ops

Archived

Most people assume that minimum wage protections inherently apply to anyone who enters the labor force. Sure, there are other pay schedules you may encounter if you work at a restaurant or on a farm, but people generally assume that these protections will apply to us as we approach the job market.

Workers with disabilities, however, are specifically excluded from the minimum wage protections, thanks to Section 14(c) of the Fair Labor Standards Act, a legal provision dating all the way back to 1938. Workers with disabilities have no minimum wage, and we can actually be paid a fraction of a penny per hour, just like the little nine that looks like an exponent on a gasoline price.

Employers can apply for special wage certificates from the US Department of Labor, which allow them to pay us wages based on arbitrary, rigged assessments to rate our “productivity.” For the record, I have encountered thousands of able-bodied people who are quite unproductive in their jobs, but nobody is allowed to pay them less than the minimum wage.

The system assumes that workers with disabilities are less productive, and then we get set up with a productivity rating that can loom over us for the following six months until the next assessment. They cannot legally pay an ethnic minority less because of assumed lower productivity, but they can legally do it to a worker with a disability.

When I chose to attend East Carolina, I immersed myself in a student body full of people who were, like I was, determined to prove themselves to the world, sometimes in the face of low expectations. For me, it came largely from growing up in rural Appalachia, as a biracial kid who could usually pass for white, who became blind halfway through high school.

East Carolina allowed me to be the first person in my family to earn a college degree, and, just as importantly, to have tremendous experiences to grow as a learner and a leader. Since graduating in 2012, I have been applying what I learned at ECU to work on this and other civil rights initiatives.

Many of the workers with disabilities working for subminimum wages are working in sweatshops and living like Oompa Loompas, often in housing controlled by the sweatshops themselves or partner nonprofits. Other times, an employer will set itself up to “serve” people with disabilities by providing them “training” or “employment services.” Then, the people get shifted around from task to task, for which they are allegedly being trained. The incentive to the sheltered workshop, as they are generically called, is to keep the worker from leaving so that they can continue to profit from grants and contracts based on the employee’s service.

Some of the workshops contract with regular businesses, like supermarkets, so that we are doing regular jobs but being paid less through the contracts. They take mind-numbing jobs, like the ones often performed by high school students, and they assume “this would be a good job for a worker with a disability.” All too often, we are told to work in jobs that do not stimulate us or take advantage of our talents. I am one of the lucky ones.

Some states have demonstrated respect for workers with disabilities by including them in their minimum wage requirements: Alaska, Maryland, New Hampshire and Vermont. The cities of Reno and Seattle have also sanctioned this practice at the local levels. North Carolina could easily do it, too, if enough of our people care to make it happen. I now live in Hawaii, where there has been an ongoing fight to ban it at the state level. This year could be the year for any states that want it. Ironically, the sweatshops in Hawaii argue that the workers with disabilities in Hawaii would not be able to find jobs if we had to be paid a minimum wage. I find this awfully disappointing because they are basically arguing that the people of Hawaii are inherently less productive than the people of Alaska, Maryland, New Hampshire and Vermont. Are people in those states born smarter and more capable than people in all other states? Surely not.

If there is going to be a minimum wage structure, it must apply to everyone. If we exclude an entire class of human beings from our minimum wage protections, then it isn’t really a minimum wage at all. In a society where many minorities are yearning for an equal place at the table and an equal opportunity to bear the dignity of facing risks, we all have to have each other’s backs. The privileged majority groups hold on tight, but every challenge to privilege that comes from an oppressed minority heightens the consciousness of equality in society.

(0) comments

Welcome to the discussion.

Keep it Clean. Please avoid obscene, vulgar, lewd, racist or sexually-oriented language.
PLEASE TURN OFF YOUR CAPS LOCK.
Don't Threaten. Threats of harming another person will not be tolerated.
Be Truthful. Don't knowingly lie about anyone or anything.
Be Nice. No racism, sexism or any sort of -ism that is degrading to another person.
Be Proactive. Use the 'Report' link on each comment to let us know of abusive posts.
Share with Us. We'd love to hear eyewitness accounts, the history behind an article.