The Free Press
Margo B. works diligently, sitting at her worktable at the South Valley Training Company in Sandy, Utah. Her job is to put silicone toe separators—a medical device similar to what might be used during a pedicure—into their white packaging. She repeats this process until there are no more products to be boxed. Then it’s time for her break at the soda machine. She works for four hours a day, two days a week, although she would love to work more. On another day she might load felt-tip markers into boxes, or smooth O-rings onto plumbing plugs.
For this work, she is paid 10 to 30 percent of the prevailing wage for such tasks in her state, based on her lower than standard level of productivity.
Margo, who is 31 years old, has autism and Down syndrome, which affect her coordination and fine motor skills. She would struggle to do the majority of jobs. But like most people her age, she has a deep desire to be productive and earn some extra cash. And so, since 2017, she has worked at the South Valley Training Company—a nonprofit that offers developmentally disabled adults various services, including the opportunity to work. Margo is employed under Section 14(c) of the federal Fair Labor Standards Act from 1938, a law that has long allowed certain employers—more than 90 percent of which are disability nonprofits—to pay their disabled workers less than minimum wage.
With roots in the interwar period, when Congress wished to incentivize employers to hire the blind, and later, wounded veterans, the logic of Section 14(c) is simple: Disabled people have just as much right to contribute to society via work as any American. To make this financially feasible, wages may be adjusted to reflect productivity levels. Those with disabilities who are “otherwise qualified” to perform the essentials of the job—for example, a computer coder who uses a wheelchair—ought to be fully compensated for their work. Those whose productivity is reduced by severe intellectual and developmental disorders and who might require hands-on, often intensive supervision—this is who 14(c) applies most often to today—may qualify for a subminimum wage.
As an autism advocate, I have spoken to many individuals who earn subminimum wages, and for them, the money is almost never the point. Most don’t only want to work in order to get healthcare and spending money. Their work is usually part of a broader package of benefits including on-site supervision, Social Security payments for disability, Medicaid, and housing subsidies. Rather, they’re seeking purpose and pride, and a sense of responsibility. “Her job has been a blessing,” said Margo’s mother, Anna, who declined to share her or her daughter’s last names. Although Margo uses few words, her mother tells me that she comes home from a day of work with a smile. “She has thrived so far beyond what anyone expected.”
But soon, Margo could lose her opportunity to work. That’s because federally funded disability rights organizations have been pushing for a phaseout of job programs that pay subminimum wage, arguing that they are exploitative. What’s more, advocates claim that adults with disabilities, no matter their level of impairment, should be encouraged to pursue competitive jobs that any other, nondisabled adult might have.
A recent memo from a group in Ohio fighting to eliminate Section 14(c) argues that “these subminimum wages are based on the incorrect assumption that people with disabilities are incapable of being fully integrated into the general labor workforce and paid competitive wages like any other employee, a belief at odds with the disability policy framework that has emerged over the past 40 years.”
Jackie Olson, the executive director of South Valley Training Company, where Margo works, is exasperated by this argument. “There is no common sense left,” Olson told me. Although advocates may long for a world where employers are willing to hire people with severe disabilities and accommodate their needs, in reality, most businesses—under pressure to provide their customers with speedy, high-quality service, and lacking on-site supervisors to address behavioral and medical challenges—simply can’t afford to do this.
“Employers aren’t motivated to hire people with intellectual disabilities, let alone those with the most significant ones,” said Olson. “It’s not something that can be mandated.” Olson’s clients have a wide variety of challenges, including autism, cognitive disability, seizures, sexually inappropriate behavior, and incontinence, to name a few.
She added that of about 32 disabled clients in a recent training she held, only three successfully found outside job placement.
The idea that Margo could work a regular job—one that she got by competing with adults who are not disabled, and for which she is compensated at minimum wage—is “utterly unrealistic,” said Anna. She cited the fact that her daughter works very slowly, and needs a trained supervisor who can handle her anxiety and lack of safety awareness.
So although disability activists argue that all they want is “equal rights” for the disabled, in reality, they’re sidelining the people they say they’re fighting for. We have entered a two-tier era where federally funded disability rights groups focus on full inclusion for those with relatively mild disabilities, while engaging in a willful blindness about the needs of those who are severely impacted, who don’t fit that narrative.
As the mom of two adult children with nonverbal, profound autism, I see the consequences of this fight acutely. My son Jonathan, 26, has never had any work or even an adult day program. My daughter Sophie, 18, could possibly work a subminimum-wage job after she exits school in a few years, but those hopes were dashed in 2021 when California governor Gavin Newsom signed a bill eliminating 14(c) in our state. It’s now clear that neither of my disabled kids will ever have jobs of any kind.
