I’m here to sound an alarm.
The minimum wage is not, it turns out, actually the minimum wage.
You may not know this, but there’s a minimum wage even lower than that which so many of us are fighting hard to increase. It’s a bargain basement wage this country has permitted for over 80 years – but only to a particular minority group. We’ve done it quietly, without much public discussion, and without much regard for the people who earn this subminimum wage – as little as 75 cents or a $1.50 an hour – in silence and shadow and shame.
You may be surprised to learn this activity is legal under current federal statute. It is.
You may also be surprised to learn that Oregon nonprofits and businesses currently utilize this statute to pay thousands of individuals a subminimum wage.
We cannot in good conscience continue the raise the wage movement without fully including this essential group of citizens: the only minority group for which it is currently legal to pay a subminimum wage.
I’m talking about adults who experience disabilities: physical, developmental, intellectual or other disabilities.
The statute which allows this abhorrent treatment to occur is a little-known subsection of the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act, or FLSA. This groundbreaking act, which did so much good – it introduced the 40-hour work week and established a national minimum wage – also codified, in section 14c, ancient thinking about the potential of people who experience disabilities, by carving out an exemption to the federal minimum wage to ostensibly incentivize employers to take a chance on hiring these individuals in their work forces.
It says, essentially: apply a test of “productive capacity” to individuals experiencing disabilities, then pay them a wage commensurate with their resulting productive capacity.
In 1938, this concept was novel. In 2015, it is discriminatory and backwards thinking.
And yet, the statute persists. As of October 2015, more than 2,700 nonprofits and businesses across the country held these 14c certificates. The federal government estimates more than 200,000 individuals with disabilities are being paid subminimum wages because of these certificates. The number could be even higher.
The federal statute also persists in spite of the progress we’ve made in Oregon to phase out what are called “sheltered workshops” – segregated workplaces where individuals with disabilities often earn just pennies per hour for their work. This helps to solve part, but not all, of the problem. The only answer to fully eliminate subminimum wages and sheltered workshops is reform of FLSA. That takes political capital, financial capital and a functioning Congress. None of which we have today.
Let’s be frank. People who experience disabilities, especially developmental or intellectual disabilities, are last on this community’s list for nearly every type of equal right. In a community consumed with discussing equity and interested in understanding and address disparities, disability rarely makes the list.
As far as we’ve come in advancing equal rights for people with disabilities, negative stigma against disability still runs rampant. Just last week, the president of the National Education Association gave a talk in which she maligned students with disabilities as “the chronically ‘tarded’ and the medically annoying.” She has yet to issue a public apology for the comments.
And so it has been with the raise the minimum wage movement. With the laser focus on bringing powerful interest groups in concert with grassroots activists, people with disabilities have once again been left on the sidelines.
They should not be. One in 5 adults in this country experiences a disability, and 1 in 5 children being born will experience some type of intellectual or developmental disability or delay. Though people who experience disabilities often have some of the least political or financial capital of any minority group, they are critical to the future of our community: as workers, thinkers, artists, teachers, students and parents.
In Oregon, we know better – or we should. The settlement from the Staley v. Kitzhaber case brought us the advent of improved services and supports for individuals with disabilities and their families. In 2013, then Governor Kitzhaber signed an executive order furthering the state’s Employment First policy, which “makes competitive integrated employment the goal for all Oregonians with intellectual or developmental disabilities.”
But still today, there are four businesses and 42 nonprofits holding 14c subminimum wage certificates in Oregon, employing thousands of individuals with disabilities at a subminimum wage. From Baker City to Ashland, from Portland to Pendleton, and from Coos Bay to La Grande and Sweet Home. Even such beloved organizations like Albertina Kerr and the Edwards Center continue to hold these certificates.
Today, paying individuals with disabilities a subminimum wage may be legal – at least until Congress changes its mind or the Supreme Court rules otherwise. But there’s no question it is wrong.
The legendary social activist Jane Addams once wrote that, “The good we secure for ourselves is precarious and uncertain until it is secured for all.”
In order to achieve its aim, the raise-the-minimum-wage movement must become more inclusive of individuals with disabilities, and take on reforming the Fair Labor Standards Act. Anything less and we’re still leaving some of our most valuable players on the sidelines.
Stephen Marc Beaudoin serves as Vice Chair of the Multnomah Education Service District board of directors and as Executive Director of PHAME, a Portland nonprofit that supports individuals who experience disabilities in leading their fullest, most creative lives.