Minimum wage doesn’t apply to everyone.
When Congress first established minimum wage in the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, it left a loophole for businesses that employ people with disabilities.
The Secretary, to the extent necessary to prevent curtailment of opportunities for employment, shall by regulation or order provide for the employment, under special certificates, of individuals ... whose earning or productive capacity is impaired by age, physical or mental deficiency, or injury, at wages which are lower than the minimum wage.
These special certificates are known today as 14(c) permits, and thousands of employers have one. Some studies claim that more than 300,000 Americans work for subminimum wage under the auspices of such permits.
This isn’t well known. Advocates of minimum wage often base their support for the measure on ethical grounds, claiming that all workers deserve a degree of compensation regardless of their productivity. Such was the reasoning of Seattle Mayor Ed Murray, who raised his city’s minimum wage last week to the unprecedented level of $15 per hour under the guise of “equal access and opportunity for all.”
Yet minimum wage advocates rarely address the issue of minimum wage exemptions.
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