High- four, elbow- spots and kisses come with the snow product at the Golden Scoop.
The store has 15 employees with developmental disabilities and is nestled inside a suburban Kansas City shopping mall. While clients first come for the special treats, many are drawn in by the Golden Scoop’s vision and welcoming atmosphere.
” It only brings you so little joy”, said Lindsay Krumbholz, who opened the store with her sister in 2021. ” We’ve actually had clients that come in and state,’ I’ve had a bad time, I just had to travel to the Golden Scoop.'”
The nonprofit shop could have gotten federal approval to pay employees who were earning less than the$ 7.25 minimum wage. But each of the store’s” Super Scoopers” earns at least$ 15 per hour plus tips.
They include , 32- year- older Jack Murphy, whom clients realize by his name of” Mayor”. He enjoys speaking with them, the professionals, and the career coaches who work with him during his swings.
” I love coming to work”, he said. ” If I was n’t working, I would be crying”.
Everything at The Golden Scoop was intended to prepare employees for victory: The restaurant was kept simple. To simplify the operation, workers pre-scoop and offer the ice cream. Big-picture snow product recipe booklets provide step-by-step instructions for mixing batches of ice cream.  , And grilled items are prepared abroad.
” They provide customized work. They’re providing the right lodging for people that work that in order to achieve”, Sara Hart Weir, senior director of the Kansas Council on Developmental Disabilities, said of the store’s professionals.
Weir, who also serves on the Golden Scoop table, hopes more Kansas employers will adopt the ice cream shop model after this year’s state law provided grant funds for organizations to give employees with disabilities above the minimum wage. For the first time, the law even established a specific tax credit that is only available to businesses that pay at least the minimum wage.
Federal rules has allowed some employers to pay people who are deemed less effective because of a physical or mental impairment that are well below the federal minimum wage since Franklin D. Roosevelt became president in 1938. Politicians in a growing number of states are attempting to abstain from the practice despite the fact that the original intent was to provide opportunities for those with limited access to operate.
With federal authorization,  , the employers , pay coins or a few dollars per hour in” sheltered sessions” that deal with businesses and hire workers to perform menial things such as shredding report, attaching product labels or presentation consumer goods in team settings that are segregated from major employees.
Although the majority of workers have intellectual disabilities, including Down syndrome and cerebral palsy, federal laws designate blindness, alcoholism, and drug addiction as qualifying conditions for lower pay.
The National Conference of State Legislatures claims that at least 16 states have abolished the minimum wage. Others, including Kansas and Minnesota, have agreed on a middle ground: creating funds to help employers make the change themselves.
The move comes at a time when Section 14 ( c ) of the Fair Labor Standards Act, the federal law that authorizes lower pay, is being closely watched, and it comes after decades of efforts to fully integrate people with developmental disabilities into their communities.
A bipartisan group of lawmakers from both chambers of Congress introduced such  legislation last year, but it has not advanced. Congress has failed to ban the practice numerous times. It followed the U. S. Department of Labor , announcement of a” comprehensive review”  , of the federal program.  , In a 2020 report, the U. S. Commission on Civil Rights found “persistent failures in regulation and oversight” of employers by the federal Labor and Justice departments.
While many disability advocates believe that raising pay will affect disabled workers ‘ social security benefits or put disabled workers ‘ businesses out of business altogether, others worry.
A report , from the U. S. Government Accountability Office last year found about 120, 000 workers were employed under the program, with half earning less than$ 3.50 an hour.
However, the use of the program has been declining for years as more disabled workers have transitioned from sheltered workshops to more commonplaced workplaces like the Golden Scoop.
In 2010, more than 3, 100 employers across the country participated in the federal subminimum wage program. By 2019, that number had dropped by nearly half, with 1, 567 employers participating, according to the GAO.
” What this program has evolved into over the years is a very niche program for people with significant intellectual disabilities and mental health issues,” said Kit Brewer, executive director of Project CU, a sheltered workshop in St. Louis that employs about 100 people with developmental disabilities.
According to Brewer, many workers are unable to produce at the rate required to compete in traditional workplaces, so subminimum wage work might be their only option. And, he said, the economics just do n’t bear higher pay. Like other workshops, Project CU competes with for- profit companies.
According to Brewer, a large proportion of those employed at his company would struggle in the workforce, even those with the necessary skills.
