Salvation Army Fights Minimum Wage Order

The Salvation Army gives its clients “soup, soap and salvation,” but the federal government says it isn’t enough.

--they should get the minimum wage, too.

For 110 years, the non-sectarian Christian group, based five miles northwest here in Verona, N.J., has fed, sheltered and offered spiritual counsel to the people it has taken in at its adult rehabilitation centers.

In exchange for room and board at its adult rehabilitation centers and up to about $20 a week in pocket money, the beneficiaries, as the Salvation Army calls them, assist in the organization’s kitchens or unload discarded furniture and clothes the Salvation Army collects, said William J. Moss, attorney for the Salvation Army’s national headquarters.

One Salvation Army official in Newark, who spoke on condition of anonymity, described the program as “soup, soap and salvation in the name of Jesus.”

The federal government, however, sees the situation differently.

The Labor Department claims that people to whom the Salvation Army ministers--giving them room, board and up to about $20 a week for helping at the centers--are employees who should be entitled to a minimum wage under the Fair Labor Standards Act, Moss said.

The Salvation Army contends that payment of a wage could doom the social service centers, which are kept financially afloat by a network of thrift shops run across the country.