1.This Act may be cited as the
Fair Wages for Workers with
Disabilities Act of 2011
.
2.Congress finds the following:
(1)Current Federal
law allows the Secretary of Labor to grant special wage certificates to
entities that provide employment to workers with disabilities, allowing such
entities to pay their disabled workers at rates that are lower than the Federal
minimum wage.
(2)The practice of
paying workers with disabilities less than the Federal minimum wage dates back
to the 1930s, when there were virtually no employment opportunities for
disabled workers in the mainstream workforce.
(3)Today,
advancements in vocational rehabilitation, technology, and training provide
disabled workers with greater opportunities than in the past, and the number of
such workers in the national workforce has dramatically increased.
(4)Employees with
disabilities, when provided the proper rehabilitation services, training, and
tools, can be as productive as nondisabled employees. Even those individuals
that are considered most severely disabled have been able to successfully
obtain employment earning minimum wage or higher.
(5)While some
employers possessing special wage certificates claim to provide rehabilitation
and training to disabled workers to prepare them for competitive employment,
the fact that such employers can pay their workers less than the Federal
minimum wage gives them an incentive to exploit the cheap labor provided by
their disabled workers rather than to prepare those workers for integrated
employment in the mainstream economy.
(6)Many employers
with a history of paying subminimum wages benefit from philanthropic donations
and preferred status when bidding on Federal contracts. Yet they claim that
paying minimum wage to their employees with disabilities would result in lack
of profitability and forced reduction of their workforces.
(7)Other employers,
recognizing that the payment of subminimum wages is in fact exploitation of
disabled workers, are now paying the Federal minimum wage, or higher, to their
employees with disabilities without reducing their workforces, while still
maintaining their profitability. For example, National Industries for the Blind
(NIB) agencies exploited their blind employees for years through the payment of
subminimum wages, claiming they could not maintain profitability otherwise.
Now, All NIB associated agencies are committed to the NIB Board policy
to pay employees, whose only disability is blindness, at or above the Federal
minimum wage or their state minimum wage, whichever is highest.
(8)The Wage and Hour Division of the
Department of Labor is charged with the responsibility for oversight of these
special wage certificates. The results from thorough investigations conducted
by the Government Accountability Office—Stronger Federal Efforts Needed
for Providing Employment Opportunities and Enforcing Labor Standards in
Sheltered Workshops, Report to the Congress, Comptroller General of the United
States
(HRD–81–99) and Report to Congressional Requesters,
Special Wage Program: Centers Offer Employment and Support Services to Workers
With Disabilities, But Labor Should Improve Oversight
(GAO–01–886)—explain that due to lack of capacity, training, and resources, the
Wage and Hour Division is incapable of enforcing compliance with the subminimum
wage provision. Furthermore, the significant appropriation that would be
required to improve oversight of the regulation would be better spent improving
employment outcomes for people with disabilities.
(9)According to the
rules established under section 14(c) of the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938,
employers are to determine the special wage to be paid to a disabled employee
through a complicated method that unfairly establishes a productivity benchmark
that would be difficult for anyone to maintain. The inability of many employers
to correctly establish the wage pursuant to the rule has regularly resulted in
disabled employees receiving even less than the special minimum wage (below the
federally established minimum wage) that they should have received under the
regulation.
3.
(1)Effective
on the date of enactment of this Act, the Secretary of Labor shall discontinue
issuing special wage certificates under section 14(c) of the Fair Labor
Standards Act of 1938 (29 U.S.C. 214(c)) to any new entities not currently
holding a certificate.
(2)All special wage certificates held on the
date of enactment of this Act—
(A)by private for
profit entities shall be revoked 1 year after such date of enactment;
(B)by public or
governmental entities shall be revoked 2 years after such date of enactment;
and
(C)by non-profit
entities shall be revoked 3 years after such date of enactment.
(3)Effective 3 years from the date of
enactment of this Act, section 14(c) of the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938
(29 U.S.C. 214(c)) is repealed and any remaining special wage certificates
issued under such section shall be revoked.