Harris wants to end subminimum wages for disabled workers—if they're not behind bars
Harris wants to end subminimum wages for disabled workers—if they're not behind bars
40,000 people would benefit. Hundreds of thousands more will still earn pennies an hour.
Anyone working 40 hours a week should be able to support themselves. That's not a ridiculous idea. If your business depends on exploiting workers, you should not be in business.
Right? Imagine thinking you're Mister Big macho business guy but in reality other desperate people are just letting you leech from them.
I agree with your comment wholeheartedly and in its entirety.
With that said, raising the wages of people with special needs to be on par with that of the general minimum wage would generally be bad for people with special needs. Employers are incentivized to hire people with special needs because of the lower rate. Many employers would prefer someone without special needs if the hourly costs were the same.
In addition, many people with special needs are working fewer than 40 hours a week, and I still think they should be able to support their lives, to at least comfortably have their basic needs met.
I think the government should be stepping in to fill in the gap. If the state minimum wage is $12/h, but workers with special needs can be paid $8/h (for example), then maybe the government could be paying the extra $4/h to meet the difference.
...or they could use that money towards providing programs that people with special needs could benefit from.
If they are actually exploiting people... I know this sounds like exploitation but this issue is pretty complex and there may actually be no "jobs" for a lot of differently abled people if there isn't a carve out for certain scenarios. I say jobs in quotes because there are some places that are more or less daycares where adults of certain ability levels can go to work and do end up making less than minimum wage. But they are doing so because they are receiving a level of care and supervision at the same time. These are people who you could not just teach a job and leave to their own devices for any amount of time without endangering them. But they are capable enough to complete certain tasks. I have known adult aged people who's elderly parents would not know what to do if they had to care for them every day all day.
That said, why in our society are some people put in this situation where the only thing they can do with their adult child is send them off to a menial job for daycare? It's great that some people get the option to work, but they should also be able to receive care and not have to work menial jobs for sub minimum wages.
Like I said, the whole thing is way more complex than the no nonsense sound bite. If she were to just waive a regulatory hand and eliminate this exemption, without making more comprehensive changes, it might put some families in a very tough position. Having to suddenly pay for daycare for adults who previously were earning some amount of money.
But the places I'm talking about are usually non-profits employing these people to do work for other for profit businesses. It's not the person at your local movie theater or grocery store working mostly independently and getting paid less than everyone else.
My alma mater does this. They partner with the local school systems and have the local disabled kids enter into a work program. Anything to get them working and have a semblance of self reliance.
I don't buy that excuse, though.
First, we should have support services and healthcare available to people who need it. We should have job training, and occupational therapy, and every employer should be prepared to make accomodations for any qualified employee who may have a disability. We don't have that, but supervised labor camps are not a solution. Employment and care are two separate things.
Second, non-profits operating as a care provider are not subject to employment laws. They do not have to pay patients minimum wage.
Third, the person bagging groceries, tearing ticket stubs, and pushing carts deserves a living wage, and if they were paid properly, they might not need to rely on their parents for care. They might choose to live at home, but they could contribute to their expenses, their healthcare costs, transportation costs, and set aside money for retirement. Parents tend to die before their kids, and then what happens? Paying them peanuts to watch them during the day is not assistance, it's exploitation.
This idea only comes from people who have never seen what this is like or how it works.
I've done this kind of work, as a direct care staff helping the disabled.People with disabilities aren't doing normal productive jobs that anyone else would do. They are being paid $1.5/hour to stuff gift bags for kids birthday parties, and the like. And they have direct care staff earning $15 to $20/hour, working right next to them to help out and keep things safe.
These laws sound good. (Accept the carve out for prisoners, not sure what's up with that) But they won't do anything for the disabled, beyond forcing them out of somewhat normal life routine. These jobs aren't productive work. They're a mental health treatment, simulating a job.
Accept the carve out for prisoners, not sure what's up with that
You don't have to accept it 😉
This is going to require some re-configuring of disability payments or a lot of people will lose benefits.
I need to say this, because the ableism in the comments is getting out of hand, just because somebody is disabled doesn't mean that they can't do the exact same job as an abled person with the same exact performance. For example, somebody who is missing a leg can do an office job just as well as somebody who has both legs, and somebody who's blind can be just as good as a software engineer as somebody who has 20/20 vision.