It’s Legal to Underpay Disabled Workers
By, Chau Ahn Nguyen
A
merica, the land of opportunity, has undoubtedly exploited millions of citizens—from minorities to low-income citizens—in its journey to becoming one of the wealthiest countries in the world. While racial minorities and women are often discussed when the subject of marginalized groups comes up, one group that is often systematically abused and overlooked is the disabled. So, with October being Disability Employment Awareness month, it is about time that the U.S. reexamines how citizens born without able-bodied privilege are treated in its society.
While seemingly well-intended at first, as the years continued over time, the interpretation of “substandard” became blurred, and many employers have actually attempted to weaponize this loophole in some of the most horrid ways imaginable. For example, employers would commonly argue that because Southern workers supposedly “tended to be slower of movement and less oriented toward production,” they should therefore be paid as substandard workers. This loophole would even be utilized in racist ways, with many seeing this as an opportunity to discriminate against black workers, justifying their decisions by claiming that black employees are “inherently” substandard workers.
Staggering unemployment rates significantly affect the disabled more than other minorities, and the disabled employment-population ratio is only a mere 19.8 percent in 2018 compared to the 65.9 percent ratio among those without a disability. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor, “. . . [Across] all age groups, people with a disability were much less likely to be employed than those with no disability.”
Thankfully, these arguments were considered controversial—even for their time period—in the end, and while future progressive actions remedied the racist and/or overall worker abusive practices, disabled people, however, are still one of the few groups to be given subminimum wages today.
The few that are hired face another problem: subminimum wages.
Today, employers who exploit this loophole tend to claim that they’re providing these workers with “vocational training and jobs for those who [would] otherwise never find one.”
According to a 2019 Forbes report, out of the 420,000 disabled people employed, the vast majority of them receive only a meager average of $2.15 per hour as payment for their labor, and this is an obviously low number, especially when considering that the U.S. national minimum wage is $7.25 per hour. In many cases, individuals with disabilities were even paid as little as 4 cents per hour.
These jobs referenced are often a part of “community rehabilitation programs,” otherwise known as “sheltered workshops.” A mix of both nonprofits and private firms, these programs usually utilize disabled labor due to their structures, therefore making them a high subject of interest when subminimum wages are discussed. And while sheltered workshops often claim to purpose themselves around disabled individuals’ best interests, too frequently have many gone against this statement.
While this transaction is morally wrong, it is unfortunately legal due to a loophole in the 1938 Fair Labors Standards Act, which allowed employers to administer payments based on productivity or ability—even payments under the federal minimum wage. The idea was initially introduced in the legislative hearings that followed President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s suggestion to implement a national minimum wage, during which Labor Secretary Frances Perkins advocated for reduced wages for “substandard workers,” meaning “persons who by reason of illness or age or something else are not up to normal production.”
Rock River Valley Self Help Enterprises is perhaps one of the most horrific and well-known examples to illustrate this. While Self Help Enterprises prides itself on “recycling, packaging, and pallet [manufacturing],” an investigation by the U.S. Department of Labor found that the nonprofit organization was guilty of exploiting nearly 250 disabled 11
