[Blindtlk] Some disabled workers paid just pennies an hour

[Sherri]

I saw this on a news item that was e-mailed to me. please be sure to watch 
Rock Center this evening at 10 P.M. Eastern.

Critics cry exploitation as a federal loophole allows companies to pay 
thousands of disabled workers across the country far less than the minimum 
wage. Harry Smith's full report airs Friday, June 21 at 10pm/9CDT on NBC's 
Rock Center with Brian Williams.



By Anna Schecter, Producer, NBC News

One of the nation's best-known charities is paying disabled workers as 
little as 22 cents an hour, thanks to a 75-year-old legal loophole that 
critics say needs to be closed.



Goodwill Industries, a multibillion-dollar company whose executives make 
six-figure salaries, is among the nonprofit groups permitted to pay 
thousands of disabled workers far less than minimum wage because of a 
federal law known as Section 14 (c). Labor Department records show that some 
Goodwill workers in Pennsylvania earned wages as low as 22, 38 and 41 cents 
per hour in 2011.

"If they really do pay the CEO of Goodwill three-quarters of a million 
dollars, they certainly can pay me more than they're paying," said Harold 
Leigland, who is legally blind and hangs clothes at a Goodwill in Great 
Falls, Montana for less than minimum wage.


"It's a question of civil rights," added his wife, Sheila, blind from birth, 
who quit her job at the same Goodwill store when her already low wage was 
cut further. "I feel like a second-class citizen. And I hate it."

Section 14 (c) of the Fair Labor Standards Act, which was passed in 1938, 
allows employers to obtain special minimum wage certificates from the 
Department of Labor. The certificates give employers the right to pay 
disabled workers according to their abilities, with no bottom limit to the 
wage.

Most, but not all, special wage certificates are held by nonprofit 
organizations like Goodwill that then set up their own so-called "sheltered 
workshops" for disabled employees, where employees typically perform manual 
tasks like hanging clothes.

For more on disabled workers and sub-minimum-wage pay watch 'Rock Center' 
tonight.

The non-profit certificate holders can also place employees in outside, 
for-profit workplaces including restaurants, retail stores, hospitals and 
even Internal Revenue Service centers. Between the sheltered workshops and 
the outside businesses, more than 216,000 workers are eligible to earn less 
than minimum wage because of Section 14 (c), though many end up earning the 
full federal minimum wage of $7.25.


NBC News

Harold Leigland, who is blind, with his guide dog on the bus during his 
morning commute to the Goodwill facility in Great Falls, Montana, where he 
works hanging clothing.

When a non-profit provides Section 14 (c) workers to an outside business, it 
sets the salary and pays the wages. For example, the Helen Keller National 
Center, a New York school for the blind and deaf, has a special wage 
certificate and has placed students in a Westbury, N.Y., Applebee's 
franchise. The employees' pay ranged from $3.97 per hour to $5.96 per hour 
in 2010. The franchise told NBC News it has also hired workers at minimum 
wage from Helen Keller. A spokesperson for Applebee's declined to comment on 
Section 14 (c).

Helen Keller also placed several students at a Barnes & Noble bookstore in 
Manhasset, N.Y., in 2010, where they earned $3.80 and $4.85 an hour. A 
Barnes & Noble spokeswoman defended the Section 14 (c) program as providing 
jobs to "people who would otherwise not have [the opportunity to work]."

Most Section 14 (c) workers are employed directly by nonprofits. In 2001, 
the most recent year for which numbers are available, the GAO estimated that 
more than 90 percent of Section 14 (c) workers were employed at nonprofit 
work centers.

Critics of Section 14 (c) have focused much of their ire on the nonprofits, 
where wages can be just pennies an hour even as some of the groups receive 
funding from the government. At one workplace in Florida run by a nonprofit, 
some employees earned one cent per hour in 2011.

"People are profiting from exploiting disabled workers," said Ari Ne'eman, 
president of the Autistic Self Advocacy Network. "It is clearly and 
unquestionably exploitation."


