ANOTHER MAJOR CHARITY CHARGED WITH MISMANAGEMENT & ABUSE

Goodwill Industries of San Francisco, San Mateo & Marin plagued by dissent

ANOTHER MAJOR CHARITY CHARGED WITH MISMANAGEMENT & ABUSE

SAN FRANCISCO, August 12, 2002 - While the country's attention has been riveted on the 'Dirty Thirty' at the Red Cross, another story involving an international nonprofit icon is beginning to unfold in San Francisco. This time, the controversy involves the local Goodwill Industries in affluent San Francisco, San Mateo & Marin Counties of California, where current and former employees are raising the alarm with a grassroots campaign.

The nonprofit corporation, chartered in California in 1916, is affiliated with Goodwill Industries International - a network of 184 autonomous, not-for-profit, community-based agencies. The organizations operate by collecting, processing and reselling donated goods to support their mission to provide job training and work experience to disadvantaged and disabled workers.

Current and former employees have banded together through the use of an Internet website at www.sfgoodwill.com to charge the agency's administrators with mismanagement of resources, as well as diversion and destruction of donated goods. Employees say also that high salaries, ranging from $66-123,000, according to tax documents for the year 2000, are going to a handful of executives while other staff salaries and wages among the 325 to 400 agency employees - many earning as little as $6.75 to $8 an hour - have lagged or remained static for several years in a row due to red ink.

All staff workers were also forced to absorbed a significant hike in their health coverage costs last Fall when the administrators cut the agency's contribution, in an attempt to balance the books for the year, according to agency documents. None of this has prevented executives from arranging increases to their own salaries and increasing the number of administrators earning over $50,000, during the years the agency has maintained a fiscal deficit.

SERIOUS CHARGES SUPPORTED BY SF EXAMINER INVESTIGATION

The most serious aspect of their charges involves the mishandling of donated goods, according to the employee group, because the agency publicly advertises that the goods will be sold to support its ongoing mission "to train, support and challenge individuals to overcome their employment barriers and thereby achieve self-sufficiency through work," as stated on the agency's own website at www.sfgoodwill.org. "I believe that this violates SF Goodwill's contract with the public-at-large who supports them, at the very least; and, it may violate corporate law governing nonprofit corporations in California," said Howard Vicini, a former employee and coordinator of the group.

The employee group's assertions seemed to be upheld by The San Francisco Examiner when it published its findings in a two page spread following a two month investigation by City Editor, Christopher Merrill. In the article*, published on July 9th, Merrill wrote, "Perhaps more revealing is an objective internal audit obtained by The Examiner. The assessment was performed in 1999 by the Interaction Institute for Social Change which, sources said, Goodwill paid more than $30,000 to identify problems because the company was one of the few losing money in the late 1990's." "The 30-page compilation of interviews with staff, managers and board members is a frequently damning corroboration of current and former employee' claims," Merrill concluded.

THREE FORMER EMPLOYEES FILE CHARGES

Three former employees are now seeking relief through the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing (DFEH) for alleged acts of discrimination and unlawful termination by the agency. Emily Miggins, Carol Glavor, and Vicini, all former staff employees, filed their charges with the State agency between November 2001, and July 2002* All three former, mid-level managers expressed mixed emotions about their decisions to charge the agency because of the possible, short-term impact on the agency's ability to carry out its mission.

Miggins, a former production manager and retail specialist now studying in NYC, said, "I spent nearly a year since I was asked to resign trying to put this behind me, but it wouldn't go away."

"I continued to learn about others who were also being forced out, laid off and even fired for objecting to administration policies that I feel are in direct conflict with the agency's mission. Finally, I realized this is something that needs to be done - it has to be done," Miggins concluded.

Glavor, who co-managed the agency's flagship store at 1580 Mission Street in San Francisco when it opened in 1997, agreed, "I have dedicated myself to Goodwill for almost 8 years, with more than half of that time at SF Goodwill. I loved working there and the people I worked with became my family. Now, they have taken all that away in the blink of an eye and the administrators don't seem to care at all about the impact it has had on my life."

"I was promoted to manage the Haight Street store in 2001. I was never written-up for a single infraction during my entire employment at SF Goodwill, and my store always exceeded the retail goals set by management. Most of all, my fellow store workers and I worked as a team and we worked extra hard to provide learning opportunities for new transitional workers to help fulfill the agency's mission," Glavor continued.

