But this quote won’t leave me alone:

“We’re actually paying them more than what they’re worth because people like to work and like to be associated with it.”

More than what they’re worth?! They’re worth more than you, you patronizing jerk!

I understand our “worth” is tied to work(ing – you can be in school and that’s kinda okay) but he could say, they make more mistakes on average or anything that doesn’t make them sound like they are less than anyone, worth less, if you will.

They’re “worth” what any worker is “worth.” Some TAB workers are good at the job, some aren’t. The same holds true for his workers.

Calling someone worthless is a major insult – you can’t do anything, you can’t do anything right, you make me sick, you worthless piece of ****.

To see it just casually tossed around makes me sick.

I think where I got stuck is thinking about people that are ‘unable’ to do work that would be ‘worth’ paying for, but who still wanted to work. This is probably pretty othering of me as I obviously don’t know what every job out there entails, and like Ali said, ou has “been offered a job at more than the minimum wage to help [people with intellectual disabilities and developmental disorders] and hang out with them” simply because ou is perceived as being nondisabled.

Thanks for giving me the opportunity to think about this.

Incidentally, your comment vastly exceeded our clearly stated length limit and veered into ‘splain in several places. Please be more respectful of our comments policy in the future.

Secondly, the national minimum wage, should she earn it, would put her out of the entitlement range for the disability pension – along with the concessions which accompany it. One of the standard concessions for persons on disability pension is the health care card, which entitles the holder to cut price medications (about $5 per prescription, rather than approximately $30), and which will usually result in their general practicioner bulk billing Medicare for any medical treatment they have (rather than them having to pay out of pocket and claim the money back). In addition, holding a health care card is generally taken as a sign of being eligible for just about all of the “low income” concessions available from the various Australian federal, state and local government agencies, not to mention utilities providers, public transport concessions, and various other businesses. Her income would also count against the benefit paid to her carer, and would impact on their income too. So gaining minimum wage might actually result in a net *decrease* in her quality of life.

Yes, I know this sounds daft. Welcome to the Australian social security regime, mind the first step, it’s a lulu.

That these disagreeable realities actually result in her being slightly *better* off if she’s not being paid minimum wage (and is instead being paid at well below that income level) is not something I’m overwhelmingly cheerful about. Unfortunately, our government’s social support systems are largely being redesigned these days by politicians who have their eyes on the bottom line and winning votes in the press, as well as by bureaucrats who are much more interested in having nice, clear-cut guidelines about who gets money and who doesn’t than about actually helping people. (Trust me, I’ve worked there; I was actually told by my supervisors that my job wasn’t to help people, it was to administer the social security act. “Helping people” was something which happened purely incidentally).

All that said, cutting her wages by two-thirds is just plain ridiculous, no matter how little she’s doing compared to the “average” worker. Let’s face it, in Australia as well as everywhere else, the “average” worker is being overloaded and overworked in order to supply the ever-increasing profits required by corporate shareholders or the ever-increasing efficiencies required in order to support the position of their managers. “A fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay” is something which really needs to be re-evaluated at and for all levels of society.

[Purely on an informational note: News Corporation (which owns and runs news.com.au) is the same corporation which owns and runs such wonderful providers of balanced and factual information as the UK "Sun" newspaper, and the US "Fox" news channel. It's also the family fiefdom of the Murdoch clan, who started out as newspaper barons in Australia. Their content does tend to skew largely toward the tabloid, the sensational, and the extreme. Take reports with a grain of salt, and note that the current Federal election campaign here in Australia is likely to have had a rather extreme influence on their choice of what is marked as "newsworthy" - particularly since the incumbent federal government is of the ostensibly left-wing Australian Labor Party rather than the right-wing Liberal party. Never underestimate the involvement of the Australian press in the political landscape.]

On the one hand, Katherine has a point that some people might prefer working below minimum wage to not working at all, and that in some places there might be govt. top-ups to ensure their income is livable. On the other hand, I’m uncomfortable justifying things based on a theoretical best-possible-form of what seems, as she said, an inherently ablist situation. (And so often when you’re disabled, the practice you encounter is not best-possible-practice but the-least-they-can-get-away-with.)

And again, it still boils down to a situation where one group of people is exempted from a law safeguarding an ordinary right – and whenever societies do that, they sanction the Othering of that group across the board.

And yet I’ve been offered a job at more than the minimum wage to help them and hang out with them. My work doesn’t yet know about my own ASD. I mostly feel conflicted about it.

I guess what I’m trying to figure out is whether it would be better to have everything that is cheaper to automate than pay someone minimum wage to do automated, and anyone that can’t work a “minimum-wage-worthy” job does not have the option to work (and gets sufficient support from the government to live etc). Would some people rather work for less than minimum wage (assuming a government top-up) than not work at all?

I don’t agree with people being forced to work for less than minimum wage if they do not get a top-up from the government to a reasonable amount, and I suspect that that is the case being complained about (if I seem obtuse, it’s because I don’t know what my country’s setup is like but I think it is fairly straightforward to get government assistance when one needs it).