Due to a 75-year-old section of the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, companies that use sheltered workshops to train workers with disabilities, such as Goodwill Industries , can legally pay their employees just a few cents an hour. The section of the Fair Labor Standards Act that legalizes this behavior must be repealed to ensure fair pay and treatment for every employee in today's workforce. To begin, I will explain the use of sheltered workshops and time tests used to determine subminimum wages for employees with disabilities. I will then go on to discuss the history of the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 and how companies use one section of the legislation to get away with paying their employees with disabilities so little. And finally I will discuss the ethics behind the use of this piece of legislation and also provide a counterargument in support of subminimum wages. Employees earning below minimum wages are usually employed to work in sheltered workshops. Sheltered workshops are typically set up in the back of a company. The tasks of employees in sheltered workshops often consist of performing simple repetitive tasks, such as sorting and hanging donated clothing. Sheltered workshops were initially intended to provide people with disabilities with the professional training necessary to work in a competitive work environment. However, today people who work in sheltered workshops are usually stuck here for years, still making only a few cents an hour. The subminimum wage is determined by how quickly the employee with a disability can perform a task compared to a person without a disability. For example, the employee can be programmed to see how many items of clothing they can hang up in a minute with a limit... middle of paper... that paying workers with disabilities a sub-minimum wage is completely legal for companies if it is issued a certificate by the federal government, but we come to the question: just because it's legal is it the right thing to do? Justin Salsbury, an employee at Goodwill Industries in Madison, Wisconsin, says, "We want everyone to understand that something is happening at Goodwill that is unfair, discriminatory and unethical." Rep. Gregg Harper, who proposed the Fair Wages for Workers with Disabilities Act of 2013, told NBC News that “meaningful work deserves fair pay.” Some even go so far as to label subminimum wages as exploitation of people with disabilities. Ari Ne'eman, president of the Autistic Self Advocacy Network, says: "People profit from the exploitation of disabled workers. It is clearly and unquestionably exploitation." (NBC News).