WATCH – It works if you work it? –

Dec. 8, 2020 – But many of the workers in these rehab programs are not receiving pay. By not paying recovering drug and alcohol abusers, these programs do not provide the most effective approach to healing patients. Moreover, such arrangements are wrong — and illegal.

Most rehab programs that require work act essentially as temp agencies, farming the rehab residents out to commercial enterprises. The work is often for third parties, such as tree trimming services, dairies, poultry processing plants or oil refineries. The wages are remitted not to the workers but to the rehab centers. In many cases, these workers are not receiving the benefits of a hard day’s work, working for no pay, no Social Security credits, no unemployment insurance payment, with all of the fruits of their labor accruing to the treatment centers.

Other rehab-affiliated programs, notably the Salvation Army, have their patients perform grossly underpaid work for their commercial enterprises — if they did not have this captive workforce, they would have to seek labor from the open market.

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