CORRUPTION TOO?

Corruption.

The Salvation Army has always run its own profit making businesses. Initially all property and businesses were under William Booth's direct control.

In the 1880's they were accused of undercutting other firms by paying lower wages, and of competing with poor laundry women for customers(51). Today they help drive down wages with their workshops, which often exploit disabled people, and people forced to work for them by community service orders and 'work for the dole'.

In Australia the Salvation Army runs a network of shops staffed by volunteers selling donated goods at inflated prices. While they could easily distribute the goods freely to the disadvantaged at no cost, they believe it is important to maintain a money based economy. To avoid oversupplying the market and so cutting down businesses' profit margins, the Army even goes as far as dumping tons of goods and clothing in suburban tips.(52)

The way they run their food and housing is also questionable. Most of the food that the Salvation Army uses for its soup kitchens is free. This food is usually made up from packaged and processed tins of food that are approaching their use by date. This food is inadequate for basic health, but it is dished out to the homeless with the knowledge that they are in no position to complain. You might expect better from an organisation with millions of dollars in property and assets.

In comparison, Food Not Bombs (an organisation mostly made up of anarchists) provides food that is free, healthy and mostly organic (grown without pesticides or harmful chemicals). They get no government funding and make do with borrowed or donated equipment. Work that one out!

When people have attempted to live in disused Army property they have been met with break-ins, the seizure of property and other attacks. In one case the Army called in the police, and then demolished a building rather than have people live in it who were not under their control.(53) Given that the Army owns a huge amount of property throughout Australia, it is likely that there have been numerous evictions like this.

The Army's need to turn a profit draws and nurtures the corrupt within their ranks. This corruption most significantly came to light in 1990 when a series of major scams were unearthed in New South Wales and Victorian branches. A police taskforce was originally set up after a fire destroyed the Salvation Army warehouse in Williamstown. Following the blaze an insurance valuation discovered that thousands of items had disappeared before the fire and could not be accounted for. In the cases that followed a number of Salvation Army members were charged with arson and theft having skinned off cash from the sale of donated clothing. Most of the cash had been drawn from morally suspect sales of donated clothing to Third World countries.(54) Eventually, the Army was forced to admit that it had no internal accounting system for the clothes people had donated and that such scams could have been going on for years.(55) With Salvation Army industries constantly expanding and nothing but a moral break to prevent management ripping off money, continued corruption is inevitable.


SOURCE-https://libcom.org/library/starvation-army-twelve-reasons-reject-salvation-army