"Then, on the basis of a trumped-up charge made by one employee, I was fired without notice and the agency is even fighting to prevent me from drawing unemployment compensation while I look for another job," Glavor said. "It is just plain mean, and it is just plain wrong."

Vicini, who was the first of the three former staff workers to seek remedy by filing with the DFEH, says Miggins departure shortly after he began working at the agency as an electronics and e-commerce specialist, made a huge impression on him. "I was disgusted by the way Emily was forced out, and the impression it made caused me to be careful in the way I maintained personal records at the Agency from the start," Vicini stated.

VICINI CHARGES HUMAN RESOURCES VIOLATIONS

"As a former employer myself," Vicini continued, "I couldn't believe the careless - even reckless - way human resources were managed at the agency. This included unsecured access to employee files by other employees who had no valid reason for the privileged access."

"I know this for fact, because I was one of those who had unsupervised access and I was never ask to sign any kind of non-disclosure agreement concerning the access to the employee records," Vicini contends. "Although I never examined any records I had access to, or violated anyone's privacy in any way, I certainly could have."

His unusual access to others' employment records was the result of him being asked to move the controls and recorder of a video taping system related to loss prevention, according to Vicini. "I was given unsupervised, Sonitrol and key access to the office of Ted Medeiros, Vice-President of Human Resources, where the system was located, as well as access to the office of Robert Ashe, Vice-President of Loss Prevention, where the system was to be relocated. In fact, the card and key gave me access to all executive offices, according to what I was told by Bob Ashe at the time."

"What I found particularly disturbing was the fact that, in Medeiros' office, employee file folders complete with documents littered the floor," Vicini stated. "I even had to move the folders to complete my investigation of the system to prepare to move it. Since this had to be done in off-hours, so as to not disturb Medeiros' work, I could have read or copied anything without anyone observing me. I didn't like the responsibility the access imposed on me, and I discussed the matter repeatedly with Bob Ashe and Bob Hartman, another vice-president."

In fact, Vicini found the entire project a "ridiculous waste of time and money." He maintains that he suggested several times that the two VP's simply switch offices that were only about 75 feet apart, but his idea was rebuffed by both occupants.

"The real irony in this story is that, after I spent approximately two weeks learning about the system, ordering and receiving more than $1,000 worth of cable and parts, testing the viability of the move, and scheduling a scissor lift to complete the task, the project was abruptly cancelled. The cable and parts are reportedly still in the shipping box at the agency, and the project has never been completed, despite the urgency impressed on me at the time," Vicini concluded.

CREATIVE USE OF TECHNOLOGY CITED AS KEY TO GRASSROOTS CAMPAIGN

Careful record keeping did not help Vicini extend his tenure at SF Goodwill, and he was fired from his job on April 26th, for "discrediting the agency," after pursuing his discrimination and retaliation claims with the DFEH. Vicini has since asked the DFEH to amend his claim to include additional acts of retaliation and unlawful termination.

However, Vicini decided not to stop there. In May and June, he began organizing the employee campaign to reform the agency by contacting Miggins, requesting an investigation by the San Francisco Examiner, and launching the website at www.sfgoodwill.com. "There is no doubt in my mind that what we have accomplished so far has been the direct result of the power the Internet lends to grassroots campaigns," Vicini asserted.

"The website has given us exposure, credibility and a powerful means to communicate with those still at the agency despite attempts by the executive staff, and especially Mary Edington (President and CEO of SF Goodwill), to impose a gag order on her employees during the Examiner's investigation," according to Vicini.

"The boardroom walls no longer shield corporate executives who engage in this type of abuse of their power over their employees. There isn't a single one of our group, or any employee at SF Goodwill I know, who wishes to disrupt the agency's mission. However, we are no longer going to sit by and watch our fellow employees be abused or to accept the abuse ourselves."

* THE COMPLETE TEXT OF THE SF EXAMINER ARTICLE, AS WELL AS MORE COMPLETE STATEMENTS BY THE EMPLOYEES INVOLVED IN THIS CAMPAIGN ARE AVAILABLE AT www.sfgoodwill.com.