$2.75 an Hour?! The Shocking Secret of Goodwill

Goodwill CEOs make over $400,000 a year. But some of its disabled employees are paid less than $3 an hour.

Jodie Gummow

Spreading Christmas ‘goodwill’ during the holidays is what Goodwill donation centers claim to be all about. The company sells thousands of donated goods at low prices every year, particuarly around the festive seaon.
In fact, it has almost become part of our culture that when something is not useful to us anymore, we give it to Goodwill.
While part of Goodwill’s mission is also to give people jobs who have disabilities, a recent documentary reveals that the company is exploiting their workers with many legally exempt from minimum wage protection, Upworthy reported.

According to the documentary, in the back rooms of Goodwill stores, disabled workers make far less then the federal wage of $7.25 an hour because of loophole in the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938.
Former Goodwill employee, Sheila Leland, who is legally blind, said she had to quit her job at a local Goodwill after her employer reduced her hourly wage from $3.50 to $2.75 per hour.
Such actions perfectly legal, based on the law’s assumption that people with disabilities are not as productive as able-bodied individuals.
But advocates such as Marc Maurer, president of the National Federation of the Blind, says such laws are unfair and unethical.
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