Workers with disabilities assemble canoe seats in Mineville, N.Y., in 2013. Under a nearly 100-year-old U.S. law that is being reexamined by the Department of Labor, people with disabilities can be paid below minimum wage for their work.
Photo by Paul Buckowski, courtesy Albany Times Union/Getty Images
Liz Weintraub graduated from high school in 1986 with a desire to become a national-level lobbyist and improve the lives of people with disabilities. But the private New Jersey agency that provided job services to Weintraub — a person with disabilities — placed her in a job at a greenhouse, even though she had no interest in pruning and watering plants.
She was later placed in a warehouse job where she stood for hours each day stuffing shopper’s guides into newspapers. The warehouse was dark and dirty, she said, and by the end of each day her hands would be covered with ink.
“Nobody ever even told me how much money I was making, but I knew it was below minimum wage,” Weintraub told The Nation’s Health.
Thankfully, a support person at the agency recognized her abilities and helped her get a competitive-wage job in a library, where she was able to break free from the sheltered, workshop-type employment settings that have segregated people with disabilities. Her career has since continued upward, and today she serves as senior advocacy specialist at the Association for University Centers on Disabilities in Silver Spring, Maryland.
Unlike Weintraub, thousands of people with physical and intellectual disabilities continue to be pigeonholed by a nearly century-old law that allows employers to pay workers with disabilities less than the federal minimum wage.
Passed by Congress in 1938 as part of the New Deal, the Fair Labor Standards Act initially sought to create job opportunities for former soldiers with disabilities. Under Section 14(c) of the act, employers can apply to the U.S. Department of Labor for special certificates that allow them to pay people with disabilities less than the federal minimum wage — also known as subminimum wage — with no minimum for the hourly wage they must pay.
Disability rights leaders say the law has long since moved away from its focus on veterans and is simply a legal way for some employers to pay unfair wages to people with disabilities.
“This is an antiquated, outdated policy that continues to promote further antiquated and outdated stereotypes of disabled people that we are inherently less productive, even though we have decades and decades of knowledge that, in fact, quite the opposite is true,” Maria Town, president and CEO of the American Association of People with Disabilities, told The Nation’s Health. “When Section 14(c) was originally passed and implemented, we did not have disability civil rights in this country. We didn’t have the concept of reasonable accommodations. Disabled people, if we even survived, were often institutionalized.”
Advancements in the disability landscape over the past 90 years include the passage of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, the Rehabilitation Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act, all of which have created new opportunities for people with disabilities to be successful in the workplace.
But despite the gains, the subminimum wage policy has persisted.
According to a 2023 Government Accountability Office report, workers paid under 14(c) certificates make an average of $4.15 per hour. More than half of them earn less than $3.50 per hour, and some make less than 25 cents an hour. About 43,000 people receive compensation under 14(c) certificates, and workers typically remain in the same job for decades, with no opportunities for advancement, the report said.
Many workers earning subminimum wages have historically performed their jobs in segregated settings known as “sheltered workshops,” which often involve menial, repetitive work. The workplaces, which employ people with disabilities only, were created with an intent of providing training that could allow them to move upward in their careers, but have come under scrutiny.
According to research from the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, the practice of segregating workers with disabilities robs them of the many benefits that can be gained from integrated, competitive employment in community settings. Moreover, sheltered workshops do not provide real-world skills training or independence, said APHA Disability Section Chair Vijay Vasudevan, PhD, MPH.
“A greater proportion of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities get placed in these segregated facilities after leaving the public school system,” Vasudevan told The Nation’s Health. “They and their families are pressured to accept this subminimum wage job, while it does not match their real skillset and desires.”
Some workers with disabilities in the U.S. are legally paid less for their work, earning an average of $4.15 an hour.
Photo by FG Trade Latin, courtesy iStockphoto
APHA’s Disability Section has joined other disability rights leaders across the country in calling for an end to 14(c), which they say perpetuates unfair pay and segregation, exploits people with disabilities and sends the message that people with disabilities are less capable than their non-disabled peers.
The outcry has made its way to Washington, D.C., where the Department of Labor is reviewing the policy. Legislators in Congress have reintroduced the bipartisan Transformation to Competitive Integrated Employment Act to end subminimum wages for people with disabilities. The legislation would phase out 14(c) over five years and provide states, service providers, subminimum wage certificate holders and other agencies with the resources they need to create competitive, integrated employment. That includes training that some people with disabilities will need when subminimum wages phase out.
Unwilling to wait for the federal government to act, 13 states and cities across the country — both blue and red, urban and rural — have taken steps to eliminate the subminimum wage and to change labor policies to support people with disabilities.
“We really need action at the federal level,” said Lauren Avellone, PhD, an associate professor in rehabilitation research at Virginia Commonwealth University. “Currently it’s been a state-by-state decision whether or not to phase out 14(c) subminimum wage work. Without federal intervention to stop the practice altogether, we have inequality based on region. If you happen to be a person with a disability that happens to live in a state that hasn’t gone through that process, then that could potentially be your future.”
Vermont and Washington were among the first states to transition away from segregated, subminimum wage employment settings, and numerous lessons can be learned from those efforts as other states look to transform their own systems, said Ellice Switzer, MA, extension associate at Cornell University’s Yang-Tan Institute on Employment and Disability.
“But wages are only half the battle,” Switzer said. “We also need to make sure that employment settings don’t segregate people with disabilities, regardless of how much they are being paid. Unfortunately, the laws that govern wages and the laws governing settings are wholly disconnected.”
At the Association for University Centers on Disabilities, Weintraub considers herself fortunate to have a job that allows her to use her interest in policy to make a difference in the lives of people with disabilities.
“Everyone, regardless of who you are, regardless of your education or what kind of supports you have, you deserve to have a fair wage,” Weintraub said.
For more information, visit www.endsubminimumwage.org and www.aapd.com.
- Copyright The Nation’s Health, American Public Health Association
