[Nfbmt] Fwd: Re: goodwill
Dan Burke
burke.dall at gmail.com
Wed Aug 7 23:36:16 UTC 2013
Outstanding!
Now we have to convince Tester and Baucus to remove Sectin 511 from
WIA. We need to work on this this month.
More later on that!
Dan
On 8/7/13, Sheila Leigland <sleigland at bresnan.net> wrote:
>
>
>
> -------- Original Message --------
> Subject: Re: goodwill
> Date: Wed, 7 Aug 2013 11:23:56 -0700
> From: Jon Perri <jon at change.org>
> To: Sheila Leigland <sleigland at bresnan.net>
>
>
>
> I'll just paste the forbes article text into this email:
>
>
> Does Goodwill Industries Exploit Disabled Workers?
>
> <http://b-i.forbesimg.com/susanadams/files/2013/07/Goodwill.jpg>
>
> A Goodwill worker in Sioux Falls, S.D.
>
> For Sheila Leigland, a blind Goodwill employee in Great Falls, Montana,
> earning $3.99 an hour was already tough. But when the Rockville,
> Md.-based nonprofit wanted to cut her salary to $2.75, she decided it
> was time to quit. “I want to be paid a living wage for meaningful work,”
> she says. Blind since birth, Leigland, 58, survives on disability
> payments. “It’s not just me—all Goodwill employees deserve the same.
> They call themselves leaders in providing opportunity for the disabled,
> but since when did opportunity look like a quarter an hour?”
>
> Leigland’s husband Harold, 66, a former massage therapist, also works at
> Goodwill, earning $5.40 an hour. No, that isn’t anywhere near the
> minimum wage.
>
> The plight of the Leiglands and of other low-paid Goodwill workers has
> gotten some attention lately, which has resulted in a petition on
> Change.org <http://www.change.org/goodwill> that has pulled in 150,000
> since late June. The petition calls on Goodwill to pay all its workers
> at least the minimum wage. “If you can afford multimillion dollar
> executive compensation packages,” says the petition, “You can afford to
> do right by your workers.”
>
> On June 21, NBC News ran a television piece
> <http://www.nbcnews.com/video/rock-center/52257275#52257275> on “Rock
> Center with Brian Williams.” Salon
> <http://www.salon.com/2013/06/21/goodwill_pays_workers_with_disabilities_as_little_as_22_cents_an_hour/>
> and
> the Huffington Post
> <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/21/goodwill-workers-disabilities-low-wage_n_3478013.html>
> also
> reported on the issue and several organizations including the National
> Federation of the Blind and a group called the Autistics Self Advocacy
> Network have called for changes at Goodwill. According to Labor
> Department documents dug up by NBC, Goodwill has paid workers in
> Pennsylvania as little as 22 cents, 38 cents and 41 cents an hour.
> (Goodwill says those ultra-low-wage figures are distorted because
> sometimes workers run into emotional or physical issues, don’t finish
> their shifts, and then wait for a parent or caregiver to arrive; in
> those cases Goodwill must still count the total amount of time the
> worker stays on the job, which translates to an abnormally low hourly wage.
>
> A provision in the Fair Labor Standard Act (FLSA) of 1938 gives
> employers the right to pay people with disabilities below the minimum
> wage. At Goodwill, explains Leigland, disabled employees take a timed
> test to see how quickly they can sort and hang a rack of clothes. The
> garments must be facing to the left and the top buttons fastened and
> separated into men’s, women’s and children’s sections. Goodwill wants
> workers to be able to hang 100 garments with no errors in 32 minutes.
> “We can’t do it that quickly because we can’t look at a garment and see
> the size,” she says about her experience and her husband’s. Depending on
> how slow the employee works, Goodwill lowers the hourly wage.
>
> As for executives bringing home high salaries, Goodwill International
> CEO Jim Gibbons, earns a base salary of $434,252. Change.org claims that
> the salaries for top managers at 150 Goodwill locations across the
> country total more than $30 million. “If you can afford to pay six- and
> seven-figure salaries to your executives, you can afford to pay minimum
> wage to your employees,” says Autistic Self Advocacy Network president
> Ari Ne’eman in a statement.
>
> Goodwill has responded to the reports and the petition with two written
> statements, here
> <http://www.goodwill.org/meaningful-work-for-people-with-disabilities/> and
>
> here
> <http://www.goodwill.org/statement/special-message-from-goodwills-director-of-mission-strategy/>.
>
> According to Goodwill, the Change.org petition “paint[s] an inaccurate
> picture of Goodwill and the use by some Goodwill agencies of the U.S.
> Department of Labor’s Special Minimum Wage Certificate.” It’s not fair
> to take “isolated incidences” of low pay and imply that they are typical
> for Goodwill, says one of the statements. The average hourly wage for
> the roughly 7,000 Goodwill employees who are paid under the FLSA
> provision is $7.47, says Goodwill. And that’s just 5%-7% of the
> organization’s workforce. An additional 25,000 disabled workers make an
> average annualized salary of $29,000, it says. Goodwill maintains that
> it’s not exploiting workers but rather giving them the opportunity to
> work, at a time when some 80% of people with disabilities in the U.S. do
> not.
>
> Labor groups and disabled Goodwill workers say the FLSA provision is a
> relic of an earlier time and Congress should change the law to require
> that all workers, including the disabled, are subject to the minimum wage.
