The Salvation Army violates federal labor law, three separate lawsuits filed across three states allege.
The lawsuits, which were filed on Wednesday in federal courts in New York, Illinois, and Georgia and seek unspecified damages, accuse the religious nonprofit organization of working its employees full-time but failing to pay them fairly for such work.
“In name, The Salvation Army’s [adult rehabilitation centers] claim to be rehabilitative, but the reality is that they take advantage of vulnerable people with few options,” said Michael Hancock, counsel at Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll, in a press release. “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.”
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The Salvation Army regularly requires those staying at their adult rehabilitation centers to perform “work therapy,” which includes a minimum of 40 hours of highly physical labor for wages between $1 and $30 per week, according to the filing. Current federal law requires employers to pay a minimum wage of $7.25 per hour.
Those employed at the centers are also restricted from seeking work outside the Salvation Army.
“Despite the substantial benefit The Salvation Army derives from the labor of these vulnerable workers, who form the backbone of its lucrative thrift store operations, The Salvation Army pays them almost nothing,” the attorneys said.
The Salvation Army told the Associated Press it doesn’t comment on pending litigation.
The charitable organization, which has roughly 1.7 million members, operates 120 adult rehabilitation centers in the United States. The group has had to close several of them in recent years due to declining sales at thrift stores, the Christian Science Monitor reported.
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The Salvation Army has faced several labor-related lawsuits in the past, including one lawsuit in 2021 in Illinois from former rehab patients. A second lawsuit was filed in May 2021 in California, and the group was the subject of a Labor Department investigation in 1990, when it was told to pay its workers minimum wage.
