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April 24, 2025 • 16 mins

For decades, workers, disability advocates and employers have debated a program called 14(c), a section of employment law that lets companies pay certain employees with disabilities less than the federal minimum wage. Proponents say the program provides opportunities for people who might not find them elsewhere. Critics say it’s exploitative and stigmatizing. 

On today’s Big Take podcast, Bloomberg senior reporter Josh Eidelson joins host Sarah Holder to dig into the debate over subminimum wage and the future of the program under President Trump.

Read more: It’s Legal to Pay US Workers With Disabilities as Little as 25¢ an Hour

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Episode Transcript

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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.

Speaker 2 (00:09):
The federal minimum wage has been around in the US
for nearly ninety years. Today, it's set at seven twenty
five an hour. By law, employers in the country can't
pay workers less than that amount, but it doesn't apply
to everyone.

Speaker 1 (00:23):
From the time that Congress created a wage floor for
the country, legislators also created an exception.

Speaker 2 (00:32):
Josh Eidelson is a senior reporter for Bloomberg covering the workplace,
and he spent the past year looking into a program
that for decades has allowed employers to pay a certain
group of workers below that federal floor, workers with disabilities.
The program is called fourteen C.

Speaker 1 (00:50):
The fourteen C program was created by Congress to ensure
that the labor of people with disabilities would not be
too expensive for companies to want to purchase it.

Speaker 2 (01:02):
Fourteen C is a section of labor law in the
US that lets employers pay sub minimum wage rates to
people with a range of disabilities based on their productivity,
and in some extreme cases. Josh says, the rate employers
come up with is close to zero.

Speaker 1 (01:17):
Records I reviewed show employers have reported paying, in one
case as little as five cents an hour to an employee.

Speaker 2 (01:26):
Fourteen C workers have packaged medical supplies in Missouri and
lipstick for Grammy Award gift bags. They've worked as janitors,
assembled car owners' manuals and clean parts used to build
F thirty five fighter jets, and people's views on the
program can be divided. There are people like Brady Bartley,
a twenty nine year old with autism who worked in Ohio.

Speaker 3 (01:48):
You just sit there and you're like, Wow, these people
are really taking advantage of me here.

Speaker 2 (01:52):
And people like Michelle Jardine, a sixty year old with
an intellectual disability and borderline personality disorder who works at
a nonprofit in Texas.

Speaker 4 (02:02):
I just love it here. It's not perfect, but it's
close to it. It's the only place I have been
in and I'd met so many friends.

Speaker 2 (02:13):
Now, fourteen C workers are at the center of a
debate over whether a program that was designed to create
more opportunities for people with disabilities is actually living up
to that promise, and whether it should exist at all. Today,
on the show, the Battle over the future of sub

(02:33):
minimum wage jobs in the United States. This is the
big take from Bloomberg News. I'm Sarah Holder, Bloomberg Senior
reporter Josh Idelson says that when Congress created the program
that would become fourteen C in nineteen thirty eight, it
was framed as a necessary exemption to the federal minimum wage,

(02:57):
meant to help both employers and people with disabilities.

Speaker 1 (03:01):
There was concern that with a federal minimum wage that
said you have to pay any employee this much per hour,
there would be people whose disabilities made them work less productively,
who would therefore not be hired or not stay hired
by employers.

Speaker 2 (03:22):
And when we're talking about workers with disabilities who are
eligible for this program, what range of disability does it encompass?

Speaker 1 (03:31):
Disabilities such as cerebral palsy autism. In recent years, most
workers paid a fourteen C subminimum wage have had some
sort of intellectual or developmental disability.

Speaker 2 (03:46):
And how do these companies determine the pay rate for
employees with disabilities.

Speaker 1 (03:51):
It's complicated by law. The pay under the fourteen C
program is supposed to be commensurate, meaning that workers are
being paid in proportion to their productivity. The amount less
than the federal minimum wage that a fourteen SEED worker
can be paid is supposed to be in proportion to

(04:12):
the amount less that they are producing at a task
as compared to a non disabled worker, and there is
a lot of responsibility on the employer. They're supposed to
figure out what non disabled workers in the area doing
that job generally make. They're supposed to figure out what

(04:34):
amount of work a non disabled worker would get done
in an amount of time. So that's generally done with
a stopwatch, timing how fast somebody else does the job.

Speaker 2 (04:47):
And how do all these metrics come together to calculate
the wage that these workers are paid. What's the range there?