Defenders of Section 14 (c) say that without it, disabled workers would have 
few options. A Department of Labor spokesperson said in a statement to NBC 
News that Section 14 (c) "provides workers with disabilities the opportunity 
to be given meaningful work and receive an income."

Terry Farmer, CEO of ACCSES, a trade group that calls itself the "voice of 
disability service providers," said scrapping the provision could "force 
[disabled workers] to stay at home," enter rehabilitation, "or otherwise 
engage in unproductive and unsatisfactory activities."

Harold Leigland, however, said he feels that Goodwill can pay him a low wage 
because the company knows he has few other places to go. "We are trapped," 
he said. "Everybody who works at Goodwill is trapped."

Leigland, a 66-year-old former massage therapist with a college degree, 
currently earns $5.46 per hour in Great Falls.

His wages have risen and fallen based on "time studies," the method 
nonprofits use to calculate the salaries of Section 14 (c) workers. Staff 
members use a stopwatch to determine how long it takes a disabled worker to 
complete a task. That time is compared with how long it would take a person 
without a disability to do the same task. The nonprofit then uses a formula 
to calculate a salary, which may be equal to or less than minimum wage. The 
tests are repeated every six months.


NBC News

Harold Leigland works at the Goodwill facility in Great Falls, Montana, 
where he earns $5.46 an hour.

Leigland's pay has been higher than $5.46, but it has also dropped down to 
$4.37 per hour, based on the time-study results.
He said he believes Goodwill makes the time studies harder when they want 
his wage to be lower.

"Sometimes the test is easier than others. It depends on if, as near as I 
can figure, they want your wage to go up or down. It's that simple," he 
said.

His wife, Sheila, 58, spent four years hanging clothes at the Great Falls 
Goodwill for about $3.50 an hour. She said the time study was one of the 
most degrading and stressful parts about her job. "You never know how it's 
going to come out. It stressed me out a lot," she said.

She quit last summer when she returned to work after knee surgery and found 
that her wage had been lowered to $2.75 per hour, a training rate.

"At $2.75 it would barely cover my cost of getting to work. I wouldn't make 
any money," she said.

Harold said he believes Goodwill can afford to pay him minimum wage, based 
on the salaries paid to Goodwill executives. While according to the 
company's own figures about 4,000 of the 30,000 disabled workers Goodwill 
employs at 69 franchises are currently paid below minimum wage, salaries for 
the CEOs of those franchises that hold special minimum wage certificates 
totaled almost $20 million in 2011.

In 2011 the CEO of Goodwill Industries of Southern California took home $1.1 
million in salary and deferred compensation. His counterpart in Portland, 
Oregon, made more than $500,000. Salaries for CEOs of the roughly 150 
Goodwill franchises across America total more than $30 million.

Some workers at Goodwill paid as little as 22 cents an hourSome workers at 
Goodwill paid as little as 22 cents an hourSome workers at Goodwill paid as 
little as 22 cents an hourSherri Brun
flmom2006 at gmail.com
Character is the side of yourself you choose to show the world.
Integrity is what you do, what you say and how you act when you think no one 
is paying attention.
 NFBF Newsline® chair
www.nfbnewsline.org
E-mail:  newsline at nfbflorida.org
http://nfbfgoc.org
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: 130619-harold-with-dog-609p.380;380;7;70;0.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 15624 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://nfbnet.org/pipermail/blindtlk_nfbnet.org/attachments/20130621/e396dea1/attachment.jpg>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: 130619-harold-hmed-350p.380;380;7;70;0.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 25418 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://nfbnet.org/pipermail/blindtlk_nfbnet.org/attachments/20130621/e396dea1/attachment-0001.jpg>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: RockCenter-slice-hdr-NEW.png
Type: image/png
Size: 6408 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://nfbnet.org/pipermail/blindtlk_nfbnet.org/attachments/20130621/e396dea1/attachment.png>