Our Fight for Dignity and Equality

Our Fight for Dignity and Equality

Braille Monitor
October 2012

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Our Fight for Dignity and Equality
by Christopher Danielsen
From the Editor: Chris Danielsen is the director of public relations for the National Federation of the Blind, the president of the Baltimore Chapter of the NFB of Maryland, and a thoughtful and articulate human being. Here is his description of the many protests against the payment of subminimum wages that took place on August 25, 2012:
Although receiving the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour will not make a person wealthy, federal law sets a wage floor so that every American worker can experience a degree of self-respect and a sense of fairness in the workplace. However, Section 14(c) of the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 (FLSA) denies workers with disabilities the dignity and equality of a guaranteed federal minimum wage by allowing some employers to obtain special wage certificates that permit them to pay their workers with disabilities wages far less than the federal minimum. The National Federation of the Blind has fought for the repeal of this discriminatory provision since the founding of our organization in 1940. We recently affirmed our policy position by passing Resolution 2012-01 at our national convention in Dallas. We have also taken our fight to the floor of the United States Congress with our efforts to support the passage of H.R. 3086, the Fair Wages for Workers with Disabilities Act. In order to inform the public about this unfair, discriminatory, and immoral practice and to galvanize support for a change in public policy, the National Federation of the Blind decided to spotlight one of the most well-known nationwide charities with affiliates holding special wage certificates.
We took our fight for dignity and equality to the streets to inform the public by emphasizing the repressive employment practices of Goodwill Industries International, Inc., known to most Americans simply as Goodwill. Goodwill is a household name because of its nationwide network of thrift stores. Many people support Goodwill by donating clothing, furniture, and other items or by purchasing such donated items. Goodwill affiliates foster this support by promoting their alleged good works in employing the so-called severely disabled, but most Goodwill donors and shoppers have no idea that Goodwill affiliates operate manufacturing operations that employ people with disabilities under special wage certificates at wages as low as 22 cents an hour, as the National Federation of the Blind learned through a Freedom of Information Act request. We decided that it was high time that the public learned the facts. After the refusal of Goodwill executives to meet with us, we began our campaign to hold Goodwill accountable for its exploitation of workers with disabilities by publicly calling for a national boycott of Goodwill. On August 25, 2012, we then took that call directly to Goodwill shoppers at over ninety Goodwill thrift store locations in thirty-five states. Federationists from across the nation carried signs, chanted slogans like “Good Jobs, Not Goodwill!” and handed out flyers to people bringing donations to Goodwill stores, planning to shop there, or just passing by. One of the signs simulated a scoreboard, showing the salary of a Goodwill executive as $500,000 and that of an employee with a disability as 20 cents. The flyer prepared for the use of the protesters read as follows:
Boycott Goodwill Industries
Don’t shop at or donate to Goodwill
Did you know that some Goodwill workers with disabilities are being paid as little as 22 cents per hour?
It may be legal, but it is not right.
Section 14(c) of the Fair Labor Standards Act allows employers like Goodwill to pay workers with disabilities less than the federal minimum wage.
UNFAIR! DISCRIMINATORY! IMMORAL!
Assuming that people with disabilities lack capacity is UNFAIR!
Denying disabled workers the federal minimum wage is discriminatory!
Paying six-figure CEO salaries while paying disabled workers pennies is immoral!
All people with disabilities, when provided the proper training and support, can be competitively employed at the minimum wage, free from dependence on public assistance, and contributing to our nation’s bottom line.
Goodwill receives public funds, accepts philanthropic donations, and profits from the sale of donated goods but refuses to pay its workers with disabilities the federal minimum wage.
Don’t donate to or purchase goods from Goodwill until it adopts a responsible corporate policy to pay its workers with disabilities at least the federal minimum wage.
For more information, visit: <www.nfb.org/fairwages>.
Some supporting organizations, including ADAPT and the Autistic Self-Advocacy Network (ASAN), also organized or participated in these demonstrations. Across the nation the protests garnered media attention in places as far flung as Myrtle Beach, South Carolina; Columbia, Missouri; Des Moines, Iowa; and Albany, Georgia. The following article was published in an online magazine called Working in These Times and accurately summarizes the protests, as well as Goodwill’s counter-arguments, such as they are.
Blind Activists Boycott Goodwill over Subminimum Pay
by Bruce Vail
BALTIMORE–The National Federation of the Blind (NFB) escalated its pay protests against Goodwill Industries with August 25 sidewalk pickets at some ninety retail locations around the country. The informational pickets are aimed at publicizing the NFB call for a consumer boycott against Goodwill over its policy of paying subminimum wages to thousands of workers with disabilities.
NFB spokesperson Chris Danielsen says his organization has been able to document cases where Goodwill affiliates have paid disabled employees as little as 22 cents an hour.
