Workers across Australia with disabilities working in supported employment are being legally paid less superannuation (pension) than the rest of the workforce, reports The Guardian. Advocates say outdated and contradictory workplace laws are to blame for the disparity.

Under Australia’s federal superannuation guarantee, companies must pay all adult employees a superannuation contribution of 11% of their ordinary wage. But under the supported employment services award 2020, employees with disability working in supported employment are entitled to only 9.5%, or AUD 15 a week, whichever is greater. The lower rate of superannuation is on top of laws that already allow Australian disability enterprises (ADEs) to pay their staff vastly below the minimum wage, sometimes as low as $2.90 an hour. The national minimum wage is $23.23 an hour.

Supported employment, or ADEs, are programmes in which people with disability work in a segregated environment under supervision. The award covers approximately 20,000 people.

Catherine McAlpine, chief executive of Inclusion Australia, said the incongruity between the award and the national guarantee was the sort of inequity and oversight that people with disability had come to expect. “There is absolutely no excuse to not pay people with an intellectual disability the same rate of superannuation as every other employee in the country,” McAlpine said.

In the final report of the disability royal commission, handed down in October last year, four of the seven commissioners recommended the phase-out of disability enterprises and elimination of subminimum wages for people with disability by 2034.