New Federal Project Aims To Help End Subminimum Wage
by Shaun Heasley | March 25, 2022
Charlie McGrory, left, who has Down syndrome, and his brother Andy, who is also his job coach, bag groceries at Hy-Vee in Winona, Minn. in 2018. Charlie McGrory previously worked at a sheltered workshop, but transitioned to integrated employment as a result of a 2014 federal law that prioritizes helping people with disabilities find jobs in the community. (David Joles/Star Tribune/TNS)
Federal officials are making a new push to get people with disabilities working in competitive, integrated employment as opposed to subminimum wage jobs.
States can vie for a piece of a $167 million demonstration project that the Biden administration is calling “a step toward ending practices that have allowed some employers to pay less than the federal minimum wage to people with disabilities.”
The grant program known as the Subminimum Wage to Competitive Integrated Employment demonstration project will fund innovative approaches to help people who are working in or considering jobs paying less than minimum wage to secure employment alongside their typically developing peers where they are paid wages on par with other workers.
The U.S. Department of Education’s Rehabilitation Services Administration, which is behind the new program, said it expects to award money to as many as 18 state vocational rehabilitation agencies and their partners to “help eliminate subminimum wage employment.”
https://www.disabilityscoop.com/2022/03/25/new-federal-project-aims-to-help-end-subminimum-wage/29773/