[nabs-l] Goodwill

[Beth]

Dear List,
	I happened to have bought my furniture from the Goodwill 
Industries Store near here in Denver, but it's amazing how 
we are still paying disabled workers $1.44 a measly hour!  
That was back in the fifties, and we should be paying them 
fair wages so they can get off of SSI.  I forwadrded the 
list email with the master list press release to a friend 
whose commmission for the blind in New York wants him to bag 
groceries.  After all the hard work he puts into making the 
high school diploma, my friend Matthew says he is outraged 
by the way Goodwill Industries treats its disabled workers, 
yet there's a blind CEO making all this money.  I'm sorry, 
but my boyfriend, also blind, and I need to be able to get 
off of SSI because you can't live off of SSI or even minimum 
wage.  For some people with disabilities, SSI is their only 
ticket to good lives.  For my boyfriend, who is blind and 
has multiple heart defects, there's no way he can do a 
fast-paced job and if he worked for Goodwill, there'd be no 
way he could support a wife and children.  The music 
industry is too iffy for us--we're both music lovers and 
he's a big-time producer for underground rappers--and making 
it is another story.  If the two of us are to even be able 
to get married, we have to have fair wages, and more options 
for jobs under what we want.  Right now, Jason provides for 
himself a bit by working for his mother administering a site 
for recipes she does.  I'm pretty sure that if Jason had the 
option of getting a job that would get both of us off of 
SSI, he'd jump at it.  But I'm non the SSI and welfare 
system in Denver, and a Goodwill job would not pay fair 
wages.  I had a relatively good relationship with the 
Goodwill store in Denver, but to hear this stuff about fair 
wages angers me inside sommewhere.  At least my boyfriend 
and I are not mentally challenged as so many Goodwill 
employees are.  But whether they are blind, wheelchair 
bound, or whatever, they should be paid the fair minimum 
wage and let them go up as they rise through the rankings.  
Just like the teenagers who work at the McDonald's or Burger 
King get raises, so should workers with disabilities.  IF 
Jason gets a job at Goodwill, I'll be darned.  Unless 
nonprofits and lucrative businesses clean up their act, I 
will personally not do business with Goodwill.  Noteworthy 
bit: myt old cane teacher's brother refused to fire his 
disabled workers for economic reasons as his boss had 
dictated.  Allen Risavy, I'd like to say, is a great guy, 
and my old cane teacher Theresa has siblings with RP.  She 
is a really sweet lady and not only does she do cane travel 
with blind individuals, she shows dogs!  Her brothers, two 
blind and one sighted, and her blind sister, are all good 
people.  As for the Goodwill boycott, I'm not sure if that 
would be as effective.  There might be other ways of 
approaching it through the top people, but those of us who 
need furnishings for our apartments and are on SSI must use 
Goodwill, and the kindness of friends, to get what we need.