[nfbwatlk] FW: No Help from the Senate HELP Committee: Increasing the Wage Disparity for Workers with Disabilities

[Mike Freeman]

From: Chapter-presidents [mailto:chapter-presidents-bounces at nfbnet.org] On
Behalf Of Lewis, Anil
Sent: Wednesday, June 26, 2013 1:35 PM
Subject: [Chapter-presidents] No Help from the Senate HELP Committee:
Increasing the Wage Disparity for Workers with Disabilities

 

No Help from the Senate HELP Committee: Increasing the Wage Disparity for
Workers with Disabilities 

Submitted by alewis on Wed, 06/26/2013 - 14:16 

https://nfb.org/blog/vonb-blog/no-help-senate-help-committee-increasing-wage
-disparity-workers-disabilities

 

Blog Date: 

Wednesday, June 26, 2013

By Anil Lewis

 

Yesterday was the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Fair Labor Standards Act
(FLSA), which is a monumental piece of legislation for most American
workers.  The FLSA provides for the payment of a federal minimum wage, which
is now $7.25 per hour, to every American citizen.  To commemorate this
seventy-fifth anniversary, the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor
and Pensions (HELP) conducted a hearing entitled "Building a Foundation of
Fairness: 75 Years of the Federal Minimum Wage," to discuss a proposed
increase in the federal minimum wage. 

 

However, many people with disabilities chose not to celebrate this
anniversary because Section 14(c) of the FLSA excludes Americans with
Disabilities from the "foundation of fairness" by allowing employers to
obtain a Special Wage Certificate that permits them to pay their workers
with disabilities less than the federal minimum wage.  In fact, the wage
foundation of some workers with disabilities starts at three cents per hour.
While the Senate HELP Committee states that it is "keeping up with a
changing economy" by "indexing the minimum wage," committee members are
ignoring the plight of workers with disabilities by refusing to abolish an
unfair, discriminatory, and immoral provision that condemns hundreds of
thousands of people with disabilities to lives of low expectations,
subminimum wages, and public assistance.     

 

The National Federation of the Blind and over fifty other committed
organizations of and for people with disabilities are working to eliminate
the payment of subminimum wages to workers with disabilities by advocating
for the repeal of Section 14(c) of the FLSA.  The Fair Wages for Workers
with Disabilities Act of 2013, HR 831, has been introduced in the U.S. House
of Representatives to phase out the use of this discriminatory provision
over a three-year period.  Rather than helping to eradicate Section 14(c) of
the FLSA, on Thursday, June 20, 2013, the Senate HELP Committee conducted a
hearing on the reauthorization of the Workforce Investment Act (WIA), and
chose to consider language that would actually result in an increase in the
use of this intolerable provision. 

 

WIA mandates coordination among federal and state job training
programs-including employment services, adult education and literacy
programs, welfare-to-work, vocational education, and vocational
rehabilitation programs-to increase employment for all Americans.  For
Americans with disabilities, the reauthorization of the federal
Rehabilitation Act is a significant part of the WIA reauthorization process
because it mandates that each state provide quality vocational
rehabilitation services to assist individuals with significant disabilities
to obtain competitive integrated employment.  However, the WIA draft
contains language in Title V, Section 511 that would increase the wage
disparity of workers with disabilities by providing a prescription for the
use of subminimum wages in the vocational rehabilitation process.  While
this language is intended to limit the steering of transition-age youth into
subminimum wage programs by prescribing a number of hoops that must be
jumped through in order for a vocational rehabilitation client to be placed
in a sheltered workshop job, experience shows that its provisions will
simply become a box-checking paperwork exercise that will have the
unintended consequences of increasing the number of young people with
disabilities being placed in subminimum wage shops.

 

With the language in Section 511, the U.S. Senate chooses to link the
Rehabilitation Act, which was established to assist people with disabilities
in obtaining competitive integrated employment, with Section 14(c) of the
FLSA, which is based on the false premise that people with disabilities
cannot be competitively employed and therefore can be paid subminimum wages.
The title of the Senate hearing on the WIA reauthorization was "Developing a
Skilled Workforce for a Competitive Economy." In our opinion, linking the
Rehabilitation Act with Section 14(c) of the FLSA supports the development
of an unskilled workforce of people with disabilities in a custodialistic
economy.  

 

Our fight is not against an increase in the federal minimum wage.  Our fight
is a fight for fairness and opportunity.  In fact, the same moral and
economic arguments being used to justify a lifting of the minimum wage apply
to workers with disabilities, over four-hundred thousand of whom are
currently being paid wages significantly less than the federal minimum wage
and well below the poverty line.  Workers with disabilities need the proper
training and opportunity to earn a living wage that raises us out of poverty
and dependence on public assistance, and allows us to contribute to the
economy by spending the money we have earned.  We, too, are citizens. We
believe that the four-hundred thousand American citizens with disabilities
currently employed at subminimum wages have the capacity to be productive,
competitive employees who deserve the same workforce protections as the
millions of other nondisabled American citizens.  Similarly, as long as
there is a federal minimum wage guarantee for nondisabled employees, workers
with disabilities should have the same minimum wage guarantee.  All
citizens, including those with disabilities, must be accorded the same
rights and protections. Equality is part of our American creed, and as we
write what the president called "the next great chapter in our American
story," we must, at long last, apply our belief in equal treatment and equal
opportunity to Americans with disabilities.

 

 

 

Mr. Anil Lewis, M.P.A.

Director of Advocacy and Policy

 

"Eliminating Subminimum Wages for People with Disabilities" 

http://www.nfb.org/fairwages

 

NATIONAL FEDERATION OF THE BLIND

200 East Wells Street at Jernigan Place

Baltimore, Maryland   21230

 

(410) 659-9314 ext. 2374 (Voice)

(410) 685-5653 (FAX)

Email: alewis at nfb.org

Web: www.nfb.org

twitter: @anillife 

 

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