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

[Omaha Steve]

X post from GD.


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.

[Mika]

1. This is rampant.

I'm a DDS who uses US dental labs only. Much of the dental prosthetics manufacturing for US dentists has been offshored to joint venture capitalist laboratories in China (like Bain Capital).

Nearly all patients have no idea... most simply assuming that their crowns, bridges, full & partial dentures are made in the USA.

There has been a moderate backlash to this because of poor quality work and lack of custom service.

The latest feature of prosthetic dentistry is local "labs" sending their work to be made in Chinese labs (at a fraction of the prices by US labs), and purchasing Chinese made MADE IN THE USA stickers to put on their packaging.

There's near ZERO regulation and enforcement. Buyer beware... although there's almost no way for the patients to know to protect themselves, or, if they do know of this, there's no way to be assured of where their prosthesis has been made.

The US domestic production dental laboratory industry has been literally gutted from this nation. Tens of thousands of highly trained US dental techs are out of work.

It is now VERY difficult to find high quality made in the US dental labs.

[Astraea]

2. They're raising their prices, too

Guess the economy isn't so great for everyone.