posted 02-04-2005 07:40 PM         

Goodwill attendant suspended because of photo in newspaper
Employee denies he violated company's media policy

By Patrick Wilson
JOURNAL REPORTER

Donald Gibson, an attendant at the Goodwill drop-off site on North Main Street in Kernersville, was excited about his picture appearing in the Jan. 20 edition of the Kernersville Journal. It had been at least 10 or 15 years since he was recognized in a newspaper.

But he wound up shocked when he arrived at work Tuesday.

His managers told him that he was being suspended for five days without pay - he earns $7.78 an hour - for violating the company's media policy. Employees are not supposed to talk to the media. Inquiries, officials said, are supposed to go first to Goodwill's marketing director.

Gibson denies violating the policy. He was not quoted in the story, and he said he did not talk with the freelance reporter who wrote it. The story did quote a Goodwill store manager, who company officials said was not disciplined.

"It really hurts," Gibson said. "I'm living from one payday to the next."

In North Carolina, "employees just don't have a lot of rights," said Hazel Mack-Hilliard, the senior managing attorney with Legal Aid Services of North Carolina in Winston-Salem. "It just sounds to me like there's something else going on.... I don't hear anything illegal, it's just unfair, and those are two different things."

The story, about thrift stores in Kernersville, ran Jan. 20 and included a photo of Gibson stacking donations on a truck at the Goodwill donation site.

Joe Stover, Goodwill's vice president of human resources and organizational development, said that an investigation showed that Gibson was interviewed and gave a statement to someone he knew was a reporter. But the company did not ask Gibson what happened, nor the reporter who wrote the story, freelance journalist Monica Young.

Young said she did not interview Gibson. She said she obtained all the information for the story during a telephone interview with an assistant manager at the Kernersville store.

"Donald Gibson just agreed to having his picture taken,'' Young said. "He never gave me a statement."

Stover said that the assistant manager was not disciplined because she told her supervisors that she did not know she was talking with a reporter.

However, Young said she identified herself - during her 30-minute conversation with the assistant manager - as a reporter writing a story for the Journal. She said she also told the assistant manager that she would be taking photos and asked for the hours of operation of the donation center.

Stover said that another factor in the decision to suspend Gibson was that he had previously violated some company policies, but he declined to give any specifics. Gibson acknowledged that he was once reprimanded for putting up a sign saying that the donation center did not accept furniture.

Gibson, 61, said he graduated from Pine Hall High School, then from Rockingham County Community College, where he studied information-systems technology, at age 55. He said he works odd jobs but hasn't felt up to it lately because of migraine headaches and bronchitis.

"I'd work 24 hours a day if they'd let me," he said of Goodwill, for whom he has worked for four years. He drives 26 miles to Kernersville from his home in Pine Hall to get to his job.

Gibson said he wasn't familiar with the company's media policy. Company representatives said that employees are given a copy of it, and given regular reminders.

Alana Patterson of Kernersville regularly drops off donations at Goodwill. She said that Gibson is a friendly employee - the kind a company should want. "He's very nice," she said. "He will help if you ask for it to take things out of the car, or you can hand something to him and he will take it into the truck," she said.

Its the end of the world,,,I tell ya,,,,,,,,the end of the world!!