THE FREE PRESS:  “Adults With Disabilities Deserve to Work:  For Many People with Intellectual Disabilities, a Subminimum-Wage Job Offers Pride, Responsibility, and Some Extra Cash.  So Why Are Activists Fighting to Eliminate Their Programs?”

I wrote on this subject for the Commission on Civil Rights a few years ago (during the late, great lockdown). It struck me then as jaw-droppingly stupid that so-called disability rights groups would advocate abolishing the special minimum wage laws for severely disabled employees.  For them, it’s that or unemployment.  I wondered at the time whether unions like the SEIU were funding the effort, since dues-paying unskilled workers, probably immigrants with low English skills but no other problems, would likely replace the severely disabled workers.  I admit I have no particular evidence of this.  But the massive effort (and it is massive) behind the “Abolish the Subminimum” campaign is just plain weird.  The public comment we got from the parents and guardians of severely disabled employees was OVERWHELMINGLY against doing away with the program.  And yet the campaign marches on.