>
> Goodwill is not alone in paying its disabled workers well below the
> minimum wage, according to an online NBC News report
> <http://investigations.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/06/25/19062348-disabled-workers-paid-just-pennies-an-hour-and-its-legal?lite>,
>
> which explains that nonprofits that get special permission from the
> Labor Department to pay disabled people below the minimum wage are
> allowed to find below-minimum-wage jobs for those workers with other
> employers. Example: the Helen Keller National Center has placed blind
> and deaf workers at a Westbury, N.Y., Applebee’s franchise where they
> made between $3.97 and $5.96 an hour in 2010. The Center also got jobs
> for workers at a Barnes & Noble in Manhasset, N.Y., where they made
> between $3.80 and $4.85 an hour.
>
> In a statement to NBC News, the Labor Department said that the FLSA
> provision “provides workers with disabilities the opportunity to be
> given meaningful work and receive an income.”
>
> That may be true and Goodwill’s practices may be entirely legal, but I
> can only imagine how demeaning it would feel to earn $3.99 an hour.
> Especially an organization like Goodwill, where the mission, as one of
> its statement says, is “to eliminate barriers to opportunity and help
> people in need reach their full potential through learning and the power
> of work,” should take a hard look at its budget and come up with the
> funds to pay all of its 117,000 workers at least the minimum wage.
> That’s part of helping people live up to their potential.
>
> On Wed, Aug 7, 2013 at 11:13 AM, Sheila Leigland <sleigland at bresnan.net
> <mailto:sleigland at bresnan.net>> wrote:
>
> hi john I'm trying to find the forbes article can you give me mor
> instructions for where on the link to look for it? thanks in advance.
>
> On 8/7/2013 10:53 AM, Jon Perri wrote:
>> Hi Sheila,
>>
>> Thank you for this information! For some reason this went into my
>> spam folder so I'm just seeing it now.
>>
>> The Forbes piece was great. Did you read it yet? Here is the link
>> if you haven't:
>>
>> http://www.forbes.com/sites/susanadams/2013/07/30/does-goodwill-industries-exploit-disabled-workers/
>>
>> I want to send an update to a bunch of the petition signers from
>> you, that asks them to go to Goodwill's facebook page to post on
>> it. I drafted something up that I hope you can read over and
>> approve for us to send out. I've pasted it below. Can you read it
>> and let me know if you're okay with us sending it?
>>
>> Name --
>>
>>
>> After I told you about how Goodwill doesn't give disabled
>> employees -- like me and my husband -- equal pay, you and more
>> than 162,000 Change.org users signed my petition to Goodwill.
>> They're under more pressure than ever to change this unfair
>> policy, and they have been getting a lot of bad public attention.
>>
>>
>> But Goodwill still hasn't changed their position on equal pay for
>> all employees. That's why I'm asking you to join thousands of
>> other signers to leave a message on Goodwill's Facebook wall to
>> really keep up the pressure.
>>
>>
>> Can you help me by copying and pasting one of the messages below
>> on Goodwill's Facebook wall? Make sure to mention if you're a
>> shopper or have a disability. Click here to post.
>>
>> <https://www.facebook.com/GoodwillIntl?utm_source=social_media&utm_medium=facebook_main&utm_content=post&utm_campaign=en_usa_ej&utm_term=goodwill_goodwill-fb-page>
>>
>>
>> "I've learned that some Goodwill stores pay disabled employees
>> below minimum wage. Just because this is legal doesn't mean it's
>> right. All Goodwill employees, regardless of disability, should be
>> paid at least minimum wage. Until Goodwill changes this policy, I
>> will not support you."
>>
>>
>> "I'm one of more than 162,000 people calling on Goodwill stores to
>> pay all of their disabled employees a fair wage. While it may be
>> legal for Goodwill to pay disabled people below minimum wage, it
>> doesn't mean it's right. Goodwill has an opportunity to stop this
>> practice and until they do, I will no longer support you."
>>
>>
>> Goodwill relies on its Facebook page to communicate directly with
>> customers, and I'm confident that seeing a lot of posts from
>> people like you will get the message across that paying disabled
>> workers drastically lower wages is not only shameful but
>> discriminatory.
>>
>>
>> Thank you for your support. Together, I believe we can help
>> Goodwill do the right thing.
>>
>>
>> Sheila Leigland
>> Great Falls, Montana
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Fri, Aug 2, 2013 at 8:43 AM, Sheila Leigland
>> <sleigland at bresnan.net <mailto:sleigland at bresnan.net>> wrote:
>>
>> hi I believe that goodwill is very concerned about the
>> patition. I did quit instead of accepting two dollars and
>> seventy five cents. The actual wage was three dollars and
>> ninety nine cents per hour. I don't know where the three fifty
>> came from.I was offered a job working as a greeter at the
>> store which would have paid minimum wage but was told later
>> that the job was never on the table. My vr conselor was
>> shocked because he as his supervisor were lwed to believe that
>> the job was a sure thing.in <http://thing.in> fact Harold knew
>> about the offer before I did because the call to me from the
>> job coach was made from the work site.Everyone there sent
>> congratulations. Interesting isn't it.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>>
>> Jonathan Perri
>> Deputy Director, change.org <http://change.org>
>> 401.265.9445 <tel:401.265.9445>
>> @changejustice
>
>
>
>
> --
>
> Jonathan Perri
> Deputy Director, change.org <http://change.org>
> 401.265.9445
> @changejustice
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Nfbmt mailing list
> Nfbmt at nfbnet.org
> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/nfbmt_nfbnet.org
> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
> Nfbmt:
> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/nfbmt_nfbnet.org/burke.dall%40gmail.com
>
--
Dan Burke
My Cell: 406.546.8546
Twitter: @DallDonal
More information about the NFBMT
mailing list