[nabs-l] The Subminimum Wage Issue

Thu Apr 3 04:05:03 UTC 2014

Hi Andy and all,

First, the article you describe about the employees hanging clothes
referred to Sheila Lieglande and her husband (don't recall his name).
The article did not mention any disabilities besides blindness. I
actually know Sheila from another NFB list, and I know that she and
her blind husband have successfully raised a son on their own. So even
if they do have additional disabilities, if they are capable of
parenting a child to adulthood without outside intervention, then I
would contend they should be capable of attaining minimum-wage or
higher employment and being supported toward that goal. Sheila's story
seems to be one example of a high-functioning person who is being paid
subminimum wage (and many folks with both blindness and CP can be
quite high-functioning). I suspect the NFB is focusing on all
disabilities because partnering with other disability groups brings a
lot more attention to the issue and makes it a much broader one than
just focusing on the blind.

Second, I could write a novel about the fallacy of those productivity
tests, but instead of doing that let me try to argue against their use
as concisely as I can. I would first ask why disabled employees are
being tested in this manner while non-disabled employees are not? If
all employees were paid according to their score on productivity
tests, I suspect that overall wages would decrease and a good chunk of
our labor force would make less than minimum wage. The very act of
holding an entire group of people to a different standard because of a
characteristic they have, like a disability, is the definition of
prejudice and discrimination. Sometimes discrimination is justified,
but I don't think there is clear evidence that disabled people, as a
whole, are less productive than those without disabilities; in fact
some would argue the opposite. Proponents of subminimum wages seem to
assume a priori that disabled employees are less productive, but
without subjecting all employees to productivity tests, we really
don't know. Moreover, there are a myriad of psychological reasons why
employees might perform worse on a timed test than they would in a
real employment situation. Finally, there are probably a lot of
disabled people who are not very productive in assembly-line kinds of
jobs, but who would be tremendously productive if they were able to
find jobs that better fit their particular skills and interests. I
suspect that if the only job I was encouraged to do was hang clothes
or tune pianos, I wouldn't be very productive at those things because
those just aren't things I'm personally good at. There are some other
things I'm much better at and I'm grateful that I had people in my
life encouraging me to get an education and develop the skills and
interests I do have. For people with intellectual and developmental
disabilities, often their "productivity" is artificially set by
guardians and others in their lives rather than by their own
aptitudes. A disabled child might be perfectly capable of walking, but
if doctors tell  their parents they won't walk and the parents never
provide the support they need to walk, they won't walk. The same
process can play out in employment and, tragically, often does.
Again, please read the article about Walgreens. It shows that a
company who made the investment to pay its disabled employees equal
wages did not have to lay off anyone and in fact is expanding its
model to include more disabled employees after they proved themselves
and their productivity.

I used to have a more moderate position about subminimum wages, but I
read a couple of very compelling posts from NABS president Sean Whalen
that convinced me to take a more extreme stance. Sean was paid $4 per
hour at a summer job just because he is blind, without other
disabilities. I have known Sean personally for several years and can
promise you he was and is perfectly capable of contributing at a level
equal to his sighted peers. He is now a Harvard law student. I will
find one of his posts in the archives and forward it along because he
addresses the economic side of the issue better than I possibly can.
There are many many people with multiple disabilities who may not be
as articulate as Sean is but who still deserve the dignity of a
guaranteed minimum wage that the rest of the public gets. Sadly, in
many cases their parents and guardians buy into the notion that these
disabled people cannot be as productive and that subminimum wage is
their only option for employment. It is long past time to change that.

Arielle

On 4/2/14, Andy <musicproandy at gmail.com> wrote:
> I thought I'd chime in here.
> Arielle, you say:
> "Some employees are being paid subminimum wages who are blind with no
> other disabilities."
> If this is true, I'm baffled as to why NFB is not using this approach
> for lobbying.  Every article I've ever seen has discussed multiple
> disabilities.  I think the NFB would have a stronger argument if they
> could find people with blindness as the only disability, and could
> procure evidence that they were, essentially, being exploited.  I read
> an article, for instance, about a woman with cerebral palsy and
> blindness.  The highest paycheck she earned was somewhere around $18.
> I've read many other such articles that detail similar cases.
>
> You also say that productivity is subjective.  I certainly agree.
> However, according to various articles, companies have been performing
> tests to try and find an acceptable salary based on the capabilities
> of the employees at their specific jobs.  I would argue that employers
> are doing the best they can with the employees they have working for
> them.  In one article I read, for instance, a woman's job was to hang
> clothes.  Her salary was adjusted based on how well she did the job -
> essentially, her productivity.
>
> Finally, you mention companies having prejudiced attitudes towards the
> disabled.  I disagree.  If these certificates were declared unlawful,
> then, from a business perspective, the only option is to lay off the
> employees.  If an employee makes, say, an average of only a few
> pennies per hour, paying that employee the federal (or state) minimum
> wage is an exponential increase in their salary.  This is obviously
> fantastic news for the employees; however, the business can't possibly
> sustain that model.  Thus, the only option is to lay off the
> employees.  I'm failing to understand how this helps them in any
> significant way; indeed, I would argue that, without a job, they would
> surely be hurting.
>
>
> On 4/2/14, Arielle Silverman <arielle71 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hi Mike,
>>
>> I might write more about this when I have more time, but the short
>> answer is: (1) some employees are being paid subminimum wages who are
>> blind with no other disabilities, and (2) how productive an employee
>> can be is highly subjective. Many employees with developmental
>> disabilities are thought to be less productive than they actually can
>> be, and a lot of what affects productivity depends on the type of job,
>> the employer's expectations, and the training and support that the
>> disabled employee gets. It is not at all obvious that disabled
>> employees cannot be productive enough to justify paying them minimum
>> wage. Companies may lay off employees if forced to pay them minimum
>> wage, but only if they have prejudiced attitudes against the disabled
>> and falsely believe their disabled employees won't be productive
>> enough.
>>
>> I would encourage you to read the excellent article Anil Lewis sent
>> out about how Walgreen's employs a large number of employees with
>> developmental disabilities on their production lines, at minimum wage
>> or higher. Their experience has been very positive and they contend
>> that including the disabled employees as equal-status participants on
>> their staff has helped the morale and efficiency of their entire team.
>>
>> Arielle
>>
>> On 4/2/14, Michael Forzano <michaeldforzano at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Hi All,
>>>
>>> I've been hearing a lot about the subminimum wage issue that the NFB
>>> is involved in, and the NFB's position honestly doesn't make sense to
>>> me.
>>>
>>> My understanding is that the people being paid subminimum wages have
>>> disabilities in addition to blindness that prevent them from doing the
>>> job as productively as someone being paid minimum wage, such as
>>> cerebral palsy. If subminimum wages are eliminated, it seems pretty
>>> clear to me that the employers would lay off the people in question.
>>> After all, if you suddenly have to pay an employee hundreds of times
>>> more than you were paying them for the same amount of
>>> work/productivity, I don't think you'd have much choice.
>>>
>>> People being paid suvminimum wage are likely in that situation because
>>> they have no other choice, that is, their disabilities prevent them
>>> from working even a minimum wage job. If the NFB succeeds, these
>>> people will likely have no job at all and be forced to spend their
>>> lives sitting at home on SSI. How is that helping them? at least right
>>> now, they have a job, something to keep them busy.
>>>
>>> I'm curious to see how the NFB is arguing against this because it
>>> seems pretty clear to me from a business perspective. As much as the
>>> employers may want to continue to employ these people it just won't
>>> make sense.
>>>
>>> Mike
>>>
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