ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, February 18, 1996 TAG: 9602160006
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: F-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BRENDA McDANIEL SPECIAL TO THE ROANOKE TIMES
BARBARA Quarles remembers that Friday the 13th - in March 1988.
Not because it was unlucky, but because ``it was payday for everybody except me,'' said the Roanoke woman. It was her first day on the job at Tinker Mountain Industries' workshop.
Quarles had never received a paycheck; in fact, in the five years since graduating from William Byrd High School, she had rarely left her home. Fears and emotional troubles had kept her from venturing out.
Today, at what now is Goodwill Industries Tinker Mountain, Quarles folds purple Taco Bell sweat shirts and appreciates the significance of holding a job - and a paycheck.
Jimmy West of Salem knew the satisfaction of work and paychecks before he joined Tinker Mountain in November 1988.
West was a truck driver before an accident ended his career and left him brain-damaged and missing several fingers.
Today, West checks to see if all the components of railroad crew kits have been inserted into plastic bags before he seals them.
West and Quarles are among 170 workers who report every workday to Goodwill Industries Tinker Mountain's workshop in Salem. Like their 160 counterparts at the ARC-Roanoke on Shenandoah Avenue, they're helping to keep the wheels of industry turning in the Roanoke Valley.
Both Goodwill Industries Tinker Mountain and the ARC operate what traditionally are called sheltered workshops, although that term no longer is considered politically correct. Today, the sheltered workshop environment for physically, mentally and emotionally disabled adults is termed a work center.
Goodwill Industries, which merged with Tinker Mountain Industries in 1990, operates two such facilities: one in a former Kroger supermarket building in Salem and one in the former Tinker Mountain Workshop location in Troutville.
The ARC, formerly the Association for Retarded Citizens, operates in two buildings on Shenandoah Avenue.
"Jobs enable folks with disabilities to be as integrated as possible in all aspects of daily life in our community," said Richard Dickson, ARC-Roanoke Inc.'s executive director. "Work gives meaning to our lives."
"Work is pivotal," echoed Roger Matthews, executive director of Goodwill Industries Tinker Mountain Inc. "If people with disabilities are receiving the same rewards people everywhere expect for getting a job done - a pat on the back and a paycheck - they develop a feeling of self-worth.
"Work also gives them a standard of knowing they are not so different from everybody else," Matthews said.
Both organizations also have what they call enclaves of workers in various business locations. One such enclave operates a damaged-goods reclamation center for The Kroger Co. on Airport Road. There, the Goodwill Industries Tinker Mountain workers - called clients - sort dented cans and other damaged food containers for 144 Kroger stores. They divide the items into three categories: those to be returned to Kroger, those to be donated to homeless shelters, and those to be returned to the suppliers.
Inside the work centers, jobs are performed on a contract basis for industries including Elizabeth Arden Co., Cox Communications Roanoke, Orvis and the distributor of Liquid-Plumr drain cleaner.
The off-site enclaves provide transition for workers between the sheltered environment of the centers and regular work sites. Enclaves generally are not permanent operations, so the number of workers varies with the completion of jobs.
Goodwill Industries Tinker Mountain and the ARC currently have about 5 percent of their clients working outside the workshops. |n n| The work contracted to Goodwill Industries Tinker Mountain and the ARC is not charity or busy work, but jobs that somebody must do.
At Goodwill, for example, assemblers package crew kits for Norfolk Southern Corp.'s overnight train crews. Each kit contains soap, 12 paper towels, a paper cup, tissues and a moist towelette. This is one of Goodwill's longest-running and most dependable jobs, now in its 15th year.
Norfolk Southern orders the kits from Dillard Paper Co., which contracts with Goodwill to assemble them. The job means 85 of Goodwill's clients work daily to meet Norfolk Southern's demand for some 2 million kits a year.
One worker counts out the towels, another inserts them into a plastic bag, someone else places a cup in each bag, and on down the line until the bags get to Jimmy West's table for a quality check and a piece of sealing tape.
In a room off the main floor, women clip threads on nylon jackets for Robertson Marketing Group Inc. of Salem. Robertson has the machines to embroider logos on clothing and ball caps, but hands are needed to clip the extraneous threads.
In a back room, other workers assemble animal cages for Harlam Sprague Dawley research labs in Indianapolis.
At the ARC, workers polish cosmetic cases and apply labels for Elizabeth Arden Co.; press O-rings into plastic lids for a distributor of household products that didn't want to spend a million dollars on a machine to do it; bag fishing flies for Orvis; and apply shrink-wrap material to twin Liquid-Plumr containers for a ``buy one, get one free'' promotion.
It's all in a day's work.
Work center clients generally are paid at a per-piece rate, a system that rewards concentration and productivity, yet allows room for the more severely handicapped to accomplish tasks at their own speed.
Some earn as much as $300 every two weeks; some earn only $2 or $3. The workday at the Arc and Goodwill is about six hours.
Both the Arc and Goodwill Industries Tinker Mountain are not-for-profit agencies, and the Department of Labor allows them to pay wages below the minimum mandated for mainstream workers.
To qualify, they survey companies in the community to determine the wages paid for jobs equivalent to those done inside their workshops. Then, a time study determines how many units of work can be produced in an hour, so workshop clients can be paid based on their productivity.
For example, if the hourly wage for a task is $5 an hour at a company where workers produce 500 units an hour, the per-piece rate is a penny each. If a workshop client can product 300 of the items an hour, she or he is paid at the same per-piece rate, or $3 an hour.
The companies that contract for these jobs benefit in several ways:
nThe jobs are done by workers who don't complain about what others might consider nuisance or unchallenging jobs.
nCompanies save money by not having to pay overqualified workers to perform simple, repetitive tasks.
nClient companies don't have to provide benefits or work space.
The community benefits as people with disabilities progress from depending on public assistance to paying taxes. Goodwill Industries Tinker Mountain and the Arc estimate their combined economic impact on the community at about $4.5 million. A sizable portion of this is reflected in wages, