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So, I used to work in the disability services sector and the 14b argument is more complicated than most people want to admit.
I’ll use one guy I knew as an example. He loves work. He loves getting his paycheck. His idea of work? Assemble one widget in the morning and then talk to his friends for the rest of the day. He doesn’t give a shit that his paycheck is $2. This man would not be able to hold down a regular job without some paid full time to support him 1:1. So, if we eliminate all 14b facilities (and Goodwill is not alone in running these, in fact none are run by Goodwill in my area), what do we do with those individuals all day? They would end up sitting in their home all day unless we accompanied a 14b ban with a significant increase in funding for disability services. I do not believe that will happen. Politicians will ban 14b facilities and say “look, no more subminimum wages!” and leave it at that.
And I’ve had the conversation with many people. “Wouldn’t you rather have a regular job?” Very few say yes. They like the slow pace of the work and the ability to socialize. Those that do work at a high pace generally make minimum wage (the pay is set to be equal to minimum wage when they do work at a typical rate. They are paid by widget completed at a piece rate. The employer runs “time studies” with their staff to see what a reasonable amount of work is. If that’s 10 widgets per hour, you get paid 1/10th of minimum wage per widget). So, if the people with disabilities are telling me they like it, who am I to say they need to all find regular jobs?
Obviously there’s also an ethical question about the value of labor and what it means to “work”.
Edit: I hadn’t actually read that specific article. The allegation of not cleaning someone after an incontinence issue is entirely separate from the subminimum wage discussion because that’s something abuse happens to people with disabilities, unfortunately, regardless of setting. Does the worker making the video realize that her individuals have the choice to go to work each day? Also, she infantalizes them by calling adults “boys and girls,” a classic no no in disability services and a personal pet peeve. If she cares about them, she should have a conversation with them about their preferences, not post a video online for views.
I'm not sure why any of that justifies paying them less than an abled person would for doing the same job.
But that’s the thing, it’s not less. If a typical worker assembles 10 widgets an hour and the worker with a disability completes 3, they get paid 30%. Like I said, there’s an ethical question there about the value of labor and what work means, even what it means to be “typical,” since those workers have varying productivity. The original justification for 14b of the FLSA was the productivity thing. It just allows people who couldn’t typically hold jobs to get some sort of work. Many of the people in 14b settings could not hold a regular job. If 14b is banned, most employees will switch to other non-work activities, should the funding even exist for those.
That's not how minimum wage is supposed to work. It's a minimum for a reason. It doesn't matter how much work you actually do.
That’s not true at all. Minimum Wage is the minimum standard pay for DOING a job.
You don’t get minimum wage for not working.
I have yet to work a job where I didn't have tons of down time. I still got paid more than minimum wage for all of them.
Well congratulations, that sounds like an incredible privilege.
I’ve also had jobs with downtime. Unfortunately, my employers did not see fit to give me a raise for not doing anything during that time.
Maybe you’re just better at doing jack shit than the rest of us.
An incredible privilege? That was true when I worked fast food jobs. Sometimes it was dead.
And I said nothing about a raise, I said a minimum wage, and I sure don't think that there should be a "you aren't working hard enough" requirement to get the completely non-survivable wage of $7.25 an hour.
And you're not going to be able to convince me that Goodwill can't just afford to pay them that rate anyway. They just don't because they don't have to.
But they ARE paying the that wage. They’re just paying them incrementally, based on performance, rather than time.
Again, yes, you are incredibly privileged that you have been allowed to sit around doing nothing & getting paid for it. Quit pretending you aren’t.
Dead time is still time on the job. Time when you ARE expected to work. The fact that you didn’t get fired is your privilege.
Good Will is not some saintly organization, no one here is arguing that. But commerce is commerce & if those jobs fill the need for someone who can’t take on additional work, then they serve a reasonably valuable purpose in society.
Well this is the first time anyone has ever suggested I was privileged for having a minimum wage fast food job where sometimes customers didn't come in so we didn't have to work for a while.
You have a very strange idea of privilege if you think you can be privileged to have a job that doesn't pay a livable wage. Or a fast food job at all.
During downtime, were you not expected to clean, restock, & prep for the next rush? If not, then your store was run by a dunce, and that would also constitute as your privilege.
If you knowingly sat on your ass, taking pay, while your coworkers did those jobs… that makes you a dick, but a privileged dick nonetheless.
You are claiming that “downtime” is unpaid time at work, but you know you were likely supposed to be working on something.
An unspoken agreement with management to chill out after the rush, as a reward for working the rush in the first place… yep, you guessed it! That’s a privilege.
Those people took those jobs because the pay structure & work requirements suit their needs. Get off your soapbox & leave ‘em be.
I have literally never heard anyone call a fast food job privileged before just because sometimes there's downtime. That's the weirdest claim I have ever heard.
Those people took those jobs because the pay structure & work requirements suit their needs.
Cool, so we better not pay them more money because giving the disabled more money to spend would be bad for some reason.
Really, paying them what anyone non-disabled would have to legally be paid for the exact same job would just be an insult to them. I know I get insulted every time I get paid more money at my very privileged jobs that you are certain I have had.
Nobody’s saying don’t pay them more money. You’re just refusing to acknowledge that this is not an hourly based job, it is a performance based job.
If you take a performance based job, & you either underperform or don’t perform, you aren’t getting paid.
