The Dark Reality Behind America’s Greatest Thrift Store Empire
I&#x27;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.<p>&gt;1. Less than one eighth of the company’s profit goes towards its charity work.<p>There are a few issues with this section.<p>&quot;The company&quot; in question is a specific Goodwill - Goodwill Omaha. Extrapolating from one operation to the entire network of Goodwills is a bit extreme.<p>The bigger issue comes from definitions - profit, charitable work, administration.<p>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&#x27;s not written into Goodwill&#x27;s mission.<p>Administrative costs: on this topic, let me quote the linked article. &quot;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&quot;. These government grants and contracts don&#x27;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.<p>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 &gt;$30MM.<p>Not to say that there aren&#x27;t red flags: &quot;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.&quot;<p>&gt;2. Your donated items get shipped out to neo-imperialist buyers that threaten developing industry in third world countries.<p>Having lived in poverty in a developing nation, this wasn&#x27;t a bad thing. There was no local cheap local clothes industry - it had already been decimated by cheap Chinese imports.<p>You might say: but bitcurious, wouldn&#x27;t high quality clothes at that same price undermine the Chinese importers? Yes, but what&#x27;s the difference between an importer of cheap clothes vs an importer of donated clothes? They need the same amount of labor.<p>You might say: but bitcurious, wouldn&#x27;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.<p>The undermining local industry argument is incredible relevant for industries that exist - farming, energy, etc. For clothes? I&#x27;m don&#x27;t buy it.<p>&gt;3. Goodwill has actively fought against legislative proposals to raise the minimum wage.<p>Probably fucked up, definitely so if true. I&#x27;d love to see a citation.<p>&gt;4. Goodwill seized on an archaic 1938 law to justify paying workers as little as 22 cents an hour.<p>Pretty fucked up, but seems to be an accounting issue.  &quot;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.&quot; Per Forbes&#x2F;Goodwill: &quot;(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.)&quot;<p>So they got paid for the time they worked, but the hourly wage was calculated based on the time spent on premises.<p>Looks like it&#x27;s not typical: &quot;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.&quot;
per Forbes[0]<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.forbes.com&#x2F;sites&#x2F;susanadams&#x2F;2013&#x2F;07&#x2F;30&#x2F;does-goodwill-industries-exploit-disabled-workers&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.forbes.com&#x2F;sites&#x2F;susanadams&#x2F;2013&#x2F;07&#x2F;30&#x2F;does-good...</a><p>&gt;5. Many people with disabilities have actually died from injuries borne of Goodwill’s unsafe workplace safety practices.<p>Huge issue, should really be the entire article.<p>&gt;6. Employees that criticize Goodwill’s practices end up getting fired, threatened, and publicly defamed by the company.<p>Fucked up, but it&#x27;s the same issue as #5.Goodwill blames the employee in question for the death. Cal-OSHA disagreed and fined the ~$100k.<p>&gt;7. Employees are subject to strict, unrealistic performance quotas, and their wages are docked if they’re not fast enough.<p>This is specific to people with disabilities. The alternative is that they simply don&#x27;t get hired. This is a larger problem than goodwill - it&#x27;s the lack of a good social safety net.<p>&gt;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.<p>More on Goodwill Omaha, and then a bit about national compensation. I spoke about Goodwill Omaha above, so here&#x27;s the national part: $53.7MM total executive compensation vs. a national revenue of &gt;$3Bn. Not crazy.<p>&gt;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.<p>Being a charitable organization is a tax status.