>In a previous post, there was discussion about an organization in New
>York city called the Doe Fund which runs a program called "Ready,
>Willing, & Able." This organization takes homeless ex-drug addicts,
>"rehabilitates" them, and lends them to the city where they collect
>trash from street litter baskets and are apparently taking over work
>that used to be done by unionized sanitation workers.
>
>Also supposedly the Ready, Willing, & Able organization is supposed to
>pay a minimum wage but was taken to court for paying workfare workers
>only $2-3 an hour under the guise of "educational” training.
>
>Because I want to use this workfare example in an article I'm working
>on, I contacted the Doe fund to see what they had to say. They deny
>everything. Does anyone have a source for the allegations - I could
>find nothing in the New York Times or any other search engine.
I don't know what these guys are paid, but it isn't much, and no doubt it's a lot less than the uniformed sanit workers I used to see doing the same work. There's also some forced savings program involved. I've always wanted to talk to them, but I'm afraid they'd get in trouble; there's some supervisor in a van who drives them around & drops them off. According to a May 12, 1998 fundraising appeal I got from them, signed by Doe Fund president George T. McDonald, the workers live in a community house in Bedford-Stuyvesant, "where participants work to support and encourage each other in their efforts to live free of drugs and alcohol, gain literacy skils and GED certifications, and achieve lives of self-sufficiency.... Through their work to sweep streets and gutters and collect and bag garbage many learn for the first time what it is to work, to contribute and be accepted by society." It's funded by, among others: Business Week, Chase, Clark Foundation, Forbes, Funding Exchange, JM Kaplan Fund, New York Times Co, Smart Money, Unilever, Wall Street Journal, and a bunch of small foundations.
Doug