Subminimum Wage Employment Continues To Slide
An employee at a sheltered workshop takes a momentary break from repackaging plastic sprayers to chat with her mother. (Tammy Ljungblad/The Kansas City Star/TNS)
There has been a major shift in the past few years in the employment of people with disabilities, but hundreds of organizations across the country still pay these workers as little as pennies an hour.
Under a law dating back to the 1930s, employers can obtain special certificates from the US Department of Labor that allow them to pay workers with disabilities less than the federal minimum of $7.25 per hour.
New data of the Department of Labor indicates that at the beginning of this month, 905 entities throughout the country have active or pending certificates under section 14(c) of the Fair Labor Standards Act. These employers report that they are paying subminimum wages to 43,584 workers with disabilities.
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The numbers represent a continued drop in employment under the program. A Government Accountability Office report released earlier this year found that in 2019 there were 1,567 employers paying some 122,000 people with disabilities less than the minimum wage.
Changes in federal law and the implementation of subminimum wage bans in many cities and states over the past decade have led to a greater focus on competitive integrated employment for people with disabilities rather than subminimum wage.
More recently, a dozen disability advocacy groups called on the Department of Labor to issue a moratorium on new section 14(c) certificates citing declining participation in the program.
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