THE AMERICA ONE NEWS
Jun 1, 2025  |  
0
 | Remer,MN
Sponsor:  QWIKET 
Sponsor:  QWIKET 
Sponsor:  QWIKET: Elevate your fantasy game! Interactive Sports Knowledge.
Sponsor:  QWIKET: Elevate your fantasy game! Interactive Sports Knowledge and Reasoning Support for Fantasy Sports and Betting Enthusiasts.
back  
topic
The Economist
The Economist
4 Apr 2025


NextImg:Is it ever right to pay disabled workers pennies per hour?
United States | The zip ties that bind

Is it ever right to pay disabled workers pennies per hour?

It is legal to do so in most American states

|Lawrenceville, Georgia

IN A SMALL building on Hi Hope Lane, Jeffrey Pennington sits at a desk packing ten-piece sets of zip ties. A diagram on a piece of paper helps him count before he drops the ties into a resealable bag and begins again. Mr Pennington, who has Down’s syndrome and autism and struggles to speak, once dreamed of waiting tables at Wendy’s, a fast-food joint. Today he is one of 77 disabled people working in “the shop” at Creative Enterprises, a Georgia non-profit. Mr Pennington and his co-workers assemble allergy-test and home-repair kits for big companies. Each week Mr Pennington proudly takes home a pay cheque, but after about ten hours’ work it amounts to only about $3.00.

Explore more

This article appeared in the United States section of the print edition under the headline “The zip ties that bind”

cartoon of Donald Trump as a high school jock in a varsity jacket lifts a frail teacher by the collar while holding a baseball bat. A science lab is in disarray with broken beakers, and two students watch in surprise.

Donald Trump is attacking what made American universities great

More than Middle East Studies is in trouble

How Donald Trump is shaping other countries’ politics

He is boosting the centre and centre-left and delighting the hard right


JD Vance speaks to an auditorium full of people

How (and why) J.D. Vance does it

The vice-presidency is a famously terrible job and Donald Trump a famously bad boss. And yet


The Trump train slows

Results from Florida and Wisconsin suggest a familiar pattern in American politics

Will Elon Musk’s cash splash pay off in Wisconsin?

A judicial race has become a referendum on the billionaire’s behaviour

DOGE comes for the data wonks

America may soon be unable to measure itself properly