Disabled Discrimination

From Forbes:

“The Truth Of Disability Employment That No One Talks About”

October is National Disability Employment Awareness Month, and it’s about time to discuss the staggering unemployment and sub-minimum pay rates among the disability community. According to data obtained by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the employment-population ratio for people with disabilities was 19.1% in 2018, compared to 65.9% for people without disabilities. Although the lower rate among people with disabilities reflects, in part, the age profile of the population — older people are less likely to be employed — across all age groups, people with disabilities were much less likely to be employed than their non-disabled peers. Out of the small population of people with disabilities who are hired, many receive sub-minimum wages. In recent years, there have been reports of an estimated 420,000 individuals with disabilities who have been paid an average of just $2.15 per hour.

The reason that employers can give such low wages is due to a loophole in the 1938 Fair Labors Standards Act. There’s a cause that allows any firm with a 14(c) certificate to pay out wages based on productivity or ability, even at rates below the minimum wage. These wages have been recorded to be as low as three cents per hour. Employers justify these sub-minimum-wages by saying they’re providing the workers with vocational training and jobs for those who otherwise never find one. These jobs are part of “community rehabilitation programs,” or what is sometimes called “sheltered workshops.” Such programs are comprised of a mix of nonprofit and private firms, and they receive both federal and private contracts that allow them to use the labor of disabled workers. At such jobs, employees often do piecemeal work, which is often referred to as the eight Fs of disability employment: food, filth, fetching, folding, filing, flower, festive and friendly.  Many community rehabilitation programs claim to have the best interest of people with disabilities, but their actions say otherwise. For example, Rock River Valley Self Help Enterprises, an Illinois nonprofit, billed itself as a vocational training program for people with disabilities. But it primarily operated as a subcontractor for local factories, providing menial tasks to workers with developmental disabilities, such as scraping debris from metal casts. 

Cheryl Bates-Harris, a senior advocacy specialist at the National Disability Rights Network, describes the employment programs as “a bridge to nowhere,” since disabled people often become trapped in these career paths that don’t lead to anywhere or anything.  Sheltered workshops undoubtedly reinforce the dangerous notion that disabled people must be isolated and kept from society, whether to protect them or protect others from them. This population too often gets ignored in discussions of fair wages and workplace diversity and inclusion. It is as if they can be silenced if they are not seen, which feeds into the vicious cycle of disabled people being treated like second-class citizens. According to a 2018 report by the National Council on Disabilities, the ten most extensive sheltered workshops had combined annual revenue of $523 million, and the CEO of the biggest sheltered workshop received a salary of $1.1 million while employing 1,790 sub-minimum wage workers. It is alarming to think that a law that was passed over 80 years ago still dictates the livelihood of people with disabilities. This attests to the fact that societal and political perceptions of disability haven’t evolved throughout the decades. 

^ I’ve written about this social, political and economical discrimination of the disabled many times over the years. This article gives more updated statistics. The more awareness of this official and legal disabled discrimination  - sanctioned by the Federal Government -  the more people will tell their elected officials in Washington that they do not agree with this practice and that the law needs to be removed so that the disabled get paid the same amount as the non-disabled no matter what job they do. ^

https://www.forbes.com/sites/sarahkim/2019/10/24/sub-minimum-wages-disability/#59b782c6c22b