Speaker 1 (04:56):
Some workers under the fourteen Seed program end up making
close to to the federal minimum wage or over it
if they have a particularly productive hour. Other workers are
making much less. Federal law does not set any specific
floor that a worker has to be paid per hour
under the fourteen SEA program.

Speaker 2 (05:20):
Many fourteen SEA employers are what's known as sheltered workshops.
Those are often nonprofits that employ Americans with disabilities in
a separate setting from other workers. These employers apply for
fourteen SEA certificates exempting them from the normal minimum wage,
and then they set piece rates or hourly rates for
the workers they hire. Almost half of workers in the

(05:41):
program make below three point fifty an hour. The Department
of Labor said last year, nearly two percent make twenty
five cents or less. Some of these employers have paid
workers even less than what the program promises, according to
investigations by labor departments under both Biden and Trump. In
fiscal year twenty two twenty three, the Department concluded that

(06:01):
more than eighty percent of the fourteen SEA employers it
investigated weren't compliant and together owe their workers' millions in
back pay.

Speaker 1 (06:10):
Critics of the fourteen C program say that this reinforces
stigma and discrimination against people with disabilities, that it sends
a signal to the public and to employers that people
with disabilities are not equal and are not as capable
as other workers. They argue, there's a whole lot that

(06:30):
the government does, and even more the government could be
doing to support integrated, dignified, well paying jobs for people
with disabilities.

Speaker 2 (06:42):
But its supporters say the program provides an important employment
option for people who might not otherwise have one. Tens
of millions of American adults have some sort of disability,
a broad category of conditions that can make it tougher
to move perceive, communicate, or learn, and while about three
quarters of non disabled working age Americans are employed, only

(07:04):
about two and five of those with disabilities are.

Speaker 1 (07:08):
One of the arguments I heard over and over was
that work in America can be hostile and unfair to
people with disabilities, and that the outside world beyond these
workshops has not met its responsibility to support people with
disabilities and treat them fairly.

Speaker 2 (07:29):
In the course of his reporting, Josh reviewed federal and
state records, visited fourteen C workplaces, and spoke with over
one hundred people, including regulators, disability advocates, employers, and workers.
One of the fourteen C employers Josh visited is called
the Brookwood Community. It's a nonprofit where he met a
woman named Michelle Jardine.

Speaker 1 (07:51):
Michelle has an intellectual disability which can make it harder
to learn and understand instructions, and borderline personality disorder, which
can lead to outbursts. She had a series of bad
experiences in other workplaces.

Speaker 4 (08:07):
I was basically bullied in front of the coworkers, call
me stupid, dumb, I'll never mount to anything, stuff like that.
So it wasn't a healthy situation for.

Speaker 1 (08:24):
Me, and because of the bullying she says she experienced
at other integrated workplaces, she switched and started working at Brookwood.

Speaker 4 (08:36):
Here I've learned that hey, I'm okay, I am kind,
really kind and consider it, and I've met lots of
friends here.

Speaker 1 (08:49):
She has a job there glazing in the ceramics shop.
She makes a piece rate that on average amounts to
around one to three dollars an hour.

Speaker 2 (09:00):
Mischelle receives financial support from her family and lives at Brookwood,
and although she says she's found fulfillment and friendship there,
her workplace is among those that have been found violating
the terms of fourteen C. Brookwood has been cited twice
by the Labor Department for violations like not conducting adequate
time studies for employees and not providing required information on

(09:21):
self advocacy and mentorship opportunities. After the latest case, Brookwood
agreed to pay one hundred and fifty thousand dollars in
back wages. The nonprofit says it's made changes to ensure
its following the rules. Other workers who participated in the
fourteen C program shared a different perspective, like Brady Bartley.

Speaker 1 (09:43):
Brady Bartley is a man with autism in Ohio who
went to a fourteen C employer where he worked disassembling speedometers.
You were getting paid how much at the beginning three dollars.

Speaker 3 (09:58):
There was not a lot a life livable amount to
live off of. I've never been happier than when I
worked at that place, but you can't survive off of it.

Speaker 1 (10:06):
Management there was very nice and was very smiley, but
over time he concluded that they were ripping him off.

Speaker 3 (10:15):
At the time, I was kind of homeless, so it
was really the only option I had at the moment.
I literally lived off of nick Chickens for a dollar.

