Minnesota scrambles to act on new rules about pay for disabled workers

After years of deliberation, state workforce regulators are preparing to enforce tough new limits on paying people with disabilities less than the minimum wage, a practice that has long been decried by civil rights advocates as discriminatory.

More than 15,000 Minnesotans with disabilities work for employers who take advantage of a loophole in federal labor law that allows them to pay below the minimum wage, often in cloistered workplaces known as sheltered workshops.

Across the state, some large workshops pay people with disabilities as little as 50 cents an hour for basic tasks, such as packaging products, shredding paper or picking up trash, a Star Tribune investigation found.

http://www.startribune.com/state-scrambles-to-take-action-on-low-pay-for-disabled-workers/390521731/