How Work Becomes Invisible: The Erosion of the Wage Floor for Workers with Disabilities
研究美国自1938年起合法向残疾人支付低于最低工资的工资，并分析1986年立法取消最低工资50%底线的历史过程，揭示专业精英、工会退出和身份污名如何使工作被重新归类为服务。
How does work come to be constructed as a service to the worker? In the United States, the payment of subminimum wages to disabled workers has been legal since 1938 and was entrenched by 1986 legislation eliminating the previously mandated floor of 50 percent of the minimum wage. This article draws on primary historical materials to explain the passage of these amendments, which I analyze as a case of delaborization , a process through which work is mystified as such and reclassified as something else (e.g., service). I find that the managers of segregated workshops for disabled manual laborers rose to control disability employment policy in the aftermath of deinstitutionalization. Professionals mobilized disability stigma to frame the subminimum wage as a social welfare issue subject to their expertise and to lobby successfully for its entrenchment. Weaknesses in the disability–labor coalition enabled this seizure of jurisdiction. This research illuminates professional expertise, the withdrawal of labor unions, and identity-based stigma as major mechanisms driving delaborization, an important contemporary influence on the organization of work. The case of the subminimum wage thus develops sociological literatures on labor, disability, and politics.