Sitting at his tidy work station, one employee carefully wraps wires around a metal fishhook at the Dale Rogers Training Center in Oklahoma City.
Another worker, surrounded by piles of clear baggies and cardboard packaging, ties the hooks into groups of four before they get packaged.
More than 80 employees with disabilities work at the center’s production center, also called a sheltered workshop, doing tasks like packaging small auto parts or sorting hangers. Dale Rogers Training Center bases the workers’ pay on how many tasks they complete.
Dale Rogers Training Center, a nonprofit employment agency, runs the workshop using a federal waiver called a Section 14(c) certificate, which allows employers to pay people with disabilities below the minimum wage of $7.25 an hour. Congress created 14(c) waivers in the 1930s to give people with disabilities more employment opportunities. But critics of 14(c) waivers say everyone should be paid at least minimum wage for their work.
The future of the decades-old policy is uncertain. The U.S. Department of Labor spent months proposing rules to phase 14(c) certificates out, but withdrew those plans on July 7. Still, more than a dozen states have already ended or limited the use of 14(c) waivers, according to one federal report. Oklahoma, along with 33 other states, has not.
Instead, Oklahoma passed legislation this year to form a task force to study how the state could transition its more than 1,200 subminimum-wage workers into minimum wage jobs or day programs. The task force will likely begin meeting in 2026 and finalize recommendations by the end of 2027.
While a transition would likely move more people with disabilities into jobs with competitive wages, some providers worry they’d have to shrink their programs to afford higher wages, potentially leaving behind those with the most complex disabilities. And families, who have relied on 14(c) jobs to provide structure and support, worry their loved ones won’t have other options.
If the use of 14(c) waivers ends in Oklahoma, advocates say success will be tied to how well other services can fill in the gap.
Sheltered workshops in Oklahoma
Oklahoma has 40 employers throughout the state that currently hold or have applied for a 14(c) waiver, according to U.S.Department of Labor data.
To pay subminimum wage, employers conduct a study to determine what the standard wage would be for a job if done by a person without a disability. Then, individuals with disabilities do the same job. Depending on their speed and productivity, they are paid a percentage of that standard wage.
The average wage for people working in 14(c) jobs is $4.08 an hour, according to the Department of Labor. About 90% of these employees have an intellectual or developmental disability. Workers are meant to eventually head to higher-paying jobs, but that doesn’t happen for many, advocates have said.
Nationally, the number of employers paying subminimum wages has dramatically decreased over the past several decades as job opportunities for people with disabilities have expanded, according to the Department of Labor. Unemployment rates for people with disabilities reached its lowest point in 2023, though still higher than the general population, and only a small percentage of the millions of people with disabilities that are employed work for subminimum wages, according to rules proposed by the department in December.
Oklahoma has spent years mulling over whether to voluntarily begin ending the use of 14(c) waivers before a federal mandate requires it. The number of people working for subminimum wages has steadily decreased in the last decade, said Mark Kinnison, the vocational rehabilitation division administrator with the Oklahoma Department of Rehabilitation Services.
Ending the use of 14(c) certificates could happen in a few ways. Employers could raise wages for current workers without having to change anything else about their programs. Service providers could create new programs or move current clients into other existing employment options. Or sheltered workshops could close or shrink available positions if providers can’t handle the financial transition.
Designing jobs around people’s needs
Employers work with the government or private businesses to secure contracts, said Deborah Copeland, executive director at Dale Rogers Training Center. Employment consultants and other staff work with individuals on building skills and adapting tasks based on the person’s goals.
This flexibility allows for creativity in designing jobs around clients’ abilities. But it also means providers in more rural areas can be limited by what the local community can support.
Dale Rogers Training Center is the largest 14(c) employer in the state, but has already begun transitioning people out of subminimum wage jobs without cutting services, Copeland said. The 14(c) workshop is just one small piece of several employment programs the center offers. Other crews will work on-site at manufacturing or janitorial jobs, or screenprint shirts and make trophies on the agency’s large campus in northwest Oklahoma City for at least minimum wage.
“We felt like that if we could figure this out, we could help other people in the state figure out how to transition away from 14(c),” Copeland said.
But smaller programs like 4RKids in Enid say they may have to cut the number of people served if required to pay minimum wage, said Rachel McVay, executive director.
4RKids has roughly 50 individuals at any time in its sheltered workshop. The group has other businesses as well, like a mini golf course, gift shop and screenprinting. The group also runs some recreational programs, but those aren’t funded with state or federal dollars, McVay said.
4RKids considered opening an adult day care center, where people can spend time outside of their homes to socialize or allow caregivers to go to work. But starting an adult day program can be complicated, and their existing building wouldn’t work without costly renovations.
