The Dark Reality Behind America’s Greatest Thrift Store Empire

It’s an interesting story, though also tragic and frightening. I probably would’ve lead with reason five. It seems to me that abusing holes, in employee safety laws for disabled people, is one of the worse evils they commit.

I wonder how much of this goes around. Recently it was revealed that a local restaurant in Aarhus, Denmark, that put disabled and mentally ill to work on a type of welfare program where the municipality pays part of the wage for people who can’t work full hours, was also abusing their employees for profit. And that just another story in a long line of these.

Another fun charity fact: Locks of Love doesn't donate most of the hair it receives to people that need hair. It removes the hair not suitable for wigs, then sends it to a wig manufacturer, who then rejects half of that hair donated. About 80% of the hair LoL receives never makes it into a wig. It sells another good chunk of the hair for profit to fund its operations. Much of the money they make goes to overhead and executive pay. And apparently, up to $6 million in hair donations goes unaccounted every year.

People who want to donate hair would do well to research charities that will take their particular type of hair, and take less for profit.

The Salvation Army is similarly exploitive. I knew a manager of one of their facilities and had a tour that was (probably unintentionally) eye-opening. For example, he talked about how any clothes they didn't sell in a certain amount of time were sent to their "ragging operation," made into bales, and then shipped to Africa.

The only difference from Goodwill as described here is that the population being exploited are addicts and ex-cons rather than mostly disabled folks. I want to like these organizations, I even think they started out with the right intentions, but greed takes over and ruins them.

Many good points, and not paying the legally set minimum wage seems like it's breaking the law (or at least skirting it). But I don't see how "Goodwill has actively fought against legislative proposals to raise the minimum wage" is inherently "Dark" - it might be self serving, but it's possible that it could also lead to layoffs and store closures. Whether or not that's actually the case seems like something that people of, ahem, good will can reasonably debate without labeling each other "dark" or "evil."

Better to shop in locally-run stores, even if they're "for profit". Because their profits, what with competition and the burden of paying full minimum wage, are likely not even enough to replace the carpeting before it turns the color of the parking lot.

The most irksome reason that got left off this list is that some types of high value items simply never make it to store shelves.

Instead of sharing good deals with the community, they put these items up on eBay for the highest bidder.

Sure, it's their right to decide how they want to do things, but it's a bit deceptive since they try to get people to donate on the premise that you are giving back to your community. Yeah, you are giving, but very indirectly, and your best items may never be seen by anyone in your community.

Taking away the best nuggets leaves the store inventories mediocre at best, yet they still ride on the perception that you can find treasures there. You still can, but they've made it much less likely.

How long until Goodwill goes brankrupt and the death of Goodwill is blamed on millennials?

Where should I be taking my lightly used, but no longer desired clothes? I try to clear out my closet once a year or so and eliminate anything that doesn't fit, doesn't reflect my current workplace dress, or isn't ever worn. I don't buy a lot of clothes, but there are still generally several shirts/pants/jackets (both outwear and dress) and shoes that I wish to pass on to someone.

I had thought My annual Goodwill drops were the best way to do that. What are the alternatives, especially that can contribute to my underserved neighbors?

Regarding the tag line:

https://goodwillsp.wordpress.com/donate-to-goodwill/

Seems there are variations based on region.

Can I add #11? If you have large bulky items like furniture that you want to get rid of, everyone tells you to call Goodwill. When you call, they ask you your location and they says they don't have pickup there, but they give you another number to call. That number then refers you to a third company which will then charge you to haul away your "trash." Turns out the middle-man is a broker that is kicking money back to Goodwill for the referrals.

How do they purportedly pay less than minimum wage? Because they're a nonprofit? I feel like I'm missing something.

If this crap is true that's horrible. They should be paying people better than min wage. Wtf.

I'm pretty annoyed by the mix of actual issues and misleading statistics in this article, so here are some thoughts on all of the items.

>1. Less than one eighth of the company’s profit goes towards its charity work.

There are a few issues with this section.

"The company" in question is a specific Goodwill - Goodwill Omaha. Extrapolating from one operation to the entire network of Goodwills is a bit extreme.

