‘An inherent indignity’: the fight to get workers with disability a living wage
“They are people who really can’t do anything,” Shawn Tarwater, a state representative in Kansas told a state House committee last month as he argued to protect a scheme that allows companies to pay people with disabilities as little as $3 an hour. “If you do away with programs like that, they will rot at home. There is no place for them to go.”
The comments have sparked a storm of protests from disability advocates and highlighted a system of state tax credits across the US that allows employers to pay people with disabilities significantly less than the federal minimum wage. In some cases, disability advocates say, people are being paid as little as three cents an hour.
The row over Tarwater’s comments comes as disability rights groups have been pushing for the end of subminimum wage waivers for employers who employ people with disabilities in several states and at the federal level.
Since the federal minimum wage was first enacted in 1938, exemptions have existed for people with disabilities. A 14© waiver from the US Department of Labor allows employers to pay people with disabilities less than the federal or state minimum wage.
A US commission on civil rights report found the average wage of a person with a disability working in a job covered by the lower-than-minimum wage waiver made $3.34 an hour in 2017 and 2018. On average they worked 16 hours a week, meaning they made just $53.44 each week, or $213.76 a month.
Joe Cheray, the chair of the Kansas Democratic Disability Caucus and member of the Topeka ADA advisory council, said she has been trying to meet with Tarwater and address his comments and the lack of any disability policies included in the Kansas Republican party platform.
“I don’t feel like it’s fair for
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