COLUMBIA, S.C. (WCSC) - A law that allows employers to pay people with disabilities less than the federal minimum wage could soon be taken off the books in South Carolina.
Legislation to abolish the subminimum wage has now passed both chambers of the State House, though changes made to it last week in the House of Representatives have put the bill back in the Senate’s hands with three days left in the regular legislative session.
Nearly 3,000 people with disabilities in South Carolina were being paid less than the minimum wage just before the pandemic began, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.
That number has since dropped to nearly 1,000 people, according to the department, but advocates hope it could soon be zero.
“As one of the largest minority groups in the whole entire country, we should no longer see people with disabilities as less than,” Able SC President and CEO Kimberly Tissot said. “We are citizens just like everybody else, and we deserve to be paid equally among our peers without disabilities.”
Under the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, employers with a U.S. Department of Labor-approved waiver can legally pay less than the federal minimum wage — currently, $7.25 an hour — to workers with disabilities, defined as those “whose earning or productive capacity is impaired by age, physical or mental deficiency or injury.”
Currently, 14 employers across South Carolina hold that certificate. Most of those are organizations that work to help people with...
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