(Cross-posted from The COFAR Blog)
Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren has proven to be one of the nation’s most effective advocates for workers and their financial security; but we think she’s wrong in charging that persons with intellectual and other developmental disabilities are being exploited by work programs that pay them a subminimum wage.
Warren is leading an effort in Congress to eliminate waivers that have allowed employers to pay a subminimum wage to disabled persons who are hired by employers in mainstream work settings. Warren alleges that payment of subminimum wages under the so-called 14(c) certificates or waivers is exploitative and discriminatory.
We would agree that for disabled people with normal intellectual functioning, payment of subminimum wages is exploitative and unnecessarily discriminatory; but a distinction needs to be made in the case of persons who have intellectual or other developmental disabilities that severely limit cognitive functioning.
In not making this distinction in calling for the elimination of the subminimum wage waivers, Warren is making the same well-intentioned mistake that many people in the advocacy community have made. That mistake is to assume that all developmentally disabled people are exactly the same as non-disabled people in terms of their employment potential and, even more importantly, their employment aspirations.
Those assumptions overlook a number of realities, including the fact that virtually all developmentally disabled persons who are placed in those work programs receive government assistance in some form for residential care, day care, or other services. Unlike non-disabled persons, most, if not all, individuals with significantly impaired cognition are not seeking to support themselves financially through work. They are seeking to occupy their time with activities that are meaningful and satisfying to them.
As the brother of an intellectually disabled person noted to me, his brother has no understanding of the concept of money, and wouldn’t know or be able to appreciate whether he was paid a minimum wage rate or not.
In an April 23 letter to U.S. Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta, Warren and six other senators attempted to link payment of subminimum wages to problems of abuse and poor work conditions in work settings for people with developmental disabilities. The letter cited four instances in which disabled persons were forced to work in sweatshop-like conditions, including a case in Iowa in which intellectually disabled men were working in a turkey processing plant for little or no wages and were subjected to verbal and physical abuse and unsanitary conditions.
But as is the case with abuse or poor conditions in any care-related or work setting, the instances cited in Warren’s letter appear to be the result of poor governmental oversight of those programs. Those problems could have been avoided or could be rectified with proper oversight. The problems were not necessarily the result of payment of subminimum wages.
Moreover, citing isolated instances of abuse in specific work settings doesn’t prove it is a problem in all work settings. In fact, we have not heard of any instances of such exploitation or abuse occurring in sheltered workshops or other work activity programs in Massachusetts.
We have made a number of attempts to contact Warren about this issue. I left separate voicemail messages since Monday of this week with Warren’s Washington and Boston Senate offices. On Monday, I also posted what was essentially this blog post on her website contact page, and asked if she or her staff would respond. To date, I’ve gotten no response and no call back.
The unfortunate impact of the effort to prohibit employers from paying subminimum wages to developmentally disabled people is that rather than paying them higher wages, most employers choose not to employ them. So the end result is that these disabled individuals miss out on satisfying and meaningful ways to occupy their time.
As we have reported, DDS data show that the number of developmentally disabled persons being placed in integrated or mainstream employment paying at least the minimum wage in Massachusetts has been steadily dropping in the past few years.
During Fiscal Year 2016, a high of 509 clients in the Department of Developmental Services system newly started working in mainstream jobs. That number dropped to 127 clients entering integrated employment during Fiscal 2017, and to a net increase of only 98 clients during Fiscal 2018.
We are assuming that demand for these mainstream jobs remains high, possibly in the thousands. That there was a net increase of less than 100 developmentally disabled persons in integrated employment in Fiscal 2018 appears to show that the administration has been unable to find jobs for people who want them.
Promises in closing sheltered workshops haven’t been kept
In 2014, the administration of then Governor Deval Patrick began closing sheltered workshops in Massachusetts that provided developmentally disabled persons with piecework activities because those facilities supposedly segregated those persons from their non-disabled peers and paid them less than minimum wage. The Baker administration followed that same policy, ultimately closing all remaining workshops as of the fall of 2016.