Speaker 1 (10:23):
And importantly, Brady, like many other people I talked to
who worked in the fourteen C program and became critics
of it, Brady says his employer was not at all
trying to prepare him to find a better job somewhere else.
He says his employer presented the outside world as a
place that was hostile and scary.

Speaker 2 (10:46):
But eventually Brady found a new manufacturing job, one that
pays above minimum wage in an integrated environment.

Speaker 1 (10:53):
He said he does get frequent breaks that are a
helpful accommodation for him with his disability, and rather than
three dollars an hour. He makes over twenty dollars an hour,
and he didn't portray this job as some nirvana. He said,
sometimes he gets made fun of for the way he talks.

Speaker 3 (11:12):
I have a lot of trouble with my words and stuff,
so that people are very mean sometimes and you're going
to have to work past that. But it's worth it.
It's way better than no money. Tell you that.

Speaker 2 (11:26):
For people who oppose the sub minimum wage, stories like
Brady's prove that fourteen C is far from the only
option people with certain disabilities have to find meaningful employment
that pays at least the federal standard. But for its defenders,
stories like Michelle's highlight the ways fourteen seed jobs are
deeply meaningful. These tensions have shaped the debate over the

(11:49):
fourteen C program for decades, and they've recently been coming
to a head. So what could the future of the
program look like under President Trump? That's after the break.
I've been speaking with Bloomberg reporter Josh Eidelson about a

(12:10):
federal program that allows employers to pay people with disabilities
subminimum wages and the questions about its fate in the US.
Have there been any efforts to reform the program or
change the program.

Speaker 1 (12:23):
Since the Americans with Disabilities Act was signed in nineteen ninety,
there have been a series of state and federal developments
that have put pressure on the program and created a
reckoning that is not over yet. More than a dozen
states have passed laws to phase out subminimum wage within

(12:44):
their borders. Under the Obama administration, the President signed in
executive order requiring that people working on federal contracts make
at least ten dollars and ten cents an hour. Congress
under Obama passed a law that creates additional requirements that
are meant to be additional guardrails for the fourteen see program,

(13:06):
And in the last weeks of the Biden administration, the
Department of Labor issued a proposed regulation that would eventually
abolish the sub minimum wage program.

Speaker 2 (13:17):
So what will you be watching for next to get
a sense of what the future of this program looks like?

Speaker 1 (13:23):
One question is what will the Trump administration do specifically
with this proposed regulation that they inherited from the Biden administration?
Another is what will happen to the broader set of
supports that the government provides to help people succeed in
competitive integrated employment. Another question is what will enforcement look

(13:43):
like under President Trump. If the federal government is taking
a more laissez faire, more business friendly approach, to what
extent will we see states go in the other direction
on their own?

Speaker 2 (13:57):
Would the future of government reform and open question. Josh
found that some former fourteen C employers are pushing for
change on their own.

Speaker 1 (14:06):
Some of the vocal critics now of the fourteen C
program are employers that used to pay a subminimum wage themselves.
The experience of some of the employers that have ended
their sub minimum wage is that it changed their thinking
and made them come up with more efficient or more
profitable lines of business, and that it changed the calculation

(14:31):
for people with disabilities and their parents. In some cases,
managers concluded that having sub minimum wage programs was creating
an easy answer for families that were worried about finding
some safe place for their child to go, and that
people were being sent there who really could have been

(14:53):
succeeding in another environment. In this debate over for enc
there are debates about science, about economics, about law. There's
also a philosophical tension here. Some of the defenders of
the fourteen C program see employment as essential to meaning

(15:15):
and dignity and purpose, regardless of how much someone is
getting paid. On the other side, some of the critics
say that there is no justice, there is no dignity
in saying people can be employees but without the minimum
amount of pay that for pretty much everyone else an

(15:35):
employer is required to provide.

Speaker 2 (15:41):
This is the Big Take from Bloomberg News. I'm Sarah Holder.
This episode was produced by Julia Press. It was edited
by Aaron Edwards and Jeff Muscus. It was fact checked
by audrean Atapia and mixed and sound designed by Alex Supia.
Our senior producer is Naomi Shaven. Our senior editor is
Elizabeth Tonso. Our deputy executive producer is Julia Weaver. Our

(16:02):
executive producer is Nicole beamsterborg Sage Bauman is Bloomberg's head
of podcasts. If you liked this episode, make sure to
subscribe and review The Big Take wherever you listen to podcasts.
It helps people find the show. Thanks for listening. We'll
be back tomorrow.
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Sarah Holder

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