Protect sheltered workshops

There are good intentions behind legislators' efforts to do away with minimum- wage requirement exemptions for some workers with disabilities.

We've seen evidence right here in Iowa that those exemptions can be shamefully abused by unscrupulous employers exploiting vulnerable adults.

But the way to address bad actors like Henry's Turkey Service - which bilked Atalissa-based workers with cognitive disabilities out of wages and benefits for decades - isn't to shutter all sheltered workshops.

It's to increase transparency and strengthen regulation to weed them out while allowing good programs to flourish.

Last month, Florida Rep. Cliff Stearns introduced the Fair Wages for Workers with Disabilities Act, which would do away with special wage certificates that allow employers to pay some disabled workers sub-minimum wages.

The bill, now in committee, calls for revoking for-profit companies' wage exemptions in a year, and non-profit exemptions in three.

Stearns argues that the 1938 law allowing sub-minimum wages is a relic - crafted before the rehabilitation services, training and tools that now enable so many workers with disabilities to successfully gain and keep employment at and above minimum wage.

What Stearns doesn't say is that programs exempt from minimum wage also have come a long way since 1938 - evolving into a blend of sheltered workshops, supported employment and enclave services tailored to individual workers' abilities and needs.

Stearns calls the wage exemption an incentive to exploit disabled workers. He argues it would be too expensive to give federal regulators enough resources to truly keep an eye on employers paying sub-minimum wages.

But when doing the accounting, Stearns doesn't address the costs, tangible and intangible, of denying so many willing adults the dignity of work.

We've seen what it looks like when regulators don't mind the store: It looks like a rundown old bunkhouse with boarded-up windows. Like two dozen malnourished men, paid just 41 cents an hour for grueling, full-time work.

Abuses have made it clear something must be done to better protect sub-minimum-wage workers.

But before they consider killing the wage exemption, legislators must look more closely at the many more programs that use exemptions to employ thousands of workers who would be left out in the cold in today's competitive market.

They must protect the sheltered workplace programs that work.

Comments: (319) 339-3154; jennifer.hemmingsen@sourcemedia.net