The bigger issue comes from definitions - profit, charitable work, administration.

Charitable work: if the only thing Goodwill did was run a chain of stores that facilitated reuse, I would argue that this is a net good to the world. However none of the money that is spent on running these stores counts as charitable work, because it's not written into Goodwill's mission.

Administrative costs: on this topic, let me quote the linked article. "While Goodwill Omaha runs job training and assistance programs that serve thousands annually, nearly all of those activities have been funded by government grants and contract". These government grants and contracts don't fall out of thin air, they require a staff to apply for, measure, track, report back on, etc. Another way of saying Goodwill spends $2.5MM on administrative costs is to say Goodwill spends $2.5MM to raise $?MM from the government to spend on programs.

CEO compensation: The stated example of ~$1MM for the CEO of Goodwill Omaha is on the high end, but still within the norm for the CEO of an organization that runs 17 retail stores and a large jobs training program with an annual revenue of >$30MM.

Not to say that there aren't red flags: "The organization [Goodwill Omaha] includes a number of highly placed staff members who are related to the CEO or board members or their own supervisors."

>2. Your donated items get shipped out to neo-imperialist buyers that threaten developing industry in third world countries.

Having lived in poverty in a developing nation, this wasn't a bad thing. There was no local cheap local clothes industry - it had already been decimated by cheap Chinese imports.

You might say: but bitcurious, wouldn't high quality clothes at that same price undermine the Chinese importers? Yes, but what's the difference between an importer of cheap clothes vs an importer of donated clothes? They need the same amount of labor.

You might say: but bitcurious, wouldn't access to high quality goods at a cheap price undermine the potential for locally made high quality goods at a higher price? Perhaps, but speaking from experience, there was a lot of stigma associated with shopping at a second hand clothing store, so anyone who could afford to buy high quality goods was already doing so, if only to avoid that stigma.

The undermining local industry argument is incredible relevant for industries that exist - farming, energy, etc. For clothes? I'm don't buy it.

>3. Goodwill has actively fought against legislative proposals to raise the minimum wage.

Probably fucked up, definitely so if true. I'd love to see a citation.

>4. Goodwill seized on an archaic 1938 law to justify paying workers as little as 22 cents an hour.

Pretty fucked up, but seems to be an accounting issue. "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." Per Forbes/Goodwill: "(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.)"

So they got paid for the time they worked, but the hourly wage was calculated based on the time spent on premises.

Looks like it's not typical: "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." per Forbes[0]

[0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/susanadams/2013/07/30/does-good...

>5. Many people with disabilities have actually died from injuries borne of Goodwill’s unsafe workplace safety practices.

Huge issue, should really be the entire article.

>6. Employees that criticize Goodwill’s practices end up getting fired, threatened, and publicly defamed by the company.

Fucked up, but it's the same issue as #5.Goodwill blames the employee in question for the death. Cal-OSHA disagreed and fined the ~$100k.

>7. Employees are subject to strict, unrealistic performance quotas, and their wages are docked if they’re not fast enough.

This is specific to people with disabilities. The alternative is that they simply don't get hired. This is a larger problem than goodwill - it's the lack of a good social safety net.

>9. Goodwill’s legal status as a charity wins grants and tax subsidies, manifesting in hugely lucrative quantities of profit for executives that are not evenly distributed among the people they are intended to benefit.

More on Goodwill Omaha, and then a bit about national compensation. I spoke about Goodwill Omaha above, so here's the national part: $53.7MM total executive compensation vs. a national revenue of >$3Bn. Not crazy.

>10. Perhaps most of all, it is troubling to promote your business as a charitable institution, project a false image of your workplace practices, and abuse the public’s trust.

Being a charitable organization is a tax status.

O and the sales culture regarding donations is quite distasteful.

Glad to hear this come out. Worked at a Goodwill store for a summer. Involved lots of heavy lifting of furniture, strict managers, insane scheduling rationale, and auschwitzean like propaganda regarding the power of work.

I don't get the feeling the author has a deep understanding of economics.

