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Thanks usually I’m pretty good with catching the sarcasm but this time I wasn’t
I think for a lot of people it’s about having some place to go during the day that they don’t have to pay for. If someone is unable to work a regular minimum wage job but is able to do simple tasks it could be either be stay at home and do nothing everyday or having either the government or the family pay for care. This allows a company to provide the supervision and a place for safe social interaction. People in these programs get to feel like an actual member of society rather than just a burden on their family. They can have something to do all day and come home and talk about their day at work instead of what they watched on TV. It’s unfortunate that they can’t provide enough value to justify a company to pay minimum wage but at least this way they get to have some money to help their family with bills or spend on their hobbies.
That’s why you pay them minimum wage or more and get a kickback from the government, that ends up being cheaper for everyone in the long run and you’re not exploiting them.
My firm works with at risk youth, we provide training and resources to assist them in pursuing a career in the trades.
We pay them $18/hr, the government gives us a subsidy of something like $8-12/hr depending on the situation.
The employee is still paid pretty much what their colleagues are. There are ways to handle this that don’t end up with mentally challenged people working for slave wages.
There are volunteer positions for anyone wanting to simply just do something through the day.
If EMPLOYERS want to have these people on staff, they should pay them. Period. We give people minimum wage regardless of their job. Whether a toilet scrubber, trash handler, or floor mopping person, these are all jobs worthy of minimum wage.
If a job needs to be done and they need to hire someone to do it, that person should get minimum wage, regardless of who it is, what their situation is, etc.
If companies really want relief about this stuff, maybe they should lobby for the wages that they spend on differently capable persons to be offset with a tax break or something… Let that person go home with a full paycheque. Twisting this into doing everyone a favor for giving those people something to do, is the same mentality that was used to enslave entire races. People literally thought that some races didn’t have the intellectual capability to handle their business, so by enslaving them, we were doing them a favor. The justification was always insane, they thought that by providing the bare minimum of food for their table and a space to sleep, they were entitled to own that person. It’s fucked up.
Now we’re trying to justify paying them less or not at all because they operate different to NT people?
… I’m sorry, that’s a twisted and toxic perspective.
I worked with in a garage where they employed someone to valet the hire fleet. He was incredibly slow but did a decent job. Half his wage was paid for by a government agency, he was originally on an unpaid work experience thing and the agency asked the boss if he would hire him. He said no so they offered to partially fund his wages so boss said ok. This is similar(better imho) but there are people you simply would not employ (unless you are doing it for charitable reasons) because you can get someone else for the same money.
I agree. Some positions simply cannot be filled by people who are incapable of doing the work. It’s the same way you wouldn’t hire a blind person to drive a truck.
There’s nothing wrong with giving the legally blind some kind of employment that they are capable of completing, it just limits their options. I would equiviquate it to hiring joe the garbage-man to do vector calculations for spacetravel. You would want someone who is educated and trained in that specific field to do the work; and companies would pay for that privlidge. Fact is, not everyone can do every job.
Giving someone who is differently abled, a job, is good for everyone. It cuts down on the requirement for the government to foot the bill of their care, as otherwise those that need the assistance would be on disability payments. By holding a job, they can contribute to society, and earn more than they would on assistance, while the government is likely paying aproximately the same amount they would for disability payments, just to the employer, who suppliements that with additional contribution. It shifts the social responsibility of the thing slightly, and allows those who are unable to do more, to do what they can and enhance the society in which we live - which is a sense of accomplishment that we all crave.
Either way, everyone working a job should be paid for what they do, and that wage should be enough to have their basic needs met… a liveable wage. Regardless of all other factors.
Which isn’t to desparage those who cannot work, they should be able to live as well, irrespective of why they cannot work. Welfare and/or disability support should provide for those who are incapable. Which is why I support UBI. everyone should have their needs met. Period. Food, Shelter, clothes on their back. The trick with UBI is how to make it so that people still want to work “minimum wage” type jobs. If UBI is covering their needs then those without any motivation or desire to better themselves will, in theory, just loaf around all day. “minimum wage” type jobs should be UBI (all basic needs met), alongside a relatively small payment to bump them above the basics to be able to afford luxuries like a premium mobile phone or premium mobile phone plan with data and unlimited texting or something. Internet at home that’s faster than the most basic connection they can otherwise get, nicer stuff… you know… like a car.
