Much has already been said about minimum wages, living wages, and how the labor shortage accompanying the COVID-19 pandemic has already highlighted flaws in how workers in the United States are compensated.
As a young disabled person entering the workforce, however, witnessing the fight for $15 an hour makes my heart ache for the disabled workers in Massachusetts and beyond being paid even less than the minimum wage as it stands. What some don’t realize is that for workers with disabilities, employers can be granted permission to pay less than the minimum wage if they can prove, based on measures of output compared to abled workers performing the same tasks, that the employer’s disabled employees are less productive than abled workers would be.
According to national survey data from 2017 and 2018 collected by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, the average wage under these certificates was only $3.34 per hour. But the point of minimum wage law is that if someone is working a full-time job, they should be able to sustain themselves on the wages they earn — no exceptions.
Consider the standard minimum wage in Massachusetts and how it has changed, from $11 an hour in 2018 to $13.50 today. That increase has not depended on increased worker productivity, nor should it have. I am far from the first to object to this practice — several states, including Vermont and New Hampshire, have ended it, and in April, a bill to support disabled workers — including the nationwide...
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