aegipan-omnicorn:

fierceawakening:

anarchistcuddles:

blushandmumble:

fandomsandfeminism:

lazerdoesfeminism:

sadhoc:

laws about minimum wage should apply to disabled people

laws about minimum wage should apply to incarcerated people 

everyone deserves a fair living wage for their labor

wait, they don’t???

Not even close. Disabled folks can be paid as little as $1 an hour in some cases at whats called “subminimum wage.” Prisoners are sometimes forced to work without pay at all.

Hi, I am an attorney in the disability field. Many disabled folks make well under $1 an hour in what are called “sheltered workshops”. There are only three states right now that require people with disabilities to be paid at least minimum wage, and they are Alaska, New Hampshire, and Maryland. Goodwill is a major offender, but there are many, many others.

Here is a recent article on the subject: https://thinkprogress.org/alaska-minimum-wage-diability-b762e00ab279/

Also minimum wage actually needs to actually be a fair living wage.

Another especially horrific thing about this:

Sometimes voc rehab counselors will… strategically avoid saying much about a sheltered workshop not having opportunities for advancement.

So people will assume that their low pay and dull tasks are temporary and that they can earn promotions or raises, when actually those things are pretty much nonexistent.

So you get people being like “I’ve done this for 20 years, why have I never gotten promoted?”

This almost happened to me (what follows is an excerpt of this post: Sheltered Workshops, the so-called “dignity of work,” and the Special Ed school-to-workshop pipeline):

When I
graduated college in 1989 (with a Bachelor of Arts in English, with a
minor in Communications, and an overall GPA of 3.4 [A – A+]), my Office of
Vocational Rehabilitation case worker, called me up to tell me about an
employer looking to hire.  I was expecting an entry-level job in data
entry or a receptionist. …As I was looking to become a professional
writer, my hope would be a job at a local magazine, or something.

Nope.

The only “employer” making offers was a factory looking for people to sort eggs on an assembly line and put them in cartons.  

I have C.P., with poor balance and spasticity in my hands.  I am not physically capable of working on any assembly line – much less handling raw eggs.

I said this to my case worker. I asked her if there were any employers who were offering work I could actually do.

She seemed incredulous at the very idea.

Since this employer would be paying subminimum wages, and I’d have to pay for wheelchair accessible transportation, it would have actually cost me money to take the job.

So I declined.

As
I recall from her tone, there was an undertone of threat that I’d be
marked down as “non-compliant” (this was 27 29 years ago, though, so my
memory may be embellishing this in my favor).

All
this time, I’ve thought this was absurd. But now that I’ve read about
the official government regulation on the matter, I see that it’s evil.
Because if an employer deliberately hires an entire factory full of
workers who can’t keep up, 75% of their product can end up as a gooey
mess on the floor, and they’d still make a larger profit than if they
hired people who can do the work at minimum wage.

[Originally published 8 May, 2016; fresh emphasis added]

Can you say it with me, boys and girls? “Capitalism is evil.”