DOL oversight of subminimum wage certificates lagging, GAO says

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Dive Temporary:

• The U.S. Division of Labor can take as much as two years to course of new and renewal functions for certificates that let employers to pay folks with disabilities lower than the federal minimal wage, in accordance with a report from the U.S. Authorities Accountability Workplace.
• The GAO report, revealed Jan. 25 however launched Feb. 24, discovered that greater than 120,000 workers have been coated by these certificates and half made lower than $3.50 per hour. The DOL’s Wage and Hour Division oversees this system by ensuring employers appropriately calculate employees’ wages however solely processes 40% of functions inside 4 months, the report mentioned. GAO beneficial DOL set and observe timeliness targets for processing functions. 
• “Vital delays elevate issues that employers with expired certificates might proceed to function whereas not assembly program necessities, comparable to by not paying commensurate wages,” the GAO report mentioned. From August 2019 by way of December 2021, DOL discovered violations at a lot of the program employers it investigated and decided employees have been owed $15 million in unpaid wages.

Dive Perception:

The GAO report comes as extra states contemplate laws to eradicate the subminimum wage. Greater than a dozen states, together with Alaska, California and South Carolina, have already handed legal guidelines prohibiting subminimum wages for folks with disabilities, in accordance with a tracker by the Affiliation of Individuals Supporting Employment First, a corporation that promotes the total inclusion of individuals with disabilities within the office. 

When Alaska handed a legislation prohibiting minimal wage exemptions for folks with disabilities in February 2018, then-Performing Commissioner of the state’s Division of Labor and Workforce Growth Greg Cashen mentioned, “Staff who expertise disabilities are valued members of Alaska’s workforce. They deserve minimal wage protections as a lot as every other Alaskan employee.”

There’s additionally a federal push to ban the observe of providing decrease wages to employees with disabilities. Days after the GAO report was launched, a bipartisan group of U.S. Congress members launched a invoice to forestall employers from paying folks with disabilities beneath the minimal wage. 

“Paying employees lower than the minimal wage is unacceptable. Everybody deserves to be paid a good wage, and People with disabilities aren’t any exception. This commonsense, bipartisan invoice would carry up folks with disabilities by elevating their wages and creating aggressive jobs in workplaces that make use of each employees with and with out disabilities,” Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa., mentioned in a press release.