New Brunswicker Kyra Thomas wanted to work, but finding a job that pays fairly was a difficult process.
Thomas is intellectually disabled, and while working for a large retailer, she was paid a subsidy. For working 30 hours a week, Thomas was paid just $20 — about 30 cents an hour.
Minimum wage in the province is currently $13.75, more than a 13-dollar difference from what Thomas was given.
Though she continued to apply for jobs that paid at least minimum wage, it was never successful. It led her mother Debbie Thomas to research why her daughter would be subject to sub-standard minimum wage — and ultimately file a grievance.
It wouldn’t take the Thomas family too long to figure out that what the employer was doing was allowed under New Brunswick labour laws.
“They were doing something that was legally allowed,” the mother said. “We knew we were going to support her to go elsewhere to find a job,, with a valid minimum wage that she was entitled.”
And that’s what Kyra did.
Kyra Thomas found a job at another retailer, where she has also received a wage increase based on her performance and customer feedback.
“She’s been working there for three years,” her mom Debbie said. “She’s been unbelievably supported. It was so gratifying as a mom.”
However, Thomas thinks it took too long to happen.
“I know the value, and it’s heartbreaking that it took such advocacy for so long.”
Changes to the legislation
The government now says laws in the Employment Standards Act that allowed Thomas’s employer to pay her 30 cents an hour will be changed.
Post-Secondary Education, Training and Labour Minister Trevor Holder tabled the first reading of the changes in the legislature on Nov. 1. It will remove the discretion employers can use to pay sub-minimum wage to persons with a disability.
“The fact of the matter is every citizen needs to be treated the same and people with disabilities are entitled to all the rights of any other worker and it’s time we put it in the Employment Standards Act,” Holder said, speaking with reporters last week.
Shelley Petit, with the New Brunswick Coalition for Persons with a Disability (PWD), said it’s a good decision but one that should have happened a long time ago.
“Because people think we are unemployable and there has been nothing done by the government to change that,” she said. “Now that they are desperate for employees, ‘oh I guess we’ll have to look at it’ and that’s it.”
Petit believes the government should also be doing more to encourage persons with disabilities (PWDs) into the public sector. She said 78 per cent of PWDs are able and willing to work, at least part-time.
Green MLA Megan Mitton said while she believes this is a positive change, she worries about the discrimination that may fall on PWDs without the proper protections.
“It is really unfathomable that in 2022, that it has been acceptable for certain people to be exploited for their labour to not be paid fairly because of their disability,” Mitton said.
Mitton wants a transition for people already working so they won’t lose their jobs as they move to a minimum wage.
“Having a disability shouldn’t mean that you can’t have employment,” she said.
Sarah Wagner, the executive director of Inclusion NB, said it was a historic day for the rights of people with a disability.
“With this change, they will be able to enter into employment just like you or I and earn a wage and support them in coming out of poverty,” she said.