7-28-97 Greetings! I am pleased and excited to announce William Cross, who has cerebral palsy, will be joining the Deaf Watch Newsletter staff. He has experienced the so called "double discrimination" dilemma in which he as a muslim and a cerebral palsy victim has encountered numerous discrimination problems at the workplace based on his race, religion, and disability. He pays a lot of attention to battling racial discrimination. He recently has voiced out against a condominium management for taking down signs written in Spanish that were placed in the laundry room. William's duties will be gathering disability resources and to gather news from the disability (non-deaf) community. He has assisted me in testing automobile insurance companies by portraying as the 'hearing' consumer. I am really happy he has joined Deaf Watch Newsletter as one of the assistant editors. Now.... William Cross has brought to my attention to today's Los Angeles Times story "Making Donated Rags Into Riches". The story covered clothing donated to charity often ends up being sold to overseas dealers. He showed me a photo by Alex Garcia of a disabled man working on some clothes with the following caption "Kenneth Johnson, 56, who wears a helmet to protect him during epileptic seizures, has worked at Goodwill in Santa Ana for 12 years. He earns $3.98 an hour---less than minimum wage." I'm really shocked to see that even respected organizations like Goodwill are exploiting their disabled workers by paying them less than minimum wage. Janet wilson also mentioned in her story "The top eight managers at Goodwill of OC (Orange County) earned $600,000 that year, (1995), with wages and added benefits ranging from $187,000 for the executive director to $73,000 for the program director" "The same year, 380 disabled trainee clients were paid $545,000 or as little as 50 cents an hour for working at Goodwill assembly line jobs." FIFTY CENTS AN HOUR?????????? That's just a little more than what the Deaf Mexicans in New York were making when they were in the slave ring. Basing on this, it is safe to say that even a well respected organization like Goodwill is exploiting their disabled workers by paying them wages far below the minimum wage. I definitely dislike what's going on at Goodwill and with this letter falling in the hands of some of the state's legislators, I am sure that an investigation will be forthcoming. Richard Roehm Deaf Watch Newsletter ,,, (o o) ===oOO==(_)==OOo=================================================== DEAF WATCH Orange County, California Richard Roehm Chief Editor Internet : Deaf@activist.com Deaf_activist@deafwatch.com Nesmuth@bbs.hwsys.com Nesmuth@concentric.net DEAF WATCH Http://www.deafwatch.com .oooO Oooo. Http://home.hwsys.com/users/roehm/deaf.htm ====( )==( )=================================================== \ ( ) / \_) (_/ Deaf Watch will continue to aggressively pursue justice, fairness, and equality for the Deaf Community as it has been doing since November 1996. We have chosen that EDUCATION is the best way accomplish this objective.