The Dark Reality Behind America’s Greatest Thrift Store Empire

https://medium.com/@aliceminium/the-dark-reality-behind-americas-greatest-thrift-store-empire-183967087a1e

by thrifter • 8 years ago

104 61 8 years ago

kermittd5• 8 years ago

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.

panarky• 8 years ago

auschwitzean

Do you mean "arbeit macht frei" [1] or "work will set you free"?

Were you prevented from leaving?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arbeit_macht_frei

kermittd5• 8 years ago

No not all. It’s why I said auschwitzean like.

O there is the corporate tag line. I think it goes improving lives through the power of work. I’ll get a source on that

kermittd5• 8 years ago

O and the sales culture regarding donations is quite distasteful.

kermittd5• 8 years ago

Regarding the tag line:

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

Seems there are variations based on region.

sidstling• 8 years ago

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.

kermittd5• 8 years ago

O very interesting. At the particular store I worked there was a teenage “volunteer” working due to legally mandated community service.

anfilt• 8 years ago

Well generally one can choose where to put their community service hours. I knew someone when growing up who had to do community service and choose to do so at the local animal shelter. Although, I have heard of judges also specifying where. So they could have "voluntarily" chose good will instead of some where else. However, community service is not voluntarily done, and t must be completed. However, definitely not what one commonly thinks about word "volunteer".

sverige• 8 years ago

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.

mental1896• 8 years ago

I'm not certain what's changed over the years but I used to love going into Salvation Army or Goodwill and browsing their stuff because you never knew what cool thing you might find. Nowadays, they all seem to carry the same picked-over stuff.

I think part of it may be that they have also noticed the cool items and moved them to an online marketplace where they can get more cash for them.

davemp• 8 years ago

I wouldn't be surprised if were just a user trend of ignoring Salvation Army and taking the quick buck from Craig's List/Letgo.

astura2• 8 years ago

With the rise of the Internet and ecommerce, there's now hoards of people buying all the good stuff to resell on Amazon, eBay, Craigslist, Facebook, etc. Many professional resellers go to charity shops daily.

ssharp• 8 years ago

Genuinely curious, regarding this as well as the complaint in the article -- what should these stores do with the clothes that don't sell? It sounds like shipping them overseas is bad and throwing them away is bad.

I'd assume there are large amounts clothes that don't end up selling and the only thing I know what to do with clothes I don't want anymore is donate them to Goodwill!

lobotryas• 8 years ago

I turn plenty of my own old tshirts into rags for use at home. Better than buying a package of specially-made rags IMHO.

dpeck• 8 years ago

I'm not sure that ragging operation in and of itself is a bad thing. If the clothes aren't useful, that seems to be the next phase of life for textile.

I've done some work with smaller charitable orgs sorting through donations and the policy was essentially that if it wasn't at minimum something you'd wear to a job interview at a fast food restaurant (think clean jeans/polo shirts) then it went in the trash. Sadly this was the vast majority of donations as people tended to use the donations as a dumping ground for things they couldn't throw out themselves vs giving items that would actually help people down on their luck.

sandworm1012• 8 years ago

US/Canada/Europe own/use/throw away far to many clothes. There arent enough poor people locally to consume them all as second hand. So it is either overseas in shipping containers or into landfills.

cameldrv• 8 years ago

What are they supposed to do, just let clothes pile up forever when they don't sell? They only have so much space to display clothes, and if there are more donations than things people want to buy, they have to do something with the excess. If you don't like it, go the the Salvation Army and buy something.

izzydata• 8 years ago

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

peterwwillis3• 8 years ago

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.

toomuchtodo2• 8 years ago

Do you have a citation for this I could keep handy for reference? Grossly inefficient non-profits to the point of malfeasance is one of my pet peeves.

scarejunba• 8 years ago

The Wikipedia page https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locks_of_Love#Criticisms cites their tax forms as saying they have 35% efficiency

helios893• 8 years ago

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/donated-hair/

peterwwillis3• 8 years ago

The funny thing is the verdict is "mostly false", yet it confirms everything I said. The $6M figure is here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locks_of_Love#Criticisms

bigtunacan• 8 years ago

I would say this is a rather disingenuous take on Locks of Love. More than 50% of the hair received by Locks of Love is destroyed due to being unsuitable for use in wigs (bleached, moldy, too short, etc...). Then since they strictly target 21 and under ALL wig suitable gray hair that is donated are made into wigs and sold as a way to help offset the cost of operations.