The plan of both administrations was to provide training to those former workshop participants and place them in mainstream workforce settings along with supports that would help them to function in those settings.
We expressed concerns at the time, however, that the workshop closure policy was being pursued without knowing, among other things, whether sufficient jobs existed in the private sector for all of those former workshop participants and others who want jobs.
Unfortunately, our concerns have proved to be well founded. Instead of being placed in mainstream or integrated jobs, the vast majority of the former sheltered workshop participants have ended up in DDS-funded Community Based Day Supports (CBDS) programs, which offer little or no work opportunities, and have left many of those people frustrated and bored.
DDS data also show that the DDS day program population increased by 81% from Fiscal 2014 through 2018 in Massachusetts while integrated job placements increased by only 19%. The chart below reflects this trend and illustrates the fact that the total day program population in the DDS system has caught up with and even surpassed the total number of departmental clients in integrated employment since Fiscal 2014.
Barbara Govoni, the mother of one former sheltered workshop participant, is continuing to advocate for legislation that would allow for the return of piecework activities in her son’s CBDS program.
Direct care workers are the ones who are exploited
Ultimately, Senator Warren’s concern about exploitation is misplaced. It is not the developmentally disabled who are exploited by subminimum wages. Rather, it is the people who are hired by DDS-funded providers to care for them who are usually the victims of systematic exploitation in this field.
As we have noted, direct-care workers in the DDS system, who do have to work in order to feed themselves and their families, are the ones who Senator Warren and other advocates for the disabled should be concerned about.
When direct-care workers are underpaid, it is not only they and their families who suffer, but the very people who depend on their services who suffer as well from substandard care. Paying developmentally disabled people less than minimum wage as part of their work programs doesn’t harm them. Paying their caregivers less than a living wage does.
Allowing for one group of people to be paid less than others I fear precipitates a race to the bottom.
Christopher, I would agree with your comment if we were speaking in completely general, non-contextual terms about payment of wages to different groups of people. But the point of the post was to describe a context under which it makes sense to pay less to a specific group for all the reasons that are mentioned.
It seems to me that one needs to examine and discuss this issue in context. I think your input in this instance would be more helpful if you were to respond to one or more of the arguments made in the post.
You argued that they were getting other support, but that doesn’t negate the potential for exploitation due to ignorance.
Sure, government assistance doesn’t negate the potential for exploitation. But that’s not at all the point here. Have you read the post?
Yes, I read the post and disagree. (I really hate it when people question that.) If you say one group can be paid less than another you run the risk of hiring more of the first group at the expense of the second and everybody loses. I’d rather tighten up laws against discrimination if that is what needs to happen to make sure they can be employed.
Christopher, You state that if you pay less to people with ID, you risk hiring more of the members of that group. The point made in the post, however, is that if you do force employers to pay people with ID at the same rate as people with normal cognitive functioning, employers will not hire them at all.
You can’t tighten laws against discrimination in this case because employers can’t be forced to hire people who can’t perform a job at the same level as others.
OK, but I stand by my philosophical contention that equal pay for equal work should apply to everyone, starting with the same minimum wage.
That’s perfectly true, Christopher, except Senator Warren is not proposing equal pay for equal work. She is proposing equal pay for equal time worked.
If this was about equal pay for equal work, employers would have no problem with paying the same wage to intellectually disabled workers.. In this case, however, people with intellectual disabilities normally cannot do the same amount of work in the same time period. Hence, the federal government has authorized waivers, which allow employers to pay those persons less per hour because they are producing less work in that time period.
This article may explain it better than I can: https://thehill.com/opinion/healthcare/401273-eliminating-subminimum-wage-waivers-will-harm-hundreds-of-thousands-of
But the whole point of a minimum wage is the idea that one’s time is worth a certain baseline amount, even if something takes longer, or even if a fully abled person is required to spend much of his day at his duty station twiddling his thumbs.
