Victims of the Exemption
Submitted by alewis on
Mon, 04/22/2013 - 11:24
Blog Date:
Monday,
April 22, 2013
By
Anil Lewis
Section 14(c) of the Fair Labor Standards
Act exempts over three thousand employers from paying their workers with
disabilities the federal minimum wage, allowing them to pay workers subminimum
wages as low as three cents per hour. The Fair Wages for Workers with
Disabilities Act of 2013 will repeal this unfair, discriminatory, and immoral
provision. The employers paying a subminimum wage argue that, once the Fair
Wages for Workers with Disabilities legislation passes, the increase in wages
would create a financial hardship that would force them to terminate employees
or go out of business. This argument is an attempt to frame the employers as
victims, but instead highlights the perverse nature of the existing subminimum
wage provision authorized by Section 14(c) of the Fair Labor Standards Act.
Rather than adopting a proven successful business model in which workers with
disabilities are paid the minimum wage or more, subminimum wage employers are
exempted from being responsible creators of real opportunities for integrated
employment at competitive wages.
Subminimum wage employers cannot properly
claim to be victims when they receive revenue beyond the income generated from
the actual productivity of the worker with a disability. These entities receive
public funding, charitable contributions, non-profit tax status, preferred
contracts, and more, all before their workers produce one product or provide a
single service. The employers receive these benefits because they cultivate the
perception that they are performing a service to people with disabilities. So
although the employer argues that it is paying the worker based on productivity
(which is itself a fallacy), the worker is not being paid consistent with all of
the revenue being generated as a result of the worker’s participation. It is
important to understand that these employers would lose this revenue, and the
goodwill that generates it, if they terminated their workers with disabilities.
Therefore, it is very unlikely that they would terminate employees who generate
revenue through their mere presence. It is simply unfair for the subminimum
wage employer to continue to use the threat of termination of employees with
disabilities to justify their continued exploitation of this labor source.
Moreover, it should be obvious that any
business unable to remain lucrative with public and private money constantly
flowing into its coffers, while paying the employees at least the federal
minimum wage, should not be in business at all. The failure of such an entity
would be the result of poor management, not the payment of competitive wages or
the incapacity of its workers with disabilities. Such shoddy operations should
not be subsidized by a federal law that allows the managers of these businesses
to exploit workers with disabilities by using them as a fundraising resource, as
a justification for the lavishing of federal largesse, and as sweatshop
laborers.
Some subminimum wage employers feel they
are excused from paying better wages because workers with disabilities choose to
work in this subminimum wage environment and to receive Social Security and
other public benefits to subsidize their wages. Working for pennies per hour or
fully participating in the workforce cannot realistically be considered a
choice. Society would never consider establishing federal law that allows other
American citizens the choice to work for subminimum wages and collect public
benefits, while supplementing the employer's revenue with public
funds.
It is important to understand that as
long as we promote the illusion that subminimum wage work is a job, we deny
these individuals access to the proper training, support, and opportunity to
obtain real jobs at real wages. The existing resources currently being used to
keep these individuals in segregated subminimum wage pseudo-work environments
should be concentrated on finding them real jobs that pay real wages, or on
training them for such jobs.
Some still argue that there are those
individuals who are so severely disabled that they cannot be competitively
employed. New strategies evolve every day that prove this statement to be
false. Many individuals with significant disabilities, previously labeled
unemployable by sheltered workshops, have received job training from qualified
professionals that used innovative strategies to assist them in obtaining
competitive integrated employment. And if there are truly individuals too
severely disabled to perform competitive work, it does not follow that
employment at subminimum wages is the best outcome for these individuals. There
is a better reality that we can provide for these individuals than toiling away,
day after day, for pennies an hour.
The Fair Wages for Workers with
Disabilities Act of 2013 (H.R. 831), which will phase out Section 14(c) of the
Fair Labor Standards Act, has a phase-in period and provides incentives to these
businesses to adopt a new business model that truly benefits the worker with a
disability while allowing the businesses to remain profitable. It should be
noted that many employers of people with disabilities, including nonprofits that
hold or have held special wage certificates, have already changed their policies
to pay their workers the federal or state minimum wage or higher. These
entities are still operating and in fact thriving. Continuing to exempt
employers from paying workers with disabilities the federal minimum wage
victimizes workers with disabilities, not their purported employers.
Anil
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