Goodwill Industries

[Animal Farm Pig]

Does anyone here have experience working for, doing business with, organizing inside, or otherwise with Goodwill Industries? How were working conditions? What was your general impression of the organization?

[Rusty Shackleford]

$20 Sofas.

other than that, i dont know.

[Animal Farm Pig]

My experience with them has been pretty shitty.

I work in the second hand clothing trade. The non-profit organization I work for collects second hand clothing and shoes using drop-off boxes. We visit businesses, ask if we can put a box in their parking lot, collect the clothes, and then we wholesale them.

Goodwill in California has been on a campaign to eliminate clothing collection boxes in the state. They tried to do this through state legislation (AB2610 (http://info.sen.ca.gov/pub/07-08/bill/asm/ab_2601-2650/ab_2610_bill_20080222_introduced.html)). It was vetoed by the governator. Lately, they've been trying the same strategy at county and municipal levels-- especially around Sacramento and the Central Valley. The basic idea is to get the local government to pass permitting requirements that are impossible to meet.

They just got another set of permit requirements passed today in Sacramento County. There are so many things fucked up with that ordinance that I don't even know where to start. They're trying to drive a legitimate non-profit organization out of business. And, for what!?

So, that's my experience with Goodwill Industries. I hate those fuckers.

I've lately been looking over the financials from the local Goodwill chapter ("Goodwill Industries of Sacramento Valley and Northern Nevada"). As a non-profit, Goodwill is required to publish them, and they're publicly available at Guidestar (http://www.guidestar.org). The most recent year available is 2008.

I won't comment on the ratio of operating to program expenses-- even if it is pretty fucked up. It's a business and has running costs. What I find interesting is that the only thing they do not related to running their business is courses in self-esteem and resumé writing.

What is kind of funny is the compensation of their CEO. It was a bit over $360K in 2008. Seems a bit high. Really interesting is under Schedule L "Business Transactions Involving Interested Persons". The CEO got paid $1,048,255 for... well... something. The form doesn't make it easy to tell. I tried calling them up and asking about it, and they basically told me to fuck off.

So, that's my own personal hate against Goodwill.


I've also heard of pretty bad working conditions in Goodwill stores. Many Goodwill workers lack the right to unionize because they're not employees-- they're part of a "job training program"-- so they lack basic worker rights. Goodwill has a special exemption to pay some workers below minimum wage. Wages in general are poverty wages ($8/hour) was typical of workers I asked around here. Workers also complained about unpredictable working hours-- both in terms of start/stop times and in terms of hours per week. Of the few people I talked with, none were working 40 hour weeks.

Many Goodwill chapters also operate labor outsourcing programs for janitorial work, cooking, grounds-keeping, document management, and other tasks. One of the largest customers for Goodwill's outsourcing services is government at all levels. The result is federal, state, and local government workers who receive decent wages, probably have health and pension plans, and may be unionized are replaced by people paid poverty wages without any sort of benefits and lacking in worker protections.