SC businesses couldn't pay disabled less than minimum wage under bill advanced by Senate
COLUMBIA — South Carolina businesses will no longer be able to pay people with disabilities less than the minimum wage under legislation approved April 8 by the Senate.
But the ban for businesses wouldn’t kick in until August 2024. The three-year delay is intended to provide time to phase out the federally allowed exception without causing harm to the very people the bill seeks to help, and to reverse course if data indicates there will be unintended consequences.
The bill now heads to the House.
Advocates for people with special needs pushed the measure as closing a discriminatory loophole in federal labor law that dates to 1938, decades before other laws added protections and opportunities for them.
“I believe it’s a civil rights violation,” said its sponsor, Sen. Katrina Shealy, R-Lexington, chairwoman of the Family and Veterans’ Services Committee, noting a half dozen other states have already barred their employers from participating in the waiver program.
Read more: https://www.postandcourier.com/politics/sc-businesses-couldnt-pay-disabled-less-than-minimum-wage-under-bill-advanced-by-senate/article_7a5415be-9887-11eb-8b2a-ab968e56011a.html