Ending the Exploitation of Disabled Workers

I am glad to see this get some attention.

Tens of thousands of disabled people in the United States are paid less than the federal minimum wage — with some workers making as little as 25 cents per hour.

These workers, most of whom have intellectual and developmental disabilities, are part of an arcane government program that is supposed to prepare them for higher-paying jobs in the community. But a Washington Post investigation has found that many disabled workers are paid low wages for years under a tangled bureaucracy that lacks accountability and oversight.

A Post analysis of Labor Department records showed that at least 38 percent of currentemployers in the program have violated compensation and other rules, and cheated disabled workers out of millions in pay.

Jaime Muniz, 33, who has autism, was recently paid about $1.22 for every hour he spent at Pathways to Independence in Kearny, N.J., the facility where he’s been working for 11 years. His tasks include sorting wire clothing hangers and unloading heavy boxes.

“I try to do better, and I’m not moving on,” Muniz said. “I don’t really know why.”

….

Oversight of different aspects ofthe 14(c) program is fragmented between four federal agencies — the departments of Labor, Education, Justice, and Health and Human Services. However, no federal agency is in charge of making sure individuals move from 14(c) programs into community employment. A stream of government reports over three decades have called for additional oversight of the program or ending it entirely. In a 2020 report, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights wrote that the 14(c) system was “rife with abuse,” with respect to wages, and found that workers were not getting the support they needed to move on into community jobs.

A 2023 report from the Government Accountability Office surveyed wage data from 2019 to 2021 and found that workers were typically making about $3.50 per hour, compared with a federal minimum wage of $7.25. About 12 percent made hourly wages of less than a dollar.

Only about 2 percent of workers fully transitioned out of 14(c) jobs into a competitive, integrated job, according to August 2021 data from the same agency.

I’ve known social worker types who defend these programs based on the point that it’s good for disabled workers to have something productive to do and companies hire these workers when they don’t have to, that it would be easier for them to hire regular workers. But while the first point has validity, the second is absurd. Companies hire disabled workers to avoid the minimum wage and increase profit through exploiting a very easily exploited set of workers. I don’t think there’s any problem at all in finding work programs for disabled people who can do certain things. In fact, I think that’s great. But this program is completely broken and it needs a total rethinking. For one thing, having it administered by four different federal agencies is just asking for none of them to really do anything and open the door for that exploitation.