“Bottom Dollars Movie Chapter 02” produced by Rooted in Rights [slow electronic music] [NARRATOR]: Bottom Dollars Chapter two - "Even when you hustle..." AUDIO DESCRIPTION: A river runs through the small town of Tiffin, Ohio. Minimum wage $8.15 per hour. PAMELA: My name's Pamela Steward. I like to sew, like to walk, like to go shopping and out to eat. AUDIO DESCRIPTION: Pamela sewing. (PAMELA): I embroider pillowcases and pass them out to friends and family members. AUDIO DESCRIPTION: She holds up an embroidered pillow. PAMELA: I have a learning disability as of to math, reading, and spelling. I work at Seneca Re-Ad, I work there full time. I've been there for six years. AUDIO DESCRIPTION: Barbara's service dog next to her at a conference table. BARBARA: My name is Barbara Corner. I'm an attorney, and I'm also the employment team leader here at Disability Rights Ohio. The Seneca Re-Ad is a sheltered workshop. It basically has one major contract with Roppe, a multimillion-dollar corporation that provides flooring-- tile and flooring, more or less for commercial establishments, and so they contract with Seneca County and with this workshop to provide the tile samples. PAMELA: We sort them, make sure the print's coming out alright, and then if the print's not coming out alright we'll throw them away, and if the print's coming out alright we'll go ahead and chain them. BARBARA: There are other jobs at the workshop, like for instance, Pam has done the saw where she has used a machine to cut holes, and there's an autoprint that-- which is another machine that prints a pattern on the tiles, so it is, in a lot of ways, light industry. PAMELA: I was probably only getting about three-something an hour. BARBARA: Way below what the wages were for people in light industries, which could be up to 11 to 13 dollars an hour. PAMELA: I don't feel that it's right that one person gets paid better than the other. I feel like we should all be paid the same. AUDIO DESCRIPTION: Cheryl Bates-Harris from National Disability Rights Network. (CHERYL): Section 14(c) allows employers to pay individuals based on their productivity. AUDIO DESCRIPTION: Mark Riccobono from the National Federation of the Blind. MARK: The idea is to compare the productivity of a person with a disability to a non-disabled person. AUDIO DESCRIPTION: The graphic illustrates Time Studies. (CHERYL): Let's say that we were a widget manufacturer, and they test three individuals without disabilities, and they can make nine widgets an hour, 10 widgets an hour, and 11 widgets an hour. Then the expectation would be that the norm would be the average of 10 widgets an hour. A person with a disability trying to make widgets, and he only makes five widgets in an hour. He would therefore be paid 50% of the prevailing wage since he was only producing 50% of the work. But, if a non-disabled worker also only made five widgets an hour, he would still be paid 100% of the wage, because he benefits from the minimal wage protections. MARK: What happens is, people with disabilities are held to a productivity standard while everybody else is guaranteed a wage regardless of how productive they are or not, so basically every person with a disability has to hustle, or you're out of luck, and, even when you hustle, you're not guaranteed the minimum that everybody else gets. AUDIO DESCRIPTION: Pamela embroiders a pillowcase. BARBARA: When they tested our clients, they didn't use the exact same testing conditions as for people without disabilities, so that test wasn't fair. PAMELA: I got held up by people slowing me down on the other side, I had to wait for them to bring jigs over to me so I could actually put the pieces on the jigs. Sometimes they'd slow around and not bring the jigs over so the job could be done. I was relying on other people, and I don't feel at all I was tested right. MARK: The Department of Labor has responsibility for monitoring the 14(c) certificates, but there are a lot of them out there, there are a lot of people with disabilities, and there's a limited amount of capacity at the Department of Labor to monitor, so it's the employers are expected to fill out the papers and expected to do it correctly and expected to tell the truth. BARBARA: From what we found out, the Department of Labor basically just looks at the paper certificate, and doesn't do any further investigation. That's why things have just continued the same way they've been for decades. [somber music] AUDIO DESCRIPTION: Pamela cleans her apartment as her cat watches. PAMELA: When I'm working, I feel that I should be paid as an equal person.