As a final project for her Spring Fellowship, Policy Fellow Emily Snodderly wrote and delivered this policy speech examining the practice of paying subminimum wages to people with disabilities.
In 1938, the Fair Labor Standards Act created the federal minimum wage, but it included an exception for people with disabilities. The exception was intended to preserve employment opportunities for people, especially wounded veterans, who couldn’t keep up with “normal production” in factories. Now, 85 years later, thanks to this law, an estimated 53,000 workers in the United States earn less than minimum wage, sometimes pennies per hour, solely because they have a disability.
This is the typical experience of a worker with a disability earning subminimum wage. We’ll call her Janet. Janet is a 35-year-old woman with an intellectual disability. For the last 15 years, she has worked in something called a sheltered workshop. Like Janet, all her coworkers have some sort of disability. For 10 hours a week, they sort and package products like jewelry or soap. Every 6 months, Janet’s supervisor times how fast she works in order to justify her current wage. She earns $4 an hour–about average for sheltered workshop employees. After an entire year of sorting and packaging the same way every day, Janet has earned a grand total of $2,000.
Oftentimes, when I first tell someone about subminimum wage employment, their reaction is positive. They say, “Isn’t that a good thing? If employers can pay lower wages, it incentivizes them to hire people with disabilities. Plus, people who couldn’t otherwise get a job get the satisfaction of having a job.” However, this perspective is based on two false assumptions. [continue reading…]