Disabled workers paid just pennies an hour – and it's legal
By Anna Schecter, Producer, NBC News
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."
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