Get this! One of the U.S.’s most well known charities is paying disabled workers as little as 22 cents an hour. Which company, you ask?
Oh just the folks you donate a ton of stuff to: Goodwill!
Goodwill executives make six-figure salaries, with disabled workers receiving pay less than minimum wage – and it’s legal. Apparently, federal law Section 14 allows employers to pay their disabled workers whatever they want.
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.
Some Goodwill workers in Pennsylvania earned wages as low as 22, 38 and 41 cents per hour, according to reports shown in 2011.
“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.”
This is disgraceful. Disabled or not, everyone should be treated equally.
Source: MSNBC
