When Virginia’s legislature voted this month to phase out the practice of paying subminimum wages to disabled people, it joined a growing movement of states and cities around the nation to end an approach that pays some as little as pennies an hour.
The effort to do away with subminimum wages for people with disabilities enjoys rare bipartisan support—even In Congress, where a bill to end the lower wages was sponsored by a Democrat and a Republican in each of the chambers.
In addition to Virginia, where the bill to end subminimum wages is awaiting the governor’s signature, another 13 state legislatures have voted to abolish the low wage for disabled people, according to theAssociation of People Supporting Employment First (APSE). Several other states are in various stages of proposing and considering related legislation.
Still, there are those who worry that ending the practice means disabled people won’t have any opportunities to work. The places that pay lower rates are sheltered workshops that employ people with severe intellectual disabilities who may not be able to bag groceries or perform many of the other minimum wage jobs. But the idea is to phase out these federally certified and funded workshops that segregate disabled workers and find ways to integrate them into mainstream workplaces. It mirrors a decades-long effort in public schools to mainstream children with disabilities with their peers.
“In the sheltered workshops, [people with disabilities] have friends...
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