Point 2 - She says she hates companies who make clothes exploiting cheap labor overseas, but then selling them cheap clothes is also bad? How is this Goodwill's fault? Should Goodwill not auction their clothes and send them straight to the landfill instead? (No, she's mad if they get sent to the landfill, too.) If Country X wants to protect their emerging clothes industry they can tax/tariff, but it's a strange argument that consumers in Country X are too happy with the clothes they're getting from Goodwill's auctions and they need to be harmed so local businesses can charge them more. (Also, am I supposed to know what a "neo-imperialist buyer" is?)

Point 3 - Author complains about Goodwill fighting the minimum wage because they have $3.8 billion in revenues. With 100,000 employees that's only $38,000 in revenue per employee per year. You could round up and say employees on average are bringing in roughly $20/hr in revenues. After paying for operating costs (buildings, land, trucks, electricity, gas, insurance, etc.) will there really be a minimum of $15/hr left for every single employee?

Point 4 - Author complains that Goodwill pays disable persons under minimum wage, one even made $3.27 for 24 hours of work. If you click through you see that worker was paid that because in 24 hours of work they were able to put 327 articles of clothing on hangers at a penny per hanger. That's obviously a sad situation but it's clear Goodwill wasn't exploiting them.

Point 5 - author says Goodwill doesn't provide safe working conditions for disabled employees. The linked article (from socialistworker.com?!?) makes it look like the unsafe conditions exist without regard to the worker's ability level. Still, this is the first real issue brought up.

Point 6 - Not great, but lots of companies fire employees for bringing them bad press.

Point 7 - "Performance Quotas" and Point 8 - "Corporate Responsibility" This is where it becomes clear the author wants impossible things, literally impossible. She says "...it is a company’s job to accommodate all employees’ needs, fairly compensate them for their labor, and give them the same tasks and work conditions as an able-bodied co-worker." I'm not sure what she thinks "fair compensation" for slowly putting t-shirts on hangers is but it's hard to justify $10/hr. Disabled people are by definition not capable of completing the same tasks as others, you can't give them the same tasks as others, if you could they wouldn't be disabled.

Point 9 - Executive Compensation. The age-old argument. If you want competent people to run your business with $4 billion in revenues, they're going to be expensive. How expensive? Who knows, but the fact that Goodwill is still in business means they're probably paying for decent leadership at least from a business perspective.

Point 10- ...The author closes with "Corporate abuse of employees has become a feature of modern capitalism, but doing so under the guise of charity? That’s something especially concerning about that." This, along with the link to an openly socialist website, makes me wonder what the author's been reading. She seems to be blaming capitalism for harsh realities of the world we live in, like disabled people not being able to work as productively as non-disabled people. Or free trade hurting some businesses and helping others. Or the fact that you have to make a distinction between an employee and a charity case.

This isn't terribly fair.

Spending 12.5% of profits on charity seems pretty laudable to me. The article complains about $57.3 million in bonuses, but the linked article neither gives that figure nor provides a timespan. Half a million per year — a number from a different linked article — for CEO compensation seems pretty fair for a national ogranisation.

Agreed that shipping stuff to third-world nations is bad for their industries, but what's the alternative? The article also complains that Goodwill throws out garbage.

The complaints about the wage paid to the disabled are misplaced, I think. I don't believe anyone can seriously write, 'Disabled people aren’t inherently less productive employees,' as does a linked Huffington Post article. It seems pretty reasonable that the choice is between low-paying jobs for the disabled or no jobs at all. Likewise, I think 'people with disabilities are not a burden' could only be written by someone who's never dealt with the mentally disabled.

The complaint about unsafe work places lacks context. Any workplace is potentially dangerous (even we office workers must worry about electrocution!). The key unanswered question is how does Goodwill compare to other organisations? If they're worse, that's bad — but if they're not, then what exactly is the problem?

The complaint about performance quotas could be turned around: perhaps those explicit expectations are necessary in order to provide jobs to low-IQ workers.

The concern about tax subsidies applies to every charity. Note that this campaign appears in part to have originated at the Socialist Worker, which would like to see the State take responsibility for all charitable endeavours — all under the expert guidance of the well-compensated, empensioned civil service. That's merely trading one set of well-compensated managers for another.