GOODWILL;
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.
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.
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."
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