There are major flaws in a program aimed at helping workers with disabilities

A new investigative report by The Washington Post examines a little-known corner of the labor force where workers with disabilities are employed for less than minimum wage — at times less than $1 an hour.

It’s part of a legally-sanctioned program — called the 14(c) program — which aims to provide people with disabilities work opportunities and training to one day move on to higher-paying jobs. But as The Post found, it does not always work out that way. And the program, which covers 40,000 workers with disabilities, is controversial.

Caitlin Gilbert is a data reporter at The Washington Post and one of the journalists who worked on the story. She joined “Marketplace Morning Report” host Sabri Ben-Achour to discuss her findings. The following is an edited transcript of their conversation.

Sabri Ben-Achour: So who are these 40,000 workers, and what kind of work do they do?

Caitlin Gilbert: So these workers predominantly have what are known as intellectual or cognitive disabilities, but you have a range of disabilities here. So currently, 37 states have this program — a whole range of work types as well. So everything from packaging small units of various products to things like janitorial work and food services work, as well.

Ben-Achour: One of the workers you profiled makes $4.50 a day, about 85 cents an hour. What’s the justification for paying so little?

Gilbert: When this program was sort of first conceived, folks with disabilities were often just sort of left in institutions without any sort of real work option. So at the time, this was actually seen as a step to getting folks who had these types of disabilities into a work type setting but being paid at a scale that allowed companies to, you know, still function as a company, right? But over the decades of this program essentially remaining the same, many researchers, academics have found that it’s actually not really the case that they can’t be in the community, they can’t be in a non-sheltered setting, and that there is actually another option for folks that we’ve seen happen in states that have phased out this program, where folks with cognitive disabilities are very readily employed in the community and being paid competitive wages.

Ben-Achour: Do these programs actually do what they are legally required to do, which is help people with disabilities get higher paid jobs in the community? Or offer a sense of independence?

Gilbert: Advocates of the program say this kind of small-wage situation isn’t a problem, because they get benefits and they get all these other supports. But when you actually ask many people who are working in these settings or people who formerly worked in subminimum wage settings, they say, “No, we want competitive wages, we want to work in the community,” or what have you. And the program was set up to push people into the community setting, but that’s just not happening. Only 2% of folks who are employed in that 14(c) setting actually fully transition out into the community. Sometimes folks are staying in the program for decades, and so it’s not working for many people in the program.

Ben-Achour: I mean, you’ve sifted through all of this, right? I mean, when you take it all in, what is your general impression of these programs?

Gilbert: It varies, right? I think over one in three current employers have, in some form or another, violated federal labor law. And so that’s a serious problem with the program as it stands. We spoke to many, many people who mentioned that they were concerned about the pay specifically — they wanted more pay — and many folks who sort of just felt lost in this system. No one agency is really accountable for making sure that people in the system are moving through it and moving out of it, if they so choose. I don’t think a solution is to just simply, you know, switch on and off the lights in terms of, you know, these facilities one day being there and the next day they’re not. It’s going to require serious support for individuals that are currently being paid subminimum wages.