§ 135-a. Workshops in connection with hospitals and facilities for the aged.

1. Any municipal corporation maintaining a hospital, sanitorium, home for the indigent or aged or facility for the chronically ill, may establish and maintain workshops in connection therewith for the production of articles or supplies required by such institution, or by any other institution or department of such municipality. Except in a supervisory or teaching capacity no person shall be employed in such workshop or workshops unless he is or shall have been a patient or resident in such institution. The appropriate municipal authorities may appropriate or provide funds for the establishment and maintenance of the said workshops in the same manner as for the establishment and maintenance of such institutions. Notwithstanding the provisions of the correction law in relation to the sale of articles manufactured in the state prisons, the products of such workshops may be used in such institution or by any other institution or department of such municipality. Such workshops shall be under the direction and control of the municipal authority having direction and control of the institution to which they may be attached.

2. The provisions of the workmen's compensation law, the unemployment insurance law, and of articles thirteen, nineteen and twenty of the labor law shall be inapplicable to any patient of a hospital maintained and operated by any municipal corporation with respect to his participation in a sheltered workshop program.