Shelby Knowles / CalMatters
By Jeanne Kuang, CalMatters
At a warehouse tucked into a suburban Bay Area office park, along white folding tables lined up like an assembly line, about 50 people on a March morning snapped together plastic pieces of bicycle safety mirrors or stuffed envelopes with a nonprofit’s donor letters.
The tasks were simple, but it’s work.
The laborers are all adults who have intellectual or developmental disabilities, performing jobs under contract for local businesses and nonprofits. VistAbility, the nonprofit employment services provider that runs the shop, pays them each $3 to $14 an hour, depending on their speed.
The arrangement is legal — for now.
Thanks to a 2021 law change, California will soon ban paying subminimum wages to people with disabilities, a decades-old practice originating from the Great Depression.
By 2025 “sheltered” disability programslike the one at VistAbility — which together employ about 5,000 Californians statewide — must begin paying the state’s $15.50-an-hour minimum wage or shut down.
The transition toward better pay has exposed a bitter debate within the state’s disability services community: Can everyone with a disability get a job in the broader labor market — and should that be the goal? And for a group of people largely receiving public assistance, what’s the role of a job in their lives?
John Bolle, VistAbility’s executive director, said when his workshop is required to pay minimum wage, some of the faster workers...
By Andrew Goudsward WASHINGTON, May 6 (Reuters) – A U.S. judge on Wednesday ruled that the Justice Department can keep 2020 election ballots seized during an FBI search in January, a win for Presi...