If you want more money for your performance, you negotiate a rate based on each performance, not how long each performance takes.
If you go under contract, you’ve agreed to the terms of that contract. These people agreed to this contract you’re so perplexed by.
You have the privilege of going to work each day & getting paid an agreed upon amount based on the time you spend doing your job.
These folks have the privilege of potentially spending less time on the job, while getting paid the same, depending on how fast they perform.
There are privileges on both sides.
Did you ever think maybe they agreed to the contract because they didn't think that Goodwill would give them any more money even if they wanted it?
What if what if what if…
Did you ever think maybe they took the job because it suited their needs & they didn’t want to have to fuck with a 9-5?
Did you ever think maybe the jobs are low paying because they really aren’t that important & serve more purpose as structure than income?
Your argument is that the job is bad because the terms are bad, but no one is twisting anyone’s arm to take the jobs.
The jobs get taken because there are people that want that type of flexibility.
Yes they want more money, we all want more money, but you don’t get to shit on their employment opportunities because they have different priorities than you do.
No, my argument is that no one should be paid less than minimum wage for any reason.
…but they ARE GETTING PAID THE SAME WAGE
You work 2 hours @ $15, you get $30
You build two widgets @ $15, you get $30
The only difference here is for the first job you’ve agreed to a payment of $15/hour regardless of how many widgets you make & for the second job you’ve agreed to a payment of $15/widget regardless of how long it takes.
Job A: you can dick around for 6 hours & still make $90
Job B: if you can make 6 widgets in 15 minutes, you’ve just made $90 & you get to keep your extra 5.75 hours.
This isn’t complicated. Nobody’s forcing these people to hit a quota, they work at their own pace & are paid accordingly.
I’m guessing you just want to fight over something right now, so you’re intentionally being obtuse. This really is a simple concept that comes down to the workers preference.
Nope, I just want people to be paid for their time and not what they're able to do within that time.
Paying people for productivity is ultracapitalist and Protestant work ethic cruelty.
But I guess that's just the privileged outlook I took away from that privileged fast food job I worked.
If someone doesn’t want to work for 8 hours a day, can make the same money in 3 hours, by your logic… fuck ‘em? By your logic they still owe this capitalist state 5 hours of their time & you aren’t happy until they serve it?
You can keep it.
Equal compensation is just based on time spent pal. Equal compensation is equal regardless of whether you work slowly or quickly.
Okay, then why pay people an hourly wage at all? Let's just pay everyone on how much they are able to accomplish. The harder you work, the more you get paid.
Because not all jobs are the same. People have different needs, different types of jobs offer options.
Stay at home partner, working from home, with multiple kids & schedules might enjoy an hourly wage position or a performance based position to account for at home needs.
Same may be true for someone reentering the workforce after incarceration… building usb cables at home, while studying for a certification, worked extremely well for a family member. Made a little money on the side AND had time to study.
Personally, I work from home writing technical manuals. I get paid hourly, rather than by document, because that’s my preference. I use my left over paid time learning this company’s platform so I can take on a bigger role.
That said, my coworkers are all performance based employees. They get paid based on the metric of production rather than time. Same job, same company, same department… different priorities.
Oh, you mean you get a preference? Unlike disabled people who can only get hired by companies like Goodwill?
Also, all of this vociferous defense of Goodwill paying disabled people less than minimum wage seems to ignore the fact that a whole bunch of disabled people are saying that they're being underpaid by Goodwill and I'm not sure why you're not taking that into account.
Literally the point of minimum wage is that it's minimum. It should be the bare minimum we would give anyone for taking time away from their lives for the benefit of a company, regardless of the amount of work done.
Frankly, if we're going to start adjusting pay based on the quantity and difficulty of work done like that, we are going to need to start paying frontline retail workers a lot more, and CEOs and the like a lot less.
That’s also not true at all. There are plenty of employment options that don’t revolve around hourly compensation at all, they are ENTIRELY performance based.
This happens to be one of those jobs.
If you & I are bothered offered a job to make X amount of widgets in Y amount of time, don’t want to be paid for the hour or per widget?
You have control over your pay if you’re paid per widget. You have no control when paid per hour.
Should we both be paid $15 for that hour if I only make 3 widgets & you make 20?
Minimum wage only extends to hourly based employment. It does not extend to contract or performance based employment.
John Tyler’s loincloth
I don't know whether to be horrified or aroused
A Virginia man bought a tattered piece of cloth claiming to be part of George Washington’s war tent. It’s now in a Philadelphia museum.
Saved you a click.
Did you? :P
Apparently not. I wonder why I didn't see that? And judging by the upvotes on my comment, neither did several other people. 🤷
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(1 replies)
That guy sure is afraid of his wife.
Why do you say that ?
From the article:
After a small bidding war Moore won the cloth fragment for $1,300. He decided not to reveal that fact to his wife, Susan Bowen.
“I didn’t want to tell her because then she’s going to ask me, ‘Where’d you get that and how much did you pay for it?’” he said. “It’s hard for me to lie about that.”
Even after the fragment was delivered, he kept it under wraps until his wife’s son was home.
“He thought it was safer to show me when there was somebody else around,” Bowen said.
As someone previously in an abusive relationship, it's nothing like a sure sign he's in one but it's a red flag.
I didn’t read that whole part of the article. Huge red flag
this post was submitted on 07 Jul 2024
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