But he doubts local businesses and nonprofits will pay more expensive contracts to accommodate higher wages, and he predicted those with the most significant disabilities likely will lose their jobs. John Bolle, VistAbility’s executive director, said when his workshop is required to pay minimum wage, some of the faster workers may be able keep working. The transition toward better pay has exposed a bitter debate within the state’s disability services community: Can everyone with a disability get a job in the broader labor market - and should that be the goal? And for a group of people largely receiving public assistance, what’s the role of a job in their lives? Thanks to a 2021 law change, California will soon ban paying subminimum wages to people with disabilities, a decades-old practice originating from the Great Depression.īy 2025 “sheltered” disability programs like the one at VistAbility - which together employ about 5,000 Californians statewide - must begin paying the state’s $15.50-an-hour minimum wage or shut down. VistAbility, the nonprofit employment services provider that runs the shop, pays them each $3 to $14 an hour, depending on their speed. The laborers are all adults who have intellectual or developmental disabilities, performing jobs under contract for local businesses and nonprofits. At a warehouse tucked into a suburban Bay Area office park, along white folding tables lined up like an assembly line, about 50 people on a March morning snapped together plastic pieces of bicycle safety mirrors or stuffed envelopes with a nonprofit’s donor letters.
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