Arizona Split Over Minimum Wage
Some want new increase to leave
a loophole
to pay disabled workers less
by Catherine Komp
Under Arizona’s
new minimum-wage law, some of the lowest-paid workers – including
those who made just pennies per hour a few days ago – are
to get a raise this week. But some groups don’t want the
wage hike to apply to people with disabilities.
Before voters passed
Arizona’s new wage law, certain workers with disabilities
were exempt from the minimum wage and were paid what are called “commensurate
wages” instead. Under the new law, effective January 1, employers must
pay even these employees the standard $6.75 hourly minimum wage.
Some advocates for people with disabilities support commensurate wage policies,
saying it boosts employment for people who employers might otherwise refuse
to hire, and they are asking the state legislature to reinstate the wage exceptions.
But others call the practice discriminatory,
exploitative and one more way to segregate people with disabilities.
“‘Commensurate wage’ is an Orwellian tag for a law that
legalizes inequality,” said disability-rights activist and author Marta
Russell. “It degrades the disabled laborer to equate his [or] her productive
capacity as less than [that of] a non-disabled laborer and to not give them
equal pay. Who is to say that the disabled worker’s labor is not equal
to or more productive or profitable for their employers than the average couch
potato’s?”
The federal Fair Labor Standards
Act permits employers to pay below-minimum wages to workers whose “productive capacity is impaired by a physical
or mental disability, including those relating to age or injury.” The
Department of Labor’s Web site says alcoholism and drug addiction are
also “disabilities which may affect productive capacity.”
For states that have minimum-wage laws, many include waivers to ensure that
employers can continue to pay sub-minimum wages. Massachusetts, Pennsylvania
and Colorado included such waivers in their new minimum-wage increases, also
going into effect this week. But Arizona failed to include an exemption in
the language of its voter-approved ballot initiative last November.
Some 5,600 employers pay sub-minimum wages to about 424,000 workers across
the country, according to a 2001 report from the US Government Accountability
Office. More than half of these workers make less than $2.50 an hour.
To pay a worker a commensurate
wage, the Department of Labor requires an employer to analyze a job’s
requirements and compare the productivity of a worker with a disability doing
that job to a worker without a disability. For example, if the average wage
paid for product assembly is $8.00 per hour, and a disabled worker can only
perform at half the rate of a worker without a disability, the commensurate
wage would be $4 per hour.
Employers must re-evaluate the productivity of commensurate-wage workers every
six months and adjust wages accordingly.
In its report, the GAO criticized
the Labor Department for inadequate oversight of employers paying commensurate
wages. After surveying a random sample of work centers and businesses across
the country, the GAO found that the Labor Department was not ensuring that
workers were getting “the correct wages.” The
GAO also said the Labor Department did not have accurate data to “manage
the program” and “ensure compliance by employers.”
The Labor Department acknowledged its oversight of enforcement was inadequate
and pledged to improve the program.
Tony DiRienzi, executive director of the Arizona Statewide Independent Living
Council, said commensurate wages are one of many battles people with disabilities
are fighting.
“People have been undervalued because of their disability,” DiRienzi
told The NewStandard, pointing out that it was once legal to pay women and
children less, too.
DiRienzi, who has post-polio syndrome and uses a wheelchair, acknowledges
the economic impact of the minimum-wage hike on organizations employing people
with disabilities. But he said all people, regardless of their productivity,
should be paid at least the minimum wage.
“It’s a matter of being integrated into the community and being
included into the mainstream… and it’s a minimum,” said
DiRienzi.
Other supporters of a uniform
minimum-wage law include the Arizona Governor’s
Council on Developmental Disabilities, the AFL-CIO and the disability-rights
group Arc of Arizona.
According to the GAO, the majority
of employers paying sub-minimum wages are nonprofit “work centers.” These centers often run “sheltered
workshops” in which only people with disabilities work, performing packaging,
assembly or manufacturing jobs. Some centers also contract with businesses
in the community, like grocery stores and restaurants, and employ workers there
for sub-minimum wages.
At the Arizona-based Marc Center, a nonprofit corporation serving people with
disabilities, about 90 percent of their 500 employees make below the minimum
wage. The Center contracts with about 65 companies for jobs that include bulk
mailing, running shrink-wrap and label machines, and filling bottles with cleaning
solutions.
CEO Randy Gray, himself the father
of a son with autism, told TNS that companies should not have to pay minimum
wages to people with severe disabilities because “that
would be charity.”
“If an individual is at five percent productivity, why should an employer
or anybody have to pay more than five percent?” Gray said.
Gray and other proponents say the sheltered-workshop model is necessary to
help people transition to gainful employment. But others say that goal is not
being met. Peter Blanck, a law professor at Syracuse University and chair of
the disability-focused Burton Blatt Institute, has studied thousands of people
employed in sheltered workshops and co-authored a report on the issue in 2003.
While Blanck says sheltered work
can serve as a form of vocational rehabilitation for some people, he said
many others are “stuck in those jobs for life” despite
their potential to be integrated into better-paying employment.
“The challenge with the sheltered workshop environment,” said
Blanck, “[is] that although many people with severe disabilities in sheltered
workshops are appropriately placed there and [sheltered workshops] do serve
an important function, many people with disabilities in sheltered workshops
do not necessarily need to be there. In fact, their skill levels are quite
high, and they often stay in these sheltered workshops much longer than they
should.”
The next challenge, said Blanck,
is to “make work pay” and provide
people with disabilities competitive wages, benefits and adequate work insurance.
Blanck suggests more tax incentives for employers and better workplace accommodations
for people with disabilities.
But Russell, who has written extensively on social and economic aspects of
disability, said both the segregation of disabled employees in sheltered workshops
and the laws permitting sub-minimal wages should be eliminated.
“All laborers should be paid at least a minimum wage, and preferably
a living wage,” Russell, who uses a wheelchair, told TNS. “That
is the only way to raise the disabled workers in question here to an equal
economic level with non-disabled workers and lift some of them up out of a
below-poverty-level existence. To be paid anything less is to further enslave
the disabled worker more than workers in general are already enslaved.” ![]()
© 2007 The NewStandard. http://newstandardnews.net/ All
rights reserved. The NewStandard is a nonprofit publisher that encourages noncommercial
reproduction of its content.
www.newstandardnews.net