So by the time you take out the "garbage hair" and the "gray hair" you are looking at probably only 30 or 40 percent tops that is even usable in wigs. Now consider that for young children, since they grow so fast, they use synthetic wigs. Synthetic hair isn't exactly free, so how do they pay for all of this if they don't raise funds somewhere?

zeveb• 8 years ago

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.

Karunamon• 8 years ago

If you really want to talk comparatives, a charity like Doctors Without Borders spends 89% of its intake on the services it delivers rather than admin overhead.

There is no valid reason for a charitable organization to be unloading 57 million dollars on bonuses. None whatsoever. The most charitable (ha) thing you could say is that Goodwill is ridiculously and willfully ineffecient.

pmyteh• 8 years ago

I have a mental disability. I also have a PhD and a well paid academic job. Disabled people really aren't inherently less productive; it depends on the job, the individual, and (critically) the attitude of the place they work.

Dirlewanger• 8 years ago

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

opencl2• 8 years ago

https://webapps.dol.gov/elaws/whd/flsa/14c/

"This Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) Section 14(c)... authorizes employers, after receiving a certificate from the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) Wage and Hour Division (WHD), to pay special minimum wages - wages less than the Federal minimum wage - to workers who have disabilities for the work being performed."

jkingsbery• 8 years ago

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."

NeonVice2• 8 years ago

I agree that fighting the minimum wage is not "dark". If two able-minded parties voluntarily agree on a wage, then no one should be able to tell them what the correct wage should be. The minimum wage may prevent a lower-skilled worker from getting a job, because an employer would only pay a higher wage to a higher-skilled worker.

WalterGR• 8 years ago

If two able-minded parties voluntarily agree on a wage, then no one should be able to tell them what the correct wage should be.

That opens up the door for so much exploitation that it boggles the mind someone could truly believe that.

Do you support the repeal of minimum wage laws? What about workplace safety laws? Laws that limit the number of hours demanded by the employer?

Incredible.

opencl2• 8 years ago

US labor law has specifically allowed paying disabled people below the minimum wage for as long as the minimum wage has existed.

NeonVice2• 8 years ago

My brother has cerebral palsy and works below minimum wage. I'm grateful that he has a job to give him a sense of responsibility and to learn basic skills. Would it be great for him to earn more money? Sure, but his output is probably not worth minimum wage and that's okay.

baking• 8 years ago

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.

everybodyknows• 8 years ago

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.

peterwwillis3• 8 years ago

I shop at a local store called Philly Aids Thrift (http://phillyaidsthrift.com/) whose proceeds are donated to HIV/AIDS-serving institutions in Philadelphia. Other big metropolises probably have other donation-oriented stores, too.

onomonomono• 8 years ago

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.

Cd00d• 8 years ago

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?

kw71• 8 years ago

I have a local homeless shelter that takes clothing. I know they are not connected with any industrial profit machine.

tk75x• 8 years ago

Try seeing if local religious centers have donation centers. They typically will contact the people who need help directly in their neighborhoods.

astura2• 8 years ago

Homeless shelters sometimes accept clothing, my homeless shelter actually runs a charity shop. Local charity shops are an option, but we don't know if they are run better.

natch2• 8 years ago

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.

slouch• 8 years ago

Do they use eBay, too? I thought it was https://www.shopgoodwill.com/.

natch2• 8 years ago

They used to... I don't know, maybe it's changed. But that site looks like eBay under the hood, whitelabeled maybe?

bitcurious2• 8 years ago

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.

pergadad• 8 years ago

Just to respond to your first comment - government contracts normally contain margins for admin (which don't need to be justified by actual cost), most organisations will use these to cover part of the writing process. Equally, mutually they will have explicit scope top indicate admin hours, etc, and any tender for public funding would plan (& declare at the end) more than actually needed for the performance or project.

In other words: grants/government contracts don't fall from the sky, but in any half competent organization it's easy to come out positive, even when you consider cost & time for tendering, unsuccessful tenders, cancelled projects, etc. Don't believe for a second that goodwill or any other org is putting up money to perform contracts/services at no gain.

purplezooey• 8 years ago

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

The Dark Reality Behind America’s Greatest Thrift Store Empire

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