Goodwill repackaging for a private company appears to violate federal rules for “Made in America” [View all]

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REPACKAGING DEAL BENEFITS FROM CHEAP LABOR
A Goodwill Omaha effort to raise money by repackaging hair rollers for a private company appears to violate federal rules for “Made in America” labeling.
COLUMN BY MATTHEW HANSEN | ILLUSTRATIONS BY MATT HANEY | THE WORLD-HERALD

http://dataomaha.com/bigstory/story/109/news/repackaging-deal-benefits-from-cheap-labor

In the past decade, Goodwill Omaha has made an undisclosed amount of money performing a manufacturing magic trick — a sleight of hand that long struck some employees as wrong and may have broken federal law.

The Omaha nonprofit has for years routinely received deliveries from a metro-area beauty supply company named Prestige Products: dozens of giant boxes packed with hair rollers made at a factory in China.

Omahans in several Goodwill programs, including teenagers with mental and physical disabilities, take the Chinese rollers out of these boxes and repack them into smaller plastic bags to ready them for sale. These bags have a brand name, Nylrem, on the front and an eyebrow-raising three-word phrase on the back:

“Made in America.”

FULL story at link.

Your tax dollars are helping fund this practice, too: Most of the Omahans who actually perform the repacking for Goodwill Omaha are being paid from federal, state or local grants.