Protection & Advocacy for Beneficiaries of Social Security (PABSS) assists beneficiaries of Social Security with barriers to employment.
Specifically, PABSS:
- helps beneficiaries draft and submit complaints regarding disability discrimination to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
- reviews and investigates allegations of employment discrimination, programmatic access issues, and other barriers to employment.
More Details:
PABSS can review any issues that are a barrier to employment to determine if advocacy or legal services can be provided. In addition, PABSS staff will be undertaking phase 2 of its project monitoring sheltered employment providers in the next 2-3 months. Sheltered employment, also sometimes called 14c employment because of the section of the law where it is found, allows employers to pay employees with disabilities less than minimum wage under certain conditions.
The focus of Disability Rights Louisiana’s sheltered employment monitoring is to assess whether employees in sheltered employment are being paid their appropriate hourly wage under 14c policy. In the first phase, DRLA found several 14c employment providers were found not to be in compliance with the 14c Labor Law. A disproportional number of “employees” were engaged in non-work activities, like coloring, despite expressing a desire to perform competitive work. Many people interviewed reported that no one has ever asked them if they would prefer working somewhere else. Nearly everyone interviewed did not know how much money they earned.