In Baltimore–home to the NFB national headquarters–the protest took place on a busy Saturday afternoon in one of the city’s busy downtown tourist districts. With about twenty spirited picketers clustered around a storefront Goodwill outlet, the protest was effective in spreading the word to thousands of city residents and out-of-town visitors, Danielsen says. “Our goal is not to harm Goodwill or any of the people who work there. Our goal is to get the leaders of Goodwill to change their policies so all disabled workers are given the protection of the minimum wage laws,” he says.
The August 25 picketing follows a June 7 call from the NFB for a national consumer boycott of Goodwill. That call arose from the NFB's efforts to change a portion of the federal Fair Labor Standards Act that exempts some disabled workers from the national minimum wage. Those efforts have been stymied, in part, by the high-profile lobbying of Goodwill Industries to keep the exemption in place, according to Danielsen.
“Goodwill isn’t the only organization that fails to pay minimum wage to disabled workers. But they are probably the best known to the general public, and their lobbying has carried a lot of weight in Congress,” Danielsen says. It is for these reasons that the NFB chose Goodwill as the target of the consumer boycott.
The picket in Baltimore was exasperating to Lisa Rusyniak, president of Goodwill Industries of the Chesapeake Inc., a regional affiliate of the national Goodwill organization. “The protest is not pertinent to us,” she told Working in These Times as she observed the picketing in front of the Baltimore store. Because the Chesapeake affiliate does not pay subminimum wage to any of its employees, she says, the picketing is unfair and undermines the good work done by Goodwill. According to Rusyniak, all Goodwill regional affiliates are entirely autonomous in their labor and compensation policies. Her group, for example, employs about 160 people with disabilities who would qualify for exemption from the minimum wage. However, the regional policy is not to seek exemption, and the average hourly wage for those 160 workers is currently $11.50, she says.
The NFB’s Danielsen did not dispute Rusyniak’s assertions but suggests that she is missing the point. The NFB’s boycott is intended to call national attention to the law permitting subminimum wages for all disabled workers, he says, and to build support for changing the law. Furthermore, Danielsen says, regional Goodwill officials like Rusyniak are in a uniquely strong position to push for employment policy changes at the larger Goodwill organization.
Brad Turner-Little, a top official of the national Goodwill Industries Inc., defends the group’s policy without endorsing the specific pay practices of any of the affiliates. Some 30,000 disabled persons are employed by 165 affiliates in the United States and Canada, Turner-Little says. Of those affiliates sixty-four have received certificates from the U.S. Department of Labor that allow them to employ workers at less than the minimum wage. Only about 7,400 individuals are currently covered by the labor department certificates, and the average hourly wage for them is $7.47, he says. With the national minimum currently pegged at $7.25, the average wage for the select number of individuals covered by the certificates does not even fall below the minimum, he points out. Some of these disabled workers even support the exemption (<http://www.goodwill.org/creating-jobs-improving-lives/>) because of non-cash benefits associated with employment at Goodwill, he says.
These arguments also miss the point, Danielsen says. The minimum wage is already low by any standard, and blind and other disabled workers are entitled to decent compensation for their labor, he argues. All advocates for the rights of the disabled--especially Goodwill Industries--should be supporting the change to the subminimum wage law, he says.
Note the disingenuous and scattershot quality of the arguments made by Goodwill officials in the article. The Goodwill affiliates, as exemplified by the comments of the official from Goodwill Industries of the Chesapeake, Inc., seem to wish to have their cake and eat it too. Some of them defend the policy of paying workers with disabilities subminimum wages while at the same time protesting that they do not employ the practice themselves. Goodwill even trots out a version of this argument at a national level by claiming that, if benefits such as life skills coaching and transportation are included, the “average” wage of its disabled employees who are covered by special wage certificates is above minimum wage and that there aren’t very many such employees anyway. But Goodwill cannot have it both ways. Either it supports subminimum wages or it opposes them. If a Goodwill affiliate can pay even a single worker 22 cents an hour, then it can similarly exploit and abuse any or all of its workers at any time. Goodwill is clearly embarrassed that the public is learning about the practice and is attempting to make the situation sound less egregious than it is. But there can be no equivocation on this point. If Goodwill recognizes that the payment of subminimum wages is problematic, then it should revise its policies to forbid the practice and instruct all of its affiliates to do so. Furthermore, it should support the Fair Wages for Workers with Disabilities Act or at least support the general principle that the 14(c) program should be phased out.
Perhaps never has the difference between organizations consisting of people with disabilities and organizations that claim to speak for us and look out for our interests been exemplified more clearly than in the debate over subminimum wages. Goodwill and other entities that hold special wage certificates must decide whether they truly believe in the essential dignity and equality of those whom they claim to serve. We will continue to emphasize the nature of the choice that they must make by holding them accountable and by taking our case directly to the general public.

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