♫ slow electronic music ♫
MELANIE: My name is Melanie Oyer,
and I work for the Center for Disability Rights.
I met Gloria about two years ago,
she is one of my clients.
She works at a site for people with disabilities,
sorting items, working with little objects,
putting plastic parts together.
GLORIA (from ASL): I worked there for eight years.
MELANIE: Her work always talks about
how great an employee she is.
She's reliable, she's friendly,
she's always on time, she never misses work.
GLORIA: Yeah they tell me I'm a good worker,
my boss loves me.
MELANIE: They have specific categories
that they evaluate her on,
and the best is four out of four,
and she received a four out of four
on about 20 different categories.
In one category it says, "Independent Work Rate,"
and it says, "Excellent worker,
on average makes $3.50 an hour."
Gloria is the only excellent worker that I know
that makes $3.50 an hour.
GLORIA: No it's not fair.
MELANIE: In my opinion,
the only reason why an employer
would pay somebody so low that's an excellent worker
is because it's legal.
♫ driving electronic music ♫
NBC NEWS ANNOUNCER: Ladies and gentlemen,
the President of the United States.
PRESIDENT FRANKLIN ROOSEVELT: My friends...
After many requests on my part,
the Congress passed a Fair Labor Standards Act.
That act sets a floor below wages.
MARK: I'm Mark Riccobono,
President of the National Federation of the Blind.
The Fair Labor Standards Act is a civil rights statute,
and it provides protections
to Americans in the workforce.
The minimum wage guarantee was revolutionary.
If you were going to take a job,
you know what the floor is.
ROOSEVELT: It is the most far sighted program
for the benefit of workers
that has ever been adopted,
here or in any other country.
MARK: But the minimum wage is offered to everybody,
except for people with disabilities.
CHERYL: I am Cheryl Bates-Harris,
I'm the Senior Disability Advocacy Specialist
with the National Disability Rights Network.
Under the Fair Labor Standards Act,
which was passed in 1938,
there's a section of law called section 14(c).
MARK: Employers who have a 14(c) certificate
pay people with disabilities
less than the minimum wage
simply based on the fact that they have a disability.
So, sub-minimum wage
is a term we sometimes use to describe
paying people with disabilities
a different wage from everybody else.
CHERYL: It's intended to be able to give employers
the opportunity to hire
wounded veterans returning from war.
That provision of law was little known
and little utilized
until sheltered workshops began to flourish
in the 50s and the 60s.
Sheltered workshop is a congregate facility
where people with disabilities go
for a period of time during the day.
It's very boring, it's shredding newspapers,
it's counting nuts, bolts, and screws for packaging.
They started for the right reason
50, 60 years ago
because parents were keeping their children out of institutions
and needed somewhere for them to go during the day.
But they've since become
an outdated model of segregation.
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Statistics show that people with disabilities
are at least twice as likely
to live below the poverty line.
And poverty, I do not believe,
is the American dream that we have
for our sons and our daughters
or our family members,
with or without a disability.
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