Speaker 1: You're listening to Comedy Central. Disabled people face a lot
Speaker 1: of challenges when it comes to employment, discrimination and hiring,
Speaker 1: a lack of accessible office spaces, coworkers who claim they
Speaker 1: are also disabled because they just can't do gluten, and
Speaker 1: there's a big issue getting a lot of attention right
Speaker 1: now about how much disabled people get paid. Minimum wage
Speaker 1: isn't the same for everyone. Businesses can take advantage of
Speaker 1: a section of a federal act that allows them to
Speaker 1: pay people with disabilities less. Employers can apply for a
Speaker 1: Section fourteen C certification of the Fair Labor Standards Act
Speaker 1: of ninety eight that grants them the ability to pay
Speaker 1: workers with disabilities less than the federal minimum wage. Of
Speaker 1: This program was established under the Roosevelt administration with arguably
Speaker 1: good intentions were veterans who developed physical and mental disabilities
Speaker 1: from combat, came home from abroad, and ruggle to find employment.
Speaker 1: There's no limit to how low an employer can pay,
Speaker 1: so employers could legally pay pennies per hour. There are
Speaker 1: even places in America where workers earn as little as
Speaker 1: twenty two cents an hour. It's all perfectly legal. Yeah,
Speaker 1: twenty two cents an hour. I mean, I don't know
Speaker 1: about you, but I was shocked when I heard them,
Speaker 1: because I don't think any human being should be earning
Speaker 1: less than a gumball machine. Even in Africa, we'd see
Speaker 1: this and be like, what, that's not even enough for
Speaker 1: a couple of coffee a day. And it doesn't even
Speaker 1: make sense in terms of just language. How can a
Speaker 1: wage be lower than the minimum wage? Minimum is supposed
Speaker 1: to be the minimum. It's like when the weather man
Speaker 1: says it's below freezing out there. Yeo man, once something
Speaker 1: is frozen, it is frozen. Gotta hear with your weather voodoo.
Speaker 1: So it's no surprised that there is a movement to
Speaker 1: get rid of sub minimum pay. More and more states
Speaker 1: have been passing laws to close the loophole, and President
Speaker 1: Biden recently called on Congress to face it out completely.
Speaker 1: And this seems like one of those things that everyone
Speaker 1: should agree on, you know, like freeing Britain, or the
Speaker 1: first VIV was better, or that that the best karaoke
Speaker 1: song is tlcsal Scrubs. But it's actually more complicated than
Speaker 1: you might think, because some argue that this wage loophole
Speaker 1: is actually a good thing for the disabled. Employers that
Speaker 1: can pay below seven are typically agencies that work directly
Speaker 1: with people with disabilities to help them find jobs what's
Speaker 1: called a sheltered workshop. Here, the disabled get virtually guaranteed employment,
Speaker 1: but they are not guaranteed minimum way. These job programs
Speaker 1: are designed to develop skills, create social groups, and instill
Speaker 1: a sense of value for their clients. If fourteen C
Speaker 1: certificates cannot be applied for, some are worried about the
Speaker 1: unattended consequences. They say, people with profound disabilities may lose
Speaker 1: a chance to be employed if sevenimum wage goes away.
Speaker 1: The biggest impact will be on our folks who have
Speaker 1: severe disabilities, the handicapped. The disabled worker is not going
Speaker 1: to be given an employment opportunity. Rory Ruland says his
Speaker 1: uns tried other jobs, but sheltered workshops provide gainful employment
Speaker 1: and purpose for it. If we forced him to go
Speaker 1: out and try to find a minimum wage job, he
Speaker 1: would be unemployed. Yeah, you see, that's what makes this
Speaker 1: so complicated. Many of the places that use this loophole
Speaker 1: are called sheltered workshops, which exist to provide these jobs
Speaker 1: to disabled people. So there's a legitimate concern that losing
Speaker 1: this wage loophole might end up hurting the very people
Speaker 1: they're trying to help, because if they closed down, some
Speaker 1: disabled people won't be able to get jobs at all.
Speaker 1: And having a job is important. I mean, it gives
Speaker 1: you structure, it gives you a community, gives you a
Speaker 1: sense of purpose, and an I D. Badge with the
Speaker 1: worst picture you've ever taken keeps you humble. So you
Speaker 1: could see how this arrangement, as messed up as it seems,
Speaker 1: might be better than nothing. At the same time, many
Speaker 1: advocates say that by providing a safety net for the disabled,
Speaker 1: these sheltered workshops could actually be doing more harm than good.
Speaker 1: Where it's legal to pay people less than the minimum wage,
Speaker 1: often as little as twenty or thirty cents an hour,
Speaker 1: raises serious questions about exploitation and whether people are really
Speaker 1: be giving an opportunity to reach their full potential, and
Speaker 1: the sheltered workshop system takes people and systematically tells them
Speaker 1: they're not as good as the rest of the workforce.
Speaker 1: To me, it's not right that we're getting the pay
Speaker 1: that we get because we worked hard over there, We
Speaker 1: worked very hard. It's not like they're just helping them
Speaker 1: get any job. They helped them get only the kinds
Speaker 1: of jobs that this place has available. Ken campone attended
Speaker 1: Johns Hopkins University. Ken also has cerebral policy. Finding a
Speaker 1: job was difficult. He ended up in a sheltered workshop.
Speaker 1: Do you know how to meaning? It was going to
Speaker 1: a sheltered workshop after completing a difficult programming class. He
Speaker 1: left after one day. But what if I did go
Speaker 1: back and work there, I probably would have still been
Speaker 1: there working for pennies on the dollar, not having the
Speaker 1: opportunities I have today. Yeah, you see this makes sense too.
Speaker 1: If society pushes disabled people into these low wage workshops,
Speaker 1: it tells them that this is where they're supposed to be,
Speaker 1: and it limits their potential because we know that disabled
Speaker 1: people are capable of doing great things. I mean, Stephen
Speaker 1: Hawking was an astrophysicist. Even with a l S. Franklin Roosevelt,
Speaker 1: he ran the country from a wheelchair. Stevie Wonder is
Speaker 1: the reason that Happy Birthday is better at Black birthday
Speaker 1: parties than white birthday parties. And look this whole idea
Speaker 1: that disabled people shouldn't be paid the same as able
Speaker 1: bodied people because they're not as productive. Like, I don't
Speaker 1: know about that argument. Guys. Because it's not like every
Speaker 1: able bodied person is great at their job either. If
Speaker 1: you ask me, disabled people should have the right to
Speaker 1: be as shitty at their jobs as everyone else. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they should also be able to show up late, just
Speaker 1: do enough work to not get fired, play fruit Ninja
Speaker 1: in the bathroom, and then leave at for thirty on
Speaker 1: the Dot That my Friends is Equality. The Daily Show
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