The main issue with UBI, IMO, is that many feel weird about giving one organization (namely the government) that much control over their flow of money; and giving it on such a scale that everyone is reliant, in some way, shape, or form, on government payments to live. Honestly, I understand that, but I disagree that it should be a problem. If the system is designed correctly, then that won’t be a problem. The main argument I have, for UBI, is that it would dramatically simplify unemployment/welfare. Everything goes through and is automatically approved as long as you’re a citizen. Whether you’re getting some form of unemployment insurance or welfare or something else (like disability), you’re getting the same, or similar amounts regardless as UBI. Hell, most of the current infrastructure wouldn’t even need to change that much, businesses would just show that John is employed here and we’re covering more than their UBI, and the company would handle it from there, as soon as John gets released from their employment, the company already has to register with the government that John no longer works here, that would trigger an action where John would need to update his UBI records, and as soon as John does, voila, UBI money going directly into John’s account. Reason for unemployment? doesn’t matter. John gets UBI. As soon as John finds a new job, the job registers that John works here as of X date, and the company is now covering John’s UBI payments through his wages.
Argh, sorry for the rant, but it’s something that I’m pretty passionate about.
It’s unfortunate that they can’t provide enough value to justify a company to pay minimum wage
What’s unfortunate is when people don’t understand that everyone, even mentally disabled persons, deserves a living wage at minimum.
No one is paid based on the actual “value” they provide to a company. If that were the case, CEOs would be paid a fraction of what they’re currently paid, and the lowest paid workers would make multiple times more than what they currently make.
I agree CEO compensation is really messed up but I don’t thinks it’s really relevant. A company gets to decide how much they value labour and if someone’s work isn’t enough to justify paying them they simply won’t have a job. I know it’s awful to pay less than a living wage but it’s important to remember these people are almost universally living with their family or in group homes. The options are really only either they don’t work or they work with a company paying less than minimum wage. Obviously the government subsidizing the wages is an option but I’m not sure if that’s the best use of resources. Would it not make more sense to directly subsidize families and group homes based on economic need.
I agree but why would a company employ people with learning disabilities when they could employ people without learning disabilities and pay them the same amount. Think there is a bigger underlying issue. Governments should incentivize employing these people so it becomes a non issue.
What’s unfortunate is that you don’t believe that the government should fully cover all the needs of disabled people and their “job” is not for money, but to become a part of a collective, bring some value for the community and feel alive. They shouldn’t need any salary, just the possibility to be useful and helpful to others.
Yeah dude CEOs just trick other capitalist out of their money. The most successful companies just toss their people into a room and make whatever they want and do whatever they do.
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So move to Cuba.
Fortunately we have this thing called “Democracy” in the USA which means “if you don’t like something you can be involved in the process of changing it.”
If I recall correctly there was a big brouhaha in the late 1700s w/r/t “we should change how this country is run somewhat.”
Would you have advised Washington, Jefferson and Franklin to have moved elsewhere rather than stand up to King George?
Should Lincoln, Grant et al have left America instead of fighting against the Confederacy?
How about Martin Luther King? Alice Paul? Thomas Paine? Elizabeth Stanton? Susan B Anthony.
Sorry but no. The USA is not a democracy. It’s a republic. It’s in the pledge if you’re old enough to have said that in elementary school.
ah, so Americans can’t vote for change? and indeed doing so is bad?
I’m shocked this is from the UK not the US.
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It’s a problem in Germany as well.
Why this is even a “debate”
I see you have a couple of straw-men responding to you, so I’ll try answer with a real world actual answer from my own lived experience.
I used to know a guy, who I’ll call Dave. Dave had some major developmental disabilities, like major major ones. At the time I first met him, my country had a law similar to this one being debated here, and Dave was employed for about half of minimum wage to push a broom around a carpentry workshop. It was the first and only time in his life that he’d ever earned a wage, and there was an unsaid understanding among the crew that Dave was doing would otherwise be a couple minutes work for them. Everyone loved him because he was so happy, and always wanting to help.
