The Salvation Army paid some workers as little as $1 a week, suits claim

The Salvation Army faces three federal lawsuits accusing it of exploiting marginalized people under the guise of offering therapy by paying as little as $1 a week for full-time work.

The suits, filed this week in Georgia, Illinois, and New York, accuse the philanthropic organization of flouting U.S. wage laws in its Adult Rehabilitation Centers (ARC) by paying well under the $7.25 an hour federal minimum wage or overtime. The Illinois and New York complaints also allege Salvation Army violated state wage laws.

"Instead of getting support on the road to stability and recovery, participants are forced to do grueling manual labor, live in meager conditions, make pennies in wages and give up government assistance that could improve their self-sufficiency," Michael Hancock, one of the plaintiffs' attorneys, said in a statement.

A Salvation Army representative declined to respond to the allegations, saying in an emailed statement that it doesn't comment on pending litigation. 

In a separate, ongoing lawsuit relating to its recovery centers, the group has defended its approach, which it calls "work therapy," as a way for people to learn vocational skills and "to help program beneficiaries become productive members of society."

But according to the lawsuits filed on Wednesday, Salvation Army's rehabilitation centers are little more than a low-paid labor pool used chiefly to prop up its operations. 

The organization's 120 centers see thousands of people each year, many of whom suffer from addiction or homelessness, or who have been ordered by a court to complete these programs as an alternative to imprisonment. Participants also have to relinquish any food-stamp benefits or other government aid to Salvation Army, the plaintiffs' lawyers said. 

Everyone in the program is also required to work 40 hours a week for the Salvation Army and is barred from working elsewhere, the suits claim. Participants who miss work shifts have to make up time, and those who can't work at least a 40-hour week — even if it's because they get injured on the job — are expelled from the program, according to the complaints. 

Those requirements effectively mean that the program participants are workers, the plaintiffs' lawyers contend. But their pay — no more than $25 a week, "dorm-like sleeping arrangements," and food and clothing from Salvation Army donations — fall short of the federal minimum wage and overtime laws. 

Salvation Army took in $424 million in sales from its thrift stores, according to its latest annual report.

$21 a week

Michael Clancy, a plaintiff in the Illinois suit, spent six months in a Salvation Army recovery center in Chicago from 2019 to 2020, the suit claims. While he was there, Clancy often worked 40 hours a week or more sorting and hanging clothes, loading and unloading donations into trucks, answering phones, and working as a security guard at the facility. But Clancy was never paid more than $21 a week, even while he worked side by side with other employees who were paid minimum wage, according to the complaint.

"ARC workers who complete the program often leave the ARC penniless and jobless, unable to survive economically in their communities," the suits allege. 

Salvation Army, a Christian organization, has been operating work-focused rehabilitation programs for more than a century, according to its website. The programs have been the subject of lawsuits since at least 1990, when the U.S. Department of Labor ordered the group to pay minimum wage to its beneficiaries. 

But the charity sued and mounted an intensive lobbying campaign, according to media reports. The Labor Department eventually exempted Salvation Army in the agency's operations manual, clarifying that the government would not enforce minimum-wage or child labor laws as far as the group was concerned.

Last year, Salvation Army was sued in California amid similar allegations of minimum-wage violations. Former ARC participants also sued the charity in Illinois in November, alleging that its requirement to work for little pay amounted to human trafficking. 

Senators have requested an investigation into mandatory work programs at government-funded rehab centers, suggesting that forced work is not an effective treatment for addiction. An investigation by the Charlotte Observer last year found that many work-based rehab programs had a graduation rate of only about 30%.