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Salvation Army ARC Labor Class Action Lawsuit Overview:
- Why: The workers allege The Salvation Army exploits vulnerable individuals through its Adult Rehabilitation Center program.
- Who: Four former workers filed a class action lawsuit against The Salvation Army.
- Where: The class action lawsuit was filed in Illinois federal court.
The Salvation Army’s Adult Rehabilitation Center (ARC) program takes advantage of vulnerable individuals and profiting from exploitative labor by force and threats of harm, say four former workers in a new class action lawsuit.
Specifically, the lawsuit accuses The Salvation Army National Corporation and The Salvation Army, known as Central Territorial of The Salvation Army (SA Central Territory), of violating the Federal Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act. SA Central Territory oversees The Salvation Army work in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wisconsin.
The lead plaintiffs are Darrell Taylor, Kevin Lewis, Darrell Burkhart, and Leevertis Page, all of whom worked in the ARC under SA Central Territory.
Plaintiffs Allegedly ‘Threatened’ and Coerced By ARC Employees
Taylor, Lewis, Burkhart, and Page claim they were each required to work at least eight hours per day and at least 40 hours per week for food, shelter, and “gratuity” between $1 and $25 per week.
They say their food assistance EBT cards with their SNAP benefits were confiscated upon their arrival at ARC as a “condition of [their] participation” in the program. When Page left the ARC, his EBT card was returned with a $0 balance, says the Salvation Army class action lawsuit.
All four men say they were threatened during their time at ARC if they worked too slowly or failed to follow instructions, were cut off from the outside world and were forced to rely on ARC for survival.
Plaintiff Burkhart says he was also threatened with an arrest warrant unless he worked as instructed although he was sick at the time. After four or five weeks, he left the ARC “because he could not take the grueling, forced labor any longer,” and was taken to jail as this violated his probation.
The class action lawsuit seeks damages, including punitive damages, and reasonable attorneys’ costs.
ARC Operates Under ‘Work Therapy’ Guise, Class Action Says
The Salvation Army bills the ARC program as a “no-cost program [to] tackle the symptoms and causes of alcohol and drug dependence” by placing participants in “work therapy,” says the class action.
Participants in The Salvation Army’s ARC program are required to “labor long hours in physically demanding jobs” in the company’s commercial thrift stores and other business locations as part of their program requirements, according to the complaint.
ARC program participants are either referred to the program by the courts as a term of parole or probation or are walk-in participants who are “often extremely economically vulnerable,” the class action says. Justice-referred participants must abide by the program or else face violating parole or probation and being sent back to jail.
In exchange for their work, participants are given cash “gratuity” between approximately $1 and $25 per full week of work, says the Salvation Army class action lawsuit. This low amount prevents participants from saving a significant enough amount to get back on their feet, keeping them reliant on ARC, the class action argues.
Participants must also work for food and shelter from ARC, and are supposedly limited from seeking additional paid work elsewhere, says the lawsuit.
Additionally, ARC employees allegedly regularly threaten participants with removal for failure to comply with instructions; Page says he saw participants kicked out of the program “during wintery conditions and in the middle of the night.”
The class action lawsuit proposes a Nationwide Walk-In Class and a Nationwide Justice-Referred Class which cover all participants in The Salvation Army’s program, both walk-in and justice-referred, who performed labor in the ARC program within the 10 years before Nov. 15, 2021. There is also a proposed Central Territory Walk-In Class and a Central Territory Justice- Referred Class which cover individuals more specifically to The Salvation Army’s Central Territory.
The Salvation Army is not the only organization accused of forced labor practices. CoreCivic, a for-profit operator of prisons and immigration detention centers, along with US Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have been accused of forcing detained immigrants to work for little to no pay.
Have you or a loved one participated in The Salvation Army’s ARC program? Tell us about it in the comments section below!
The plaintiffs are represented by David Fish and M. Nieves Bolaños of Fish Potter Bolaños, PC.
The Salvation Army ARC Labor Class Action Lawsuit is Taylor, et al. v. The Salvation Army National Corporation, et al., Case No. 1:21-cv-06105, in the US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois.
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49 thoughts onThe Salvation Army ‘Forced Labor,’ Abused ARC Participants, Alleges Class Action
Also, the only phone we had access to was one privately owned pay phone so if you didn’t have any money or someone who would accept a collect call then you weren’t able to talk to your family/loved ones/friends. You did receive gratuity which started at $1 your first week and maxed out at $12 so after three months you would get $12 each week. Your clothing was used donated clothes from the thrift store, the food they fed you was donated even though they took your EBT food stamp card upon your intake. Mine was at a zero balance when I finally was able to get it back from them which was a week after being kicked out. You get written up for minuscule things like dust on your nightstand, bed not made, chore not completed accurately enough, item left on nightstand (I got it for my water bottle one time) using the kitchen at all on weekdays after work (the Seattle women’s program was small and maxed out at 12, which it rarely got over 8 total during my stay, so we had a two story house where we were put 2 to a room. The men had over 100 people and had a kitchen where one paid employee and the rest were guys from the program as that was their work therapy assignment). The guys had different work therapy jobs they could do i.e. sorting in the warehouse, unloading/loading random donations from/into trucks, dispatch, drive box trucks to pick up donations, janitorial, front desk, laundry, or kitchen. Us women were only allowed to work in the warehouse sorting goods in one of the departments. One paid supervisor in the warehouse in particular would not allow you to use the restroom without asking permission first. If she granted it you were generally only allotted 5mins but it depended on her mood. Ultimately if she felt you took too long you would be written up. The main consequence for being written up was mandatory work therapy on Saturday. That being said they wrote you up for anything and everything so we’d ultimately be working 7 days/48hrs a week consistently. On the rare occasion you might get lucky enough to receive a consequence of writing an essay on why whatever it was you did was unacceptable or they would dock some if not all of your weekly gratuity for that week. You had to be on blackout for the first 30 days which meant not even phone calls to family/loved ones even if you had money for the payphone. Once you past the 30 day mark you could only leave to go anywhere if someone else who had been there more than 30 days was willing to sign out with you and accompany you to wherever it was you wanted/needed to go, which was rare for us women as it was always such a small group and we were located way out in Shoreline next to the freeway not near any stores/places and we didn’t have bus fare so would have had to walk. There was also a time restriction and you would have a certain time you were required to be back by or you would be kicked out.