How Work Becomes Invisible: The Erosion of the Wage Floor for Workers with Disabilities
Abstract
How does work come to be constructed as a service to the worker? In the United States, the payment of subminimum wages to disabled workers has been legal since 1938 and was entrenched by 1986 legislation eliminating the previously mandated floor of 50 percent of the minimum wage. This article draws on primary historical materials to explain the passage of these amendments, which I analyze as a case of delaborization , a process through which work is mystified as such and reclassified as something else (e.g., service). I find that the managers of segregated workshops for disabled manual laborers rose to control disability employment policy in the aftermath of deinstitutionalization. Professionals mobilized disability stigma to frame the subminimum wage as a social welfare issue subject to their expertise and to lobby successfully for its entrenchment. Weaknesses in the disability–labor coalition enabled this seizure of jurisdiction. This research illuminates professional expertise, the withdrawal of labor unions, and identity-based stigma as major mechanisms driving delaborization, an important contemporary influence on the organization of work. The case of the subminimum wage thus develops sociological literatures on labor, disability, and politics.
Ingestion failed: Traceback (most recent call last): File "/srv/app/app/worker.py", line 85, in run_once process_job(db, job) File "/srv/app/app/worker.py", line 39, in process_job pdf_path, info = fetch_pdf_temp(candidate["url"]) ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ File "/srv/app/app/downloader.py", line 129, in fetch_pdf_temp raise ValueError(f"PDF source returned HTTP {response.status_code}.") ValueError: PDF source returned HTTP 403.
No local PDF is available.
GROBID Extracted text; discontinued.
This text is generated from TEI extraction for accessibility, search, and TTS. Formulas, tables, figures, page layout, and references may not perfectly match the original PDF.
No accessible text representation is available. The text extraction service has been discontinued for the time being. If you require this service, for accessibility or any other reason, please submit an issue/request on this page.
Metadata
Issues
No public issues have been filed for this DOI.
Submit an issue
Record history
| When | Event | Field | Old | New |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-06-18 19:37:53.011249+00:00 | identifier_assigned | DSEID | DSEID-001-0009899 |