Thanks! I hate it!

That's why you pay them minimum wage or more and get a kickback from the government, that ends up being cheaper for everyone in the long run and you're not exploiting them.

There are volunteer positions for anyone wanting to simply just do something through the day.

If EMPLOYERS want to have these people on staff, they should pay them. Period. We give people minimum wage regardless of their job. Whether a toilet scrubber, trash handler, or floor mopping person, these are all jobs worthy of minimum wage.

If a job needs to be done and they need to hire someone to do it, that person should get minimum wage, regardless of who it is, what their situation is, etc.

If companies really want relief about this stuff, maybe they should lobby for the wages that they spend on differently capable persons to be offset with a tax break or something..... Let that person go home with a full paycheque. Twisting this into doing everyone a favor for giving those people something to do, is the same mentality that was used to enslave entire races. People literally thought that some races didn't have the intellectual capability to handle their business, so by enslaving them, we were doing them a favor. The justification was always insane, they thought that by providing the bare minimum of food for their table and a space to sleep, they were entitled to own that person. It's fucked up.

Now we're trying to justify paying them less or not at all because they operate different to NT people?

.... I'm sorry, that's a twisted and toxic perspective.

My firm works with at risk youth, we provide training and resources to assist them in pursuing a career in the trades.

We pay them $18/hr, the government gives us a subsidy of something like $8-12/hr depending on the situation.

The employee is still paid pretty much what their colleagues are. There are ways to handle this that don't end up with mentally challenged people working for slave wages.

they can’t provide enough value to justify a company to pay minimum wage

Bullshit. Showing up at all is worth more than $7.25/h. If you can't afford to pay decent wages, you can't afford to have employees.

It’s unfortunate that they can’t provide enough value to justify a company to pay minimum wage

What's unfortunate is when people don't understand that everyone, even mentally disabled persons, deserves a living wage at minimum.

No one is paid based on the actual "value" they provide to a company. If that were the case, CEOs would be paid a fraction of what they're currently paid, and the lowest paid workers would make multiple times more than what they currently make.

It’s a problem in Germany as well.

Because it costs money to support these individuals whether it's at the job or sitting at home. So as one other commenter put it, you can have them contributing, feeling good about themselves, and bringing in a few bucks; or you can make it so that nobody wants to hire them and they sit at home draining caretaker resources. If you want to subsidize that cost go ahead and convince everyone to do so.

I see you have a couple of straw-men responding to you, so I'll try answer with a real world actual answer from my own lived experience.

I used to know a guy, who I'll call Dave. Dave had some major developmental disabilities, like major major ones. At the time I first met him, my country had a law similar to this one being debated here, and Dave was employed for about half of minimum wage to push a broom around a carpentry workshop. It was the first and only time in his life that he'd ever earned a wage, and there was an unsaid understanding among the crew that Dave was doing would otherwise be a couple minutes work for them. Everyone loved him because he was so happy, and always wanting to help.

Dave was so proud of being part of the team, and he kept the place incredibly tidy, tidier than I've ever seen any other tradie's workshop. (Also - it's important context that over here we have good social safety nets, so Dave didn't need the money to survive, he had government benefits and a full time carer).

Then the law was revoked - suddenly the guy owning the business had to choose between paying Dave or getting a full time qualified apprentice. So he did what he had to do.

There isn't a happy ending to this story. Health and safety meant that you couldn't have an unpaid non-worker running around a workshop, and Dave was never able to come back - even though he'd have been happy to stay unpaid just to be part of the team. And a couple years later, my work happened to take me to a small government -owned townhouse, which turned out to be Dave's. His carer recognised me, but I didn't recognise Dave. He was a sad empty shell of the person I once knew; he'd lost his purpose, his armchair literally had the cartoon-style outline of his body because he was there so often, and I was told he hadn't left the house for more than six months, even for a walk around the block.

It's possible to both protect disadvantaged workers from exploitation, while also giving inducements to businesses so that it's worth hiring people who otherwise wouldn't be hireable. We had that here! And when we lost it, Dave lost his purpose and the only part of his life that had ever given him meaning.

Personally i think the solution is government programs for people with disabilities where their wages are subsidized so that the government provides, for example $5 an hour, to the employer who provides a job for someone with a disability.

That way the employer benefits by saving a bit of money, and the employee benefits by having a higher chance to be hired, not being devalued by making less than minimum wage or their coworkers, and they make a decent wage (hopefully).

Holy shit, that restaurant owner is beyond evil 100 per week for $0 pay, how can you not even feel bad for doing that?

Does this not already exist in the states?

I had a retarded uncle, not a slur, just something that happened before they were aware of the second baby Rh pheonemona. And they paid him like $3 an hour to make fishing lures. I think somehow it's a program that helps pay for services and stuff that supported him. But it always seemed really bad to me, although I lived on the other side of the country so no idea what the "services" entailed.

The alternative is they get paid just as much as everyone else, receive some extra cash from the government because being disabled can carry big hidden costs most people don’t realize.

The insensitive for the business is a tax break so the disabled worker does cost them less overall, they NEED this extra bit of what otherwise would be tax money to make reasonable changes to integrate the peoples special needs. After which its easier to hire more disabled people meaning more tax breaks.

Gonna take a personal stance that if 80% of your workers are officially disabled you shouldn’t need to pay tax at all. Helping these people is enough contributing to society to be ethical.

This isn’t a perfect system but its similar to how many countries do it and its miles better then forcing them into wageslavery.

Paying the disabled worker less is a complete upside down work because they have to work so much harder to get the same result. Remember your wage isn’t just a reflection of your output, otherwise it wouldn’t be an hourly rate. Its a reflection of the time and energy your body is putting into it every day.

It's probably why they put lead in everything back then.

Capitalists: we don't need welfare, charities can take care of those in need.

Also capitalists: it's not my fault my employees are homeless, they should have made better choices.

We already know what unchecked capitalism looks like, it's company stores and families buried under endless debt. This leads to things like the great hunger in Ireland where the island is literally exporting 10x the food it's citizens need to survive while they starve in the streets.