Chicago, IL Our brothers and sisters who live and work at The Salvation Army’s adult rehabilitation centers and adult rehabilitation programs (ARCs) are desperate – and very vulnerable. They are homeless, or marginally housed, very poor, suffering from drug or alcohol addiction, mentally ill, and/or entangled with the criminal justice system.
But it gets worse.
Michael Clancy v. The Salvation Army, an unpaid wages lawsuit alleges that they are also the victims of wage theft at the hands of the very same religious organization that purports to “save” them.
Now in the summary judgment phase, Clancy is particularly important. Two other lawsuits, Raymon Alvear v. The Salvation Army, and Robert Geiser v. The Salvation Army, have been stayed pending the resolution in Clancy.
Thousands of vulnerable people are enrolled in The Salvation Army’s ARC program. The cornerstone of the program is that all ARC workers must work for at least forty hours per week in Salvation Army stores. These stores compete with similar used goods establishments like the (for profit) Value Village or (non-profit) Hadassah Resale Shops.
ARC workers typically perform tasks like sorting donated clothing, hanging clothes on hangers, putting price tags on the clothing and other goods, sorting and cleaning bric-a-brac, testing electronics, rehabilitating furniture, and loading and unloading trucks with donated goods.
In exchange for the ARC workers’...
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