Dave was so proud of being part of the team, and he kept the place incredibly tidy, tidier than I’ve ever seen any other tradie’s workshop. (Also - it’s important context that over here we have good social safety nets, so Dave didn’t need the money to survive, he had government benefits and a full time carer).
Then the law was revoked - suddenly the guy owning the business had to choose between paying Dave or getting a full time qualified apprentice. So he did what he had to do.
There isn’t a happy ending to this story. Health and safety meant that you couldn’t have an unpaid non-worker running around a workshop, and Dave was never able to come back - even though he’d have been happy to stay unpaid just to be part of the team. And a couple years later, my work happened to take me to a small government -owned townhouse, which turned out to be Dave’s. His carer recognised me, but I didn’t recognise Dave. He was a sad empty shell of the person I once knew; he’d lost his purpose, his armchair literally had the cartoon-style outline of his body because he was there so often, and I was told he hadn’t left the house for more than six months, even for a walk around the block.
It’s possible to both protect disadvantaged workers from exploitation, while also giving inducements to businesses so that it’s worth hiring people who otherwise wouldn’t be hireable. We had that here! And when we lost it, Dave lost his purpose and the only part of his life that had ever given him meaning.
This is a good response, it really sucks for Dave, and the boss to a degree.
People with disabilities should be given activities and support groups as well, money is helpful but unfortunately not enough.
After I wrote the above rant, I was reflecting on it and I think the main opposition to this idea comes from the inbuilt assumption that job = money + survival. People say that the USA should have $15 minimum wage because that’s what they need to survive.
But in a country where survival and a base amount of money were inbuilt, Dave was free to do something that he enjoyed and which gave him purpose.
I think I just talked myself into supporting universal basic income, presumably paid for by taxing the world’s trillion dollar corporations?
It’s similar in the US. I worked with some people similar to Dave. They didn’t work out of necessity. Disability covered their basic needs.
I’m glad to hear it! You never hear about the instances where systems work and support those in need…
I mean, you’re forced into permanent poverty but disability does do what it’s supposed to. Sort of.
Yeah l hope UBI can be adopted succesfully somewhere in the near future, but I fear that no person in power will let that happen because it’s not to their benefit to do so.
I would love it if we can create a society where survival and a simple living are given for everyone regardless of job status, without having to resort to a violent revolution, but historically that doesn’t seem likely.
UBI would be an ideal solution to a lot of problems. People argue everyone would choose to stay home and do nothing with UBI but really it would make it conscionable to open up more options for how and why people work.
Because it costs money to support these individuals whether it’s at the job or sitting at home. So as one other commenter put it, you can have them contributing, feeling good about themselves, and bringing in a few bucks; or you can make it so that nobody wants to hire them and they sit at home draining caretaker resources. If you want to subsidize that cost go ahead and convince everyone to do so.
Because capitalism won.
Because people have egos.
“I make $15 an hour at my job, this (slur) can’t even (slur) and gets paid nearly as much as I make?!”
Yeah buddy, and you also deserve to make more.
The moment the monsters that want this get their way, I guarantee someone will try to manufacture more people with disabilities.
It’s probably why they put lead in everything back then.
It disabled the boomers from critical thinking
Oh wait. Don’t doctors and schools do that already?
Found the American suffering from lead poisoning
We already had someone try that here in South Carolina, and it ended up pretty much how you’d expect for South Carolina. https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/551409-judge-rules-south-carolina-restaurant-manager-owes-enslaved/
Holy shit, that restaurant owner is beyond evil 100 per week for $0 pay, how can you not even feel bad for doing that?
Welcome to the mind of slaves owners
Does this not already exist in the states?
I had a retarded uncle, not a slur, just something that happened before they were aware of the second baby Rh pheonemona. And they paid him like $3 an hour to make fishing lures. I think somehow it’s a program that helps pay for services and stuff that supported him. But it always seemed really bad to me, although I lived on the other side of the country so no idea what the “services” entailed.
If there could be a reasonable debate on this, we could argue: A) Even with accomodations, some people are going to be so unproductive that companies cannot justify hiring them at minimum wage -> B) Therefore, the government could subsidize their salary so that they have the option to contribute and earn their own salary.
