Necronic
Staff member
I was talking about Goodwill today with some co-workers at lunch and a few issues came up that I was in the minority on. They are both complicated issues with some obvious knee-jerk answers that I just don't buy. I'm curious to hear your thoughts since my co-workers didn't really want to discuss it.
1) Executive compensation at a large charity (like Goodwill or United Way). Everyone at the table found it apalling that the CEO of Goodwill was earning ~750k. I didn't see a problem with it. This organization earns roughly 4-5 billion $ in revenue a year. The CEO has a significant impact on those earnings. A CEO at a for profit company making that much money would be making 3-4 million at least, so its below market rates, which is fine for a charity, but if you go too far below market rates you start getting inexperienced or unqualified people in leadership positions which can severely damage the company. If the difference between paying 250k and 750k means a loss of even 0.1% of their earnings then they screwed up.
Really you get what you pay for, and you can't expect many people who are CEO calibre to take too large of a paycut.
That said I do think there are limits to this, and some of the compensations I have seen for local Goodwill presidents seem innapropriately high (Portland Oregon President was earning 850k apparently).
2) Underpaying disabled people. Section 14(c) allows companies to pay a disabled person below the minimum wage. This can result in employees who earn less than 1$ per hour, but iirc the average is something like 2.5$ give or take.
On the face of things, especially when considering point 1, this seems apalling. As someone wrote, "I guess slavery is back but just for the disabled". But, if you've ever worked with a severely disabled person, you have to understand that they are incapable of doing labor like a regular worker. They require oversite and may not actually be able to do much work.
The purpose of this provision is to provide oppurtunities for fulfilling work to people who otherwise would not be able to do anything otherwise. The workplace is also a key part of a humans socialisation, so a workplace gives these people a place to talk to people and make friends. The sad truth is that without these jobs many of them would spend many of their days alone.
I do think there are problems with how this law is currently being used. Some people exploit it and take advantage of their disabled employees. There was a turkey farm somewhere that had the disabled employees living in slums and setting their pay to only cover their cost of living. There needs to be significant oversight involved here.
Moreover, I think there need to be more options to meet the varied type of disabled workers. Someone with severe mental retardation is going to have far different difficulties and needs in their workplace than someone who is blind.
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Anyways, my coworkers vehemently disagreed with both of my views on this, and I do understand why. What do you guys think of this complicated issue?
1) Executive compensation at a large charity (like Goodwill or United Way). Everyone at the table found it apalling that the CEO of Goodwill was earning ~750k. I didn't see a problem with it. This organization earns roughly 4-5 billion $ in revenue a year. The CEO has a significant impact on those earnings. A CEO at a for profit company making that much money would be making 3-4 million at least, so its below market rates, which is fine for a charity, but if you go too far below market rates you start getting inexperienced or unqualified people in leadership positions which can severely damage the company. If the difference between paying 250k and 750k means a loss of even 0.1% of their earnings then they screwed up.
Really you get what you pay for, and you can't expect many people who are CEO calibre to take too large of a paycut.
That said I do think there are limits to this, and some of the compensations I have seen for local Goodwill presidents seem innapropriately high (Portland Oregon President was earning 850k apparently).
2) Underpaying disabled people. Section 14(c) allows companies to pay a disabled person below the minimum wage. This can result in employees who earn less than 1$ per hour, but iirc the average is something like 2.5$ give or take.
On the face of things, especially when considering point 1, this seems apalling. As someone wrote, "I guess slavery is back but just for the disabled". But, if you've ever worked with a severely disabled person, you have to understand that they are incapable of doing labor like a regular worker. They require oversite and may not actually be able to do much work.
The purpose of this provision is to provide oppurtunities for fulfilling work to people who otherwise would not be able to do anything otherwise. The workplace is also a key part of a humans socialisation, so a workplace gives these people a place to talk to people and make friends. The sad truth is that without these jobs many of them would spend many of their days alone.
I do think there are problems with how this law is currently being used. Some people exploit it and take advantage of their disabled employees. There was a turkey farm somewhere that had the disabled employees living in slums and setting their pay to only cover their cost of living. There needs to be significant oversight involved here.
Moreover, I think there need to be more options to meet the varied type of disabled workers. Someone with severe mental retardation is going to have far different difficulties and needs in their workplace than someone who is blind.
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Anyways, my coworkers vehemently disagreed with both of my views on this, and I do understand why. What do you guys think of this complicated issue?