People With Disabilities Aren’t Entitled to the Minimum Wage

[KamaAina]

Alas, not The Onion.

https://www.thenation.com/article/people-with-disabilities-minimum-wage/

The old labor motto goes, “From each according to ability, to each according to need,” but hundreds of thousands of people are stuck in jobs that pay according to their disability, and end up with jobs that match neither ability nor need.

Although federal labor law’s guiding principle is “equal pay for equal work,” workers with disabilities are categorically restricted from earning equal pay under antiquated federal labor laws, and physically barred from regular workplaces. People with disabilities are literally stuck on a second-class wage scale, based on the assumption that they lack the competence to be equally productive. The structural bias ingrained in the labor market has left more than 80 percent of people with disabilities out of the workforce....

The sub-minimum wage remains a powerful, and condescending, discriminatory barrier, say rights advocates. The Fair Labor Standards Act provision known as 14(c) allows some bosses to seek waivers, known as “exemptions,” to pay substandard wages to workers with impairments—in some cases under $1 per hour. Since the New Deal, the rules have been incrementally whittled down, so that instead of ensuring opportunity for workers who would otherwise be excluded, many segregated programs for workers with disabilities—typically low-grade jobs doing rote tasks like assembling housewares—can effectively pay whatever they want—if the firms certify the wages are “commensurate” for their duties (an arbitrary standard prone to exploitation).

Goodwill Industries has been scandalized for recruiting workers with disabilities to work in stores for as little as $1 an hour in some cases. This summer, federal regulators revoked the wage exemption of a West Virginia–based nonprofit “Work Adjustment Center” purporting to provide rehabilitation services, which owed about $48,000 in back wages to 12 workers doing assembly production jobs, after falsifying prevailing wage assessments.

[unblock]

1. if republicans had their way, everyone shorter than 8 feet tall would be considered "disabled"

for this purpose.

[marybourg]

2. “From each according to ability, to each according to need,”

I'm surprised to see this characterized as a "labor" motto. I've never known it to be other than a Marxist, then a communist, slogan.

[dembotoz]

3. no surprise here it is something of a double edge sword

some workers perform at a REALLY low level in sheltered workshops

so everyone wants these folks to work but you have some really low functioning adults.

the task is to be fair.........which is ........hard