“Bottom Dollars Movie Chapter 03” produced by Rooted in Rights [NARRATOR]: Bottom Dollars Chapter three - "Pennies per hour." [sad piano music] AUDIO DESCRIPTION: Row houses line the street of Baltimore, Maryland. Minimum wage $8.75 per hour. CHARLES: There's no reason to pay us less than the minimum wage. I'm Charles Biebl, I'm from Baltimore, Maryland. AUDIO DESCRIPTION: Charles leaves his house using his white cane. CHARLES: I went to the school for the blind all through high school. I was very enthused about working, I wanted to work, and it certainly wasn't what I hoped it would have been. They wanted to throw me in a workshop, a sheltered workshop, and forget about me, and that's what they basically did. AUDIO DESCRIPTION: Cheryl Bates-Harris from National Disability Rights Network. CHERYL: I think they persist for a number of reasons. Number one, they're well-funded. There's a pre-vocational service under Medicaid that basically pays for people to go somewhere for seven or eight hours a day. The provider agency is being paid for their mere presence in the workshop, usually on a daily basis. There is a program called AbilityOne. Because the federal government is the largest purchaser of goods and services, this program gives preferential contracts to organizations that employ people with significant disabilities. So, these service providers can basically be guaranteed a lifelong contract. AUDIO DESCRIPTION: Mark Riccobono from the National Federation of the Blind. MARK: So, you get all these government programs that really create a great incentive for employers, with the theory that they're there to help people with disabilities, but when you add them all up, they simply serve to shelter people with disabilities and to keep them limited in what they can do. CHERYL: As the providers have gotten more sophisticated, and actually say that they want to teach people job skills. They look to businesses in the community to provide work to them. (MARK): Of course you can pay people with disabilities less than the minimum wage, so you have a built-in competitive advantage to the price of the workforce that you provide. CHARLES: They had contracts like that, of course the workshop would bid on different items, and of course the workshop would say they'll do it for this price, and Western Electric would say, "Okay, we'll give you the work then, since you're the lowest bidder." CHERYL: The companies, we believe, are getting a very good deal. [NARRATOR]: Companies that work with employment agencies that hold 14(c) certificates Vons Boeing Home Depot The Medicine Shop Merriam-Webster Walgreens 3M Best Western Pizza Hut CHERYL: The workshop is getting a lot of money, paying on average under $2 an hour across the country. AUDIO DESCRIPTION: Roy Rocha. Bakersfield, California. ROY: And they go, "Okay, let's see how fast you can take a phone apart." I start taking phones apart real quick, and they go, "Oh man, you do it pretty quick," and all this stuff, and I said, "Man, I gonna miss no days, and I'm gonna see how much my first paycheck is." AUDIO DESCRIPTION: James Meadours. San Antonio, Texas. JAMES: When I was in Oklahoma, I was there a short time in my high school, and they said, "We got a job for you." I said, "Cool, a job!" And when I saw my first paycheck, I said, "That's not right!" ROY: And then two weeks came, they were passing out payroll at the program. And I opened it, I go, "$15?" And I took it to the supervisor, I go, "What happened? I didn't miss no days, how come my check's only $15?" JAMES: It was only $7.70. And then I look at the rate, they said it's 50 cents an hour, I said, "Oh my God!" AUDIO DESCRIPTION: Betty Williams. Indianapolis, Indiana. BETTY: How would you like to go into a sheltered workshop and work for two weeks and come out with a $6 check? That happened to me more than once. AUDIO DESCRIPTION: A vintage film of Goodwill Industries showing workers in their workshop. (ANNOUNCER): It's spring, and again the rush is on for the Goodwill Industries. Let's leave the customers for a moment while we inspect the operation of this splendid social service agency. CHARLES: When I used to work at Goodwill, that was a same thing kind of a deal. Some people would make maybe 10, 15, 20 dollars a week. MARK: Well, Goodwill is one of the largest employers, and I would say exploiters, of the provisions under the law that permit people with disabilities to be paid less than the minimum wage. AUDIO DESCRIPTION: The Center for Disability Rights. Stephanie works at her desk, seated in her wheelchair. STEPHANIE: I'm Stephanie Woodward, I'm the Director of Advocacy at the Center for Disability Rights in Rochester, New York. We just did a FOIA request from Goodwill. We did Goodwill nationally, for all of their wages. [percussive music] [NARRATOR]: Goodwill hourly wages Grand Island, Nebraska $2.53 per hour Birmingham, Alabama $1.51 per hour Branford, Connecticut $0.40 per hour Cincinnati, Ohio $0.02 per hour STEPHANIE: We found that can be as low as two cents an hour. (INTERVIEWER): Two cents an hour? STEPHANIE: Two cents. MARK: The management is making very, very significant six figure salaries, and they say then that they can't afford to pay people with disabilities a minimum wage. CHERYL: Provider agencies have told us that if they had to pay half of minimum wage that they would probably go bankrupt. [NARRATOR]: CEO Annual Salaries Opportunity Partners, Inc., Minnetonka, Minnesota $198,693 CW Resources, New Britain, Connecticut $293,764 Ohio Valley Goodwill, Cincinnati, Ohio $342,069 Goodwill Industries of Orange County, Santa Anna, California $352,338 Pride Industries Inc., Roseville, California $361,578 Elwyn Inc., Elwyn, Pennsylvania $400,065 Goodwill National, Rockville, Maryland $565,925 AUDIO DESCRIPTION: Photo of Jim Gibbons, CEO of Goodwill. MARK: Quite ironic that the CEO of Goodwill, who is a blind person, thinks that other people with disabilities don't deserve a basic level of equality, and I don't know how you resolve that in your own mind as a person with a disability, except that you don't believe in the concept of equality and civil rights. CHARLES: These places had a vested interest in keeping people there, especially those who could produce. AUDIO DESCRIPTION: Charles walks into a convenience store. CHARLES: You may say, "Well, why didn't you quit?" Well, there was nowhere else to go. Western Electric never thought about hiring people like myself to do it, and I would have done very well at it. But they would have had to pay me like everybody else, and they didn't wanna do that. AUDIO DESCRIPTION: Charles buys a lottery ticket. (CHARLES): I'm poor now, and I gotta carry that to my grave. AUDIO DESCRIPTION: Charles holds up his Mega Millions ticket. CHARLES: If I win, wouldn't that be nice? I spent years doing this stuff in the sheltered workshops, but it really didn't prepare me for anything, they lied to us and said that it would. I was basically sold a bill of goods. [slow electronic music] [NARRATOR]: Share the full film in your community. Host a screening. BottomDollarsMovie.com End of transcript.