And this is what happens when companies are allowed to bypass minimum wage laws.
A national charity whose executives earn six-figure salaries used a legal loophole to pay disabled workers as little as three and four cents an hour, according to documents obtained exclusively by NBC News.
An NBC News investigation recently revealed that Goodwill Industries, which is among the non-profit groups permitted to pay disabled workers far less than minimum wage because of a federal law known as Section 14 (c), had paid workers as little as 22 cents an hour.
Now newly obtained federal documents show that at least 13 Goodwill franchises in 10 states paid 140 workers even less.
According to Department of Labor filings acquired via the Freedom of Information Act, two Goodwill franchises in Fort Worth, Texas paid 51 employees less than 10 cents an hour in 2011, with 14 earning just four cents an hour for tasks described as ?assembly.?
Franchises in Michigan, Maryland, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Ohio, Florida, Wisconsin, Oklahoma, Virginia also paid employees 21 cents or less between 2008 and 2011, according to the documents. One franchise in Fairfield, Ohio paid a worker just three cents an hour for hanging clothes in 2008.
?The results of your FOIA request reinforce that people with disabilities are devalued in this situation and the operators of these programs are not keeping pace with the times,? said Clyde Terry of the National Council on Disability, an independent federal agency that advises the White House and Congress on disability policy.
?This may have been appropriate in the 1930s,? said Terry, ?but in this day and age with the advances of technology, health care and education, is this the best we can do??
A spokesperson for Goodwill International Industries countered that it was "misleading" to "cherrypick" low wages, calling them "extraordinary situations."
Section 14 (c) of the Fair Labor Standards Act, which was passed in 1938, allows employers to obtain special minimum wage certificates from the Department of Labor. The certificates give employers the right to pay disabled workers according to their abilities, with no bottom limit to the wage.
Most, but not all, special wage certificates are held by non-profit organizations like Goodwill that then set up their own so-called "sheltered workshops" for disabled employees, where participants typically perform manual tasks like hanging clothes.
http://investigations.nbcnews.com/_n...ennies-an-hour