” They do n’t have the comfort level, because of their anxiety, because of their disability, possibly because of some of their behavioral needs”, he said. ” And throwing money at a changeover does n’t fix any of that”.
Everything is determined by choice.
Disability advocates have been working for years in Minnesota to phase out the subminimum wage. Last year, lawmakers embraced most of the recommendations from a state , task force. They provided funding for technical assistance, case management, and training for those employers who were making the transition to the minimum wage in an omnibus spending bill.
Last week, a House committee , approved a bill , that would abolish the subminimum wage.
According to Jillian Nelson, a member of the task force and a member of the Autism Society of Minnesota, sheltered workshops are as antiquated as the state institutions that once housed a large number of people with disabilities.
” We would never do that now”, she said. ” We saw when we brought people out of institutions, they thrive. When we brought people out of institutions, our communities became more diverse. … And this is very much the same thing”.
Nelson, who has autism, said she struggled for years with mainstream employment. She claimed she was unaffected by office politics and bounced around between entry-level positions before coming across a supporter.
” It’s changed my sense of self- worth. It’s changed my value of myself”, she said. ” It’s hard to want more for your life when you’re making$ 4 an hour. It’s hard to see value in yourself when you’re being told you’re worth$ 3 an hour”.
However, according to Minnesota Republican state Sen. Jim Abeler, ending the subminimum wage could make some families ‘ options impossible, leading to the closure of workshops.
” For me, everything is about choice”, said Abeler, who opposes abolishing the subminimum wage. ” Nobody should be trapped, and so if they want to be independent, we should try to support them in that”.
Abeler praised efforts to encourage people with disabilities to transition to more lucrative jobs if they so choose. But, he said, that’s not an option for everyone.
Of the 3, 200 Minnesotans who work for subminimum wages, he said, a few hundred may be able to find mainstream work.
” So at least 2, 500 people would find themselves sitting at home, trying to work on a puzzle or watch TV or something”, he said.
Impacts of closures
In the fall of 2021, Colleen Stuart claimed that a change in the reimbursement rates for job coaching services forced her to shut down a rural workers ‘ sheltered workshop after 25 years of mailings and packaging.
The closure of the employees ‘ relationships and paychecks also affected their families: some parents claimed they would have to leave their jobs to care for their newly unemployed adult children.
” The individuals said,’ Colleen, you’re breaking up our family,'” she said. ” It broke my heart”.
Stuart is the president of the national organization Coalition for the Preservation of Employment Choice, which supports the federal program that allows employers to pay wages below the minimum wage.
In Northwest Pennsylvania, she serves as the CEO of Venango Training and Development Center, a provider of employment and mental health services.
Although the closure of a sheltered workshop at her training center in 2021 was not related to wage issues, she claimed the effects show what might happen to the workers of other workshops if they are forced to make wages above minimum wage.
” To this day, there’s one person out of all the individuals that got employment”, she said. The rest are sitting at home, waiting for service, and are still unemployed. And that is our biggest concern”.
Similar concerns this January helped , sink Utah legislation , that would have abolished the subminimum wage, said Nate Crippes, the public affairs supervising attorney at the Disability Law Center of Utah.  , Utah’s 45- day legislative session made it hard to have a substantive debate on the issue, he said.
” I think it needs to be a longer discussion than just,’ Oh, these places would go out of business and people would have nowhere to go,” he said. ” Because I do n’t think that would happen”.
Even if sheltered workshops are required to pay the minimum wage, Crippes predicted that day programs and other services for people with disabilities will continue.
” My issue is that our minimum wage is pretty low and it is not a living wage,” he said. ” Just getting people to$ 7.25 should n’t be out of the realm of possibility”.
Georgia state Rep. Scott Hilton views the issue through the lens of his 14- year- old son, who has Down syndrome.
” My goal for my child is for him to be a taxpayer and in return be a net positive, a net benefit back to that system that’s paid so much into his life to make him a happy, healthy, productive citizen”, he said.
Hilton, a Republican,  , co- sponsored a bill this session , that would force the state’s eight remaining workshops to pay the federal minimum wage.  , The bill , was approved by the state House and is pending in the state Senate.
” Work brings joy to a lot of us”, Hilton said. ” And that’s what we’d want for any of our kids — meaningful work and a fair wage”.
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