“Phasing out 14(c) makes total sense in theory. Everybody deserves to make minimum wage if they’re working,” McVay said. “I just hope that the task force can figure out how to work with vocational sites that are servicing people that can’t participate in a minimum wage job.”
Individuals with disabilities and their families have a choice in the programs they think will work best, said Wanda Felty, a longtime advocate for individuals with intellectual or developmental disabilities. But those programs can be hard to find or get into, especially in more rural areas.
Felty has helped push for 14(c) waivers to be phased out. But she said she understands that some families worry about the safety of their loved ones in unfamiliar community-based jobs and fear they may lose access to benefits like Social Security payments or SoonerCare if they make higher wages. State officials said it’s unusual for people with disabilities to suddenly lose benefits because of wages.
Many families are concerned about the possibility that 14(c) waivers will end and their loved ones with severe disabilities won’t have options.
Rebekah Reynolds’ son has a severe intellectual disability, limited verbal communication and a seizure disorder. She told lawmakers at an interim study in 2023 that her son enjoyed his 14(c) job, where he’s worked for more than a decade, earning about $28 every two weeks.
Without the 14(c) waiver, her son would have to find a job in the community where he’d need extensive supports and likely only work a few hours a week. The rest of the time, he’d either be at home or in a day care program, Reynolds said at the study.
“For him, working where he is now with the 14(c) certificate is a viable and robust setting,” Reynolds told lawmakers.
Funding needs
Oklahoma is considered one of the top states in the nation for the ability of people with disabilities to make at least minimum wage at integrated jobs, according to the Institute for Community Inclusion, a think tank out of the University of Massachusetts. Oklahoma’s Developmental Disabilities Services department spent nearly $24 million on all employment services over the last fiscal year, according to data provided by the agency.
Still, the state is “leery” to draw a hard line and end the use of 14(c) waivers, said Melissa Gituma, program manager for employment services for Oklahoma’s Developmental Disability Services. Instead, Developmental Disability Services has been working with providers to voluntarily transition away from paying subminimum wages. The state paid out 54 incentives in 2024 to providers who made the switch.
Some workshops could lose contracts with outside businesses if they have to raise prices to meet minimum wage requirements. The task force will look at ways to ease any future transition away from 14(c) waivers on employers and families, said Beth Scrutchins, director of Oklahoma’s Developmental Disability Services.
“We don’t want to leave anyone behind. We don’t want to lose our good providers,” Scrutchins said. “We want to support them as we make this transition, which we do believe in. We just don’t want to take any options off the table at this point.”
Kinnison, with Oklahoma’s Department of Rehabilitation Services, said his staff already work caseloads of 95 to 120 people. Federal dollars pay for about 80% of the services his agency provides. Whether Oklahoma can successfully transition people out of 14(c) jobs and into existing programs is the big question, Kinnison said. That transition will likely be more challenging without additional dollars to hire job coaches and case managers.
Teaching people to dream
Employees at ThinkAbility’s cafe in downtown Duncan fold napkins, fill orders for baked potatoes and mop the floor. The cafe is one of ThinkAbility’s local businesses that employs individuals with intellectual disabilities, along with a gift shop, screenprinting operation and community garden.
ThinkAbility ended its use of 14(c) waivers in 2020 after conversations about the likelihood that 14(c) waivers would go away at the federal level, as well as employees spending days doing “pretend work,” disengaged and having behavioral issues, said Robin Arter, executive director.
“It wasn’t respectful of the people we supported, and what were they learning?” Arter said. “So we met with each person individually and created something unique for them.” Now, some workers spend all day at the cafe. Others spend just a few hours rolling silverware into napkins.
The transition did have challenges, Arter said. ThinkAbility absorbed the cost of paying individuals minimum wage, so margins are slim and the number of administrative staff is small. Families were worried about whether loved ones would be bullied by non-disabled coworkers or if government assistance payments would be yanked due to higher wages. Some community placements have failed because of bullying or poorly trained staff.
For a handful of individuals with multiple disabilities or high needs, ThinkAbility hasn’t yet been able to find any other job scenarios that will work for them, Arter said. ThinkAbility opened an adult day center around the same time it transitioned away from using a 14(c) waiver, and people who weren’t able to transition to other jobs started to attend, Arter said.
But the additional visibility in the community has led to other businesses reaching out about hiring workers. And thanks to higher wages, employees have had a chance to save and manage larger paychecks. One couple got married and bought a house. Another man saved up to buy a new car.
“We had to teach people to dream about what they could save for,” Arter said.
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