Wisconsin Administrative Code › Department of Workforce Development › DWD 270-279 - Labor Standards › Chapter DWD 272 - Minimum Wages › Section DWD 272.09 - Subminimum wage licenses for rehabilitation facilities and for the employment of workers with disabilities and student learners

Current through June 24, 2024
(1) DEFINITIONS.
				For the purposes of this section:
(a)
				"Commensurate wage" means a special minimum wage paid to a worker with a
				disability.
(b) "Employ" means to
				permit work.
(c) "Employment
				relationship" means the relationship that exists whenever an individual,
				including an individual with a disability, is permitted to work.
(d) "Experienced worker" means a worker who
				has learned the basic elements or requirements of the work to be performed,
				ordinarily by completion of a probationary or training period.
(dm) "IWRP" means individualized written
				rehabilitation plan.
(e)
				"Institution" means an entity which may be either a public or private entity
				and either a nonprofit or a for profit entity that receives more than 50% of
				its income from providing residential care for sick, aged, or mentally ill
				persons or persons with intellectual disabilities. "Institution" includes
				hospitals, nursing homes, intermediate care facilities, rest homes,
				convalescent homes, homes for the elderly and infirm, halfway houses, and
				residential centers for the treatment of drug addiction or alcoholism, whether
				licensed under s. 50.01, Stats., or not
				licensed.
(f) "Patient worker"
				means a worker with a disability employed by a hospital or institution
				providing residential care where the worker receives treatment or care without
				regard to whether the worker is a resident of the establishment. In determining
				whether a patient worker is "employed", the department shall consider whether
				the work performed is of any consequential economic benefit to the institution.
				Work is considered to be of consequential economic benefit if it is of the type
				that workers without disabilities normally perform. A patient does not become
				an employee if the patient merely performs personal housekeeping chores and
				receives token remuneration in connection with this activity. It may also be
				possible for patients in group homes or other family like settings to rotate or
				share household tasks or chores without becoming employees.
(g) "Sheltered workshop" means a
				rehabilitation facility which is a charitable organization or institution
				conducted not for profit, but for the purpose of carrying out a recognized
				program of rehabilitation for workers with disabilities providing such
				individuals with remunerative employment or other occupational rehabilitating
				activity of an educational or therapeutic nature.
(h) "Sheltered workshop training program" or
				"rehabilitation training program" means a program of not more than 12 months
				duration designed to:
1. Develop the patterns
				of behavior which will help a client adjust to a work environment, or
2. Teach the skills and knowledge related to
				a specific occupational objective of a job family, and which meets the
				department of workforce development, division of vocational rehabilitation or
				equivalent standards.
(i)
				"Special minimum wage" means a wage authorized under a license issued to an
				employer that is less than the statutory minimum wage.
(j) "Sponsoring agency" means a sheltered
				workshop, governmental agency or a nonprofit charitable organization or
				institution carrying out an occupational rehabilitating activity of an
				educational or therapeutic nature.
(k) "Student learner" means a student who is
				receiving instruction in an accredited school, college or university and who is
				employed on a part-time basis, pursuant to a bona fide vocational training
				program.
(l) "Vicinity" or
				"locality" means the geographic area from which the labor force of the
				community is drawn.
(m) "Work
				activity center" means a rehabilitation facility, a workshop or a physically
				separated department of a workshop having an identifiable program, separate
				supervision and records, planned and designed exclusively to provide
				therapeutic activities for workers with disabilities whose physical or mental
				impairment is so severe as to make their productive capacity
				inconsequential.
(n) "Worker with a
				disability" means an individual whose earnings or productive capacity is
				impaired by a physical or intellectual disability, including those relating to
				age or injury, for the work to be performed. Disabilities which may affect
				earning or productive capacity include blindness, mental illness, intellectual
				disability, cerebral palsy, alcoholism and drug addiction. The following, taken
				by themselves, are not considered disabilities for the purposes of this
				section: vocational, social, cultural, or educational disabilities; chronic
				unemployment; receipt of welfare benefits; nonattendance at school; juvenile
				delinquency; and correctional parole or probation. Further, a disability which
				may affect earning or productive capacity for one type of work may not have
				this effect for another type of work.