The national minimum wage was established in a landmark labor law that President Franklin Roosevelt signed nearly 90 years ago.

Today, the minimum wage is just over $7 an hour.

But a provision in the law allows employers to pay certain workers with disabilities less than that.

Ali Rogan is back with a conversation with Maria Town, the president and CEO of

the American Association of People with Disabilities. It's part of our series, Disability Reframed.

Maria, thank you for joining us. Why is it legal for some companies to pay some workers less than

the minimum wage, which right now is $7.25.

What's the history of this role? Well, in 1938, during the New Deal, the United States

passed the Fair Labor Standards Act, which sounds very good. And in many ways, it is. It outlawed

child labor. It established the 40-hour work week.

And within the Fair Labor Standards Act, there is a section that allows employers to pay people with disabilities less than minimum wage. And this was originally created as a kind of incentive program to get employers to kind of hire people that were deemed unhireable.

You know, it was based on the idea that disabled people were inherently less productive,

so you could pay us less, but we still needed to work.

And that policy and the programs associated with it

have stayed in place, again, since 1938.

What is the environment like now for people in the workforce who have disabilities?

Well, so in the span of almost 90 years, one, we've had a whole disability civil rights

movement happen that's still happening today that's actually been fairly successful.

We've had the Rehabilitation Act that establishes nondiscrimination by the federal government.

We've passed the Americans with Disabilities Act and amended it to make it even better,

where workers with disabilities can get reasonable accommodations

so that we can be as effective as possible and thrive in our workplaces.

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