So, even if an intellectually disabled person wants to do the piecework they used to enjoy, and they have no conception as to what the minimum wage is, it’s better for them that they do nothing than to be paid less than that amount? That, in fact, is the reality now for what may be tens of thousands or possibly hundreds of thousands of people in this country as sheltered workshops close.
Let’s be clear. that with respect to the people I’ve written about in this post, the minimum wage is an abstract principle. They don’t need the money to support themselves. But without the subminimum wage waivers, it will be even harder for them to find meaningful work activities in the mainstream workforce.
But for Senator Warren and yourself, it appears that it’s more important to support the abstract principle of the minimum wage with no possible exceptions to it than to find a way to ensure that this group of people have meaningful and satisfying lives. .
And close those lemonade stands exploiting child labor. How dare they learn the idea of work and valuation.
I don’t accept your false choice.
I hate when people make what are essentially content-free criticisms of posts or other comments. Christopher, if you believe I’m ascribing a false choice to you, it would be helpful to provide a reason or reasons to back up your statement.
What are your solutions to the problems I’ve described?
Your arguments seem to boil down to the same ones generally made against raising the minimum wage – that it will cause fewer hires overall and leave some people out in the cold entirely. I do not want to risk the incentive to hire those who are legally allowed to make less at the expense of others nor to exploit the ignorance of those who have “no concept” of what a minimum wage is. I already gave my solution – tighten up discrimination laws if needed. If they can be hired in the first place to do a job, then they should be paid at least the regular minimum wage. If they are not competent to do the job then they should not be hired. If they take longer to do the same job that is still their time.
Christopher it’s about the inclusion in an activity. I do a fundraiser in a elderly setting where there is a couple days of staging and preparation. Over the years as frailty and Alzheimers sets in the people who at one time helped with staging become a liability. You don’t tell them they can’t help anymore, you give them a bright yellow t shirt with “Security” on it and they wander around the group talking to people.
The government doesn’t always have to be regulating everything to make everyone equal. Sure when abuse happens come down real hard, make an example, but one size fits all solutions aren’t always the answer. There are car washes that hire autistic kids in Fla, cafes that hire Down syndrome kids. as a customer you know it might take longer but it’s worth it. Some people need a much more protected setting but they still want to do something, leave them alone.
Christopher, we seem to be just going around in circles here. You said before that anti-discrimination laws should be tightened, and I responded that such laws would not apply to hiring or paying intellectually disabled persons unless they were able or qualified to do the work. You didn’t respond to that point, but now you’ve proposed that “solution” again.
Aslo, you are misrepresenting my position in saying I’m using arguments against raising the minimum wage. This is a different situation than a requirement to raise the minimum wage overall. It’s a carve-out from such a requirement, and only applies to a discrete group.
The number of people involved in this carve-out is too small to affect the overall job market in a negative way. Intellectually disabled people are not going to take away others’ jobs if they are allowed to do piecework at a subminimum wage.
As scott12mass says, this is simply an accommodation to allow this group to enjoy activities that are meaningful to them. It doesn’t negate the principle of a higher minimum wage, which I strongly support.
Sorry, standing on principle here, and if I agree with Senator Warren I figure I’m in good company. I have nothing more to add so I guess we will just have to agree to disagree.
Thanks for posting this. People with very low IQ are a lot more expensive to train and supervise. It is not easy for them to get and maintain employment. If we are not going to make exceptions to the minimum wage, then some other allowance needs to be made.
In response to couves’ comment, with which I largely agree, I would say that the expectation has been that the state will provide the training and supervision. In practice that hasn’t happened, however, because sufficient funding for that training and supervision hasn’t been forthcoming from the Legislature.
The result has been that people with intellectual disabilities have simply lost out on satisfying work opportunities following the closures of all sheltered workshops in the state. Eliminating subminimum wage waivers might make some folks feel good that justice has been done on behalf of intellectually disabled people; but in reality, it will only make it that much harder for disabled people to engage in activities that once gave them satisfaction and boosted their self esteem..