Historically, there has been bipartisan agreement about the value of expanding employment options for those with disabilities. But over the past few years, states like mine have begun to phase out 14(c) programs in the name of advancing the dignity and rights of disabled people. Maine eliminated them in 2020, and today, two-thirds of former 14(c) participants there are now unemployed. In Washington State, which eliminated their program in April 2021, more than 80 percent of people with severe cognitive impairments remain unemployed. When Oklahoma reduced the numbers of cognitively disabled adults in 14(c) programs, there was no corresponding increase in integrated employment. And late last month, Governor J.B. Pritzker made Illinois the 16th state to officially enact a 14(c) phaseout by signing the Dignity in Pay Act.
I asked one of the bill’s two sponsors, Theresa Mah, a Democratic state representative from Chicago, what would happen to those with severe disabilities once their subminimum-wage jobs disappear. She suggested that agencies that offer employment under section 14(c) could just pay them minimum wage, something I know from speaking with employers is generally not financially feasible. Or that, instead of working, disabled people could go to the “museum, park, or zoo, or do art,” Mah told me. She was vague on the details, mentioning only that “technical assistance” would be made available for organizations to help their disabled people “find something that works for them.” In other words, something besides working.
“I’m hearing of a lot of disabled kids who are just staying home,” said Dawn Kovacovich, the mother of Laura, 33, who has autism, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and poor vision and hearing. The Kovacoviches live in Minnesota, another state that has been phasing out 14(c) in recent years—meaning that the state no longer approves certificates for subminimum wage for any employers. Laura has been able to keep her special-wage job at a thrift store, where she reshelves merchandise and attaches price tags, because she was hired before the law took effect. Younger adults have no such option.
“It’s a ludicrous notion that all disabled people can achieve competitive employment,” said Kovacovich. “Laura’s pace would never keep up.” She noted that her daughter needs a supervisor who is prepared for her meltdowns, as well as a more structured—and forgiving—environment than she could find at a normal job.
Matthew Capps is 49 and lives in Ohio. He is another beneficiary of the 14(c) safety net, currently under contract with a car company. He has worked in a subminimum-wage job for about 25 years, and earns about $2.50 an hour for sorting small hoses that connect a car’s tank to its engine. According to his father, Harris Capps, Matthew is “probably 10 percent as productive as a regular employee.”
“When he gets in a mood, he will just walk away and not be productive at all,” Capps added.
Matthew has an intellectual disability, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and other conditions that result in him “operating at about a 5-year-old’s level.” But his job, according to his dad, “gives him a lot of satisfaction.” Matthew spends his earnings on toys or going to McDonald’s.
A business would struggle to make the case for paying Matthew minimum wage. But that doesn’t mean he should not be allowed to work.
This past December, in a Hail Mary attempt to end all 14(c) programs across the country, President Joe Biden’s Department of Labor proposed a rule that would eliminate them as “no longer necessary,” owing to the “dramatic expansion of employment opportunities for individuals with disabilities.” The proposed rule is currently on ice due to President Donald Trump’s executive order that all pending federal regulations are suspended.
The “dramatic expansion” of opportunities for disabled adults is news to Alan G.—who also declined to share his last name. Alan lives in California with his autistic son Niles, 26, who cannot grasp complex tasks. Niles was fired a year ago from a standard, non-14(c) job at a grocery store, where he wrangled shopping carts and stocked shelves. He has been job hunting ever since.
“We hear all these stupid platitudes, but in terms of practical solutions and delivering them, there is almost nothing,” Alan said, adding that when he appealed to the state disability agency for help, he was referred to California’s Employment Development Department, which hasn’t been able to find a job for Niles.
“It’s a giant gaping hole in the system,” Alan told me.
This giant hole is expanding, as rates of autism rise. An increasing number of disabled young adults are aging out of school—and into a system utterly unequipped to meet their needs. Based on data from both California and New Jersey, this population is growing by about 10 to 11 percent a year, creating what one adult program provider called “a fire hose of young adults” needing services.
Fortunately, the effort to entirely shut down subminimum-wage job programs is being met with some resistance.
After the federally funded group Disability Rights North Carolina called for an end to the state’s 14(c) programs, the legislature rejected the idea. It opted not only to retain subminimum-wage programs but also to require activist organizations that offer them to report on their real-world impact. According to the bill, that includes “specific examples of how the agency reduced barriers to employment, enabled independent living, and increased postsecondary educational opportunities.”
Given the history of state legislatures rubber-stamping proposals by disability rights groups, this was a shocking and welcome move, one that required accountability from the federally funded activists.
There is also a growing chorus of advocates for the severely disabled who are pressing for a new era of common sense around disability policy. An era in which federally funded ideological warfare is not played out at the expense of adults with severe cognitive disabilities. A new moment in which pragmatic solutions for our most vulnerable are not attacked with a quasi-religious zeal for an unattainable vision of “equity.” One in which the disability rights movement can no longer run amok, willfully blinding itself to the human consequences of its activism.
As Anna, Margo’s mother, said to me, we need a system that helps those with severe disabilities reach their potential—but one that also entails “a radical acceptance of their limitations.”
Jill Escher is president of the National Council on Severe Autism.