Unfortunately, due to the pervasive interests of business, implementations of these solutions tend to result in companies suckling out of the teat of the state, underreporting on the actual productivity of their employees, and often putting them under the orders of managers who patronise them and barely see them as humans, with the subsequent issues that this provokes on one’s daily life.
And this is even without getting into the terrain of people who do have the capacity to be productive, but society doesn’t care about enabling that possibility. Think of people with reduced mobility who are perfectly capable of working in an office, but HR will immediately discard their application without bothering to study if they could be a good fit for the company; or autistic people, who require different sensory and social accomodations (neurotypical have sensory and social accomodation requirements too, but since they’re the norm, this tends to be ignored), and will be immediately assumed to be problematic even when they could be more productive than their allistic counter-parts.
I don’t mean to be defeatist, however. It is not impossible to achieve a proper integration of diversity.
Specialisterne helped Casa Batlló, a tourism-oriented cultural space in Barcelona, to employ and integrate 50 people on the spectrum, and everything has kept working reasonably well over there since then. This is notable because it is a common conception in business that you can’t or shouldn’t employ an autistic person to attend the public, but folks over there are literally getting paid to infodump tourists.
Unfortunately, I don’t know how it’d be possible to systemize the good work Specialisterne and other well educated and well intentioned groups are doing, without attracting nefarious actors that just want to get public funds even if they do a shit job.
Alternate alternate headline. Are disabled people, people?
The alternative is that they will never have any job at all, and they might not be happy living on handouts.
The alternative is they get paid just as much as everyone else, receive some extra cash from the government because being disabled can carry big hidden costs most people don’t realize.
The insensitive for the business is a tax break so the disabled worker does cost them less overall, they NEED this extra bit of what otherwise would be tax money to make reasonable changes to integrate the peoples special needs. After which its easier to hire more disabled people meaning more tax breaks.
Gonna take a personal stance that if 80% of your workers are officially disabled you shouldn’t need to pay tax at all. Helping these people is enough contributing to society to be ethical.
This isn’t a perfect system but its similar to how many countries do it and its miles better then forcing them into wageslavery.
Paying the disabled worker less is a complete upside down work because they have to work so much harder to get the same result. Remember your wage isn’t just a reflection of your output, otherwise it wouldn’t be an hourly rate. Its a reflection of the time and energy your body is putting into it every day.
If minimum wage was a wage that a single income earners could support an entire household on, as it was original intended still, I might get this argument. With minimum wage being an unlivable joke, paying less is essentially slavery and textbook exploitative.
Such individuals include student-learners (vocational education students), as well as full-time students employed in retail or service establishments, agriculture, or institutions of higher education. Also included are individuals whose earning or productive capacities are impaired by a physical or mental disability, including those related to age or injury, for the work to be performed.
This is such a weird group of exemptions. Full time students, presumably while paying tuition and housing themselves and completing 20 hours of coursework per week; and specifically in exactly the types of part time or seasonal jobs full-time students could take? What is the rationale? I know this happened to me in college–the university itself paid less than minimum wage for virtually any jobs done by students.
It seems to me you have the choice of paying high taxes and socializing everything; paying EVERY worker a living wage with room to cover a dependent or two and having a functioning capitalism; or earning enough for yourself to fly to Mars and avoid the guillotine while the world crumbles in despair. Why do so many choose space?
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What kind of question is that? Did you think you learned something that makes you an adult? What was the exam?
I think that legally and culturally, I am treated as an adult in that I have the same amount of freedom to accept jobs that anyone else has, and nobody is talking about people who hire me as taking advantage of me.
Well it is actually somewhat of a valid question legally. One of the main legal distinctions between adult and child is the ability to accept legal responsibility and sign contracts. At least in Canada those with severe disabilities can sometimes be found to not have the capacity to be considered a legal “adult”.
That doesn’t make people a child. It just splits people into adults that cannot accept legal responsibility and adults that can.
That’s a better way to put it. Should people with learning disabilities be treated as an adult with regard to consenting to economic arrangements?
The good thing about the near future is we are going to have the DSA for comment like this.
Did this comment offend you? That wasn’t my intention. Specifically I’m asking whether people with learning disabilities should be allowed to make their own employment decisions, like an adult, or whether they need special protections, like a child.
