Happy Labour Day weekend: disabled labour is still labour.

A lot of takes going around right now about weather or not disabled people are “worth” minimum wage and, just, yes.

In the absence of a more just system, minimum wage is the cost of monopolizing hours of a finite human life.

There is a deeply pernicious worldview that hiring disabled people is a favour, a performative charity, that the person’s “diminished” labour is neither needed nor wanted, and should come at a discount.

Also the idea that the disabled (and, to a similar degree, teenagers) aren’t “worth” that wage because they don’t “need” it, implying that their wants, interests, financial independence, and dignity either don’t exist or just don’t matter.

Screw all that.

Minimum wage is minimum.

Labour is time, not sweat.