Column: Internships over subminimum wages

The minimum wage excludes workers with disabilities, which can include old age. At the state level, this is authorized under Section 387-9, Hawaii Revised Statutes. At the federal level, it is Section 14(c) of the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, as amended. People with disabilities and our allies have been working, ever since 1938, to try to end this practice. Recently, legislation has been considered to repeal these provisions at the state and federal levels.

Sheltered workshops are special, segregated work environments that specialize in hiring workers with disabilities. Not all of them pay subminimum wages, but they can obtain a Special Wage Certificate from the U.S. Department of Labor that allows them to pay less than minimum wage to workers with disabilities. The Hawaii Department of Labor and Industrial Relations certifies individual workers as being worthy of being paid subminimum wages.

Workshops can receive charitable donations, priority for government contracts, tax breaks and the opportunity to rent government-owned facilities for $1 annually. They receive funding from Medicaid for providing “prevocational services” to their workers, so they have a financial incentive to keep the workers in their workshops instead of transitioning them out. Disability rights leaders point out that the workshops have the funds to pay their workers, especially when the CEOs sometimes earn seven-figure incomes.

Sometimes, members of the public take tours of the sheltered workshops, and people say that it’s like Willy Wonka is taking them on a tour of his chocolate factory. They see the workers with disabilities, who, like Oompa Loompas, are proud of the work that they do and put on a happy show for the visitors. Workshop administrators, like Willy Wonka or like a missionary, might genuinely believe that the workshop is best for the workers, but there are better alternatives than the payment of disability-based subminimum wages.

Sheltered workshops profit immensely from the current system and routinely oppose the advocacy efforts of organizations of people with disabilities and our allies to change it. The most common argument is that many of us would not be able to get jobs if we had to be paid like able-bodied workers. Thankfully, this problem has not occurred in the states that have already sanctioned the payment of subminimum wages to workers with disabilities: Alaska, Maryland, New Hampshire, Oregon, Texas, Vermont and Washington. Expectations — low, mediocre or high — become self-fulfilling prophecies.

One sensible alternative can be quite easily done. Internships and apprenticeships allow employers to train people for jobs while paying them stipends below the minimum wage, or not at all. Any employer paying disability-based subminimum wages can use internships to convert those wages into small stipends using a mainstream, non- discriminatory system.

Regardless of disability, if they are not productive enough to be paid a full wage for that job, you can make them an intern or apprentice and pay them less while you train them. The sheltered workshops claim to be training the workers, sometimes forever. Internships are temporary, but so are the productivity ratings that the workshops give their workers. The attitudes attached to internships emphasize growth and learning, but permanent jobs are viewed as destinations. Subminimum- wage jobs should not be destinations.

The resounding message is that we want to be treated equally under the law. If we are paid less because we are learning, that’s fine, but it should have nothing to do with our disability. In fact, many organizations of people with disabilities take no stance on whether a minimum wage should exist at all — but, if it is going to exist, it should not discriminate against a minority group.

Justin Mark Hideaki Salisbury, a Kapiolani resident, chairs the Legislative Advocacy Committee of the National Association of Blind Students