dailycaller.com By Ireland Owens
While various Democrats and disability rights groups have been advocating in recent years for disabled workers to get paid higher wages, slashing certain low-wage job programs could potentially harmfully impact such workers.
Many workers with intellectual or developmental disabilities rely on sub-minimum wage job programs, which were established under section 14(c) of the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 to allow employers to pay workers with disabilities less than the federal minimum wage. Various disability advocacy organizations and Democratic lawmakers in recent years have been calling for states to abolish job programs that pay sub-minimum wages, claiming that they are unjust and exploitative.
But some experts have warned that eliminating jobs that pay sub-minimum wages would actually end up reducing work opportunities for disabled individuals. There are also some concerns that raising the minimum wage could drive up costs for consumers and also lead to employers reducing employment of low-wage workers or adopting technological replacements for such workers, such as self-checkout kiosks.
“Obviously the main issue is that there are people out there with severe cognitive, developmental or physical disabilities that would find it incredibly difficult to find paid employment at ordinary minimum wage range,” Ryan Bourne, an economic expert at the Cato Institute, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “Just simply because, for various reasons, because of their productivity challenges, because of their need for constant supervision, for the fact that they may need to do tasks in modified ways that are costly to employers, a lot of employers just would not find it profitable to hire them. And so, if you raise their wage in line for the general prevailing wage for a job, if you’re an employer, you’re going to on the margin hire the person who is most likely going to do the job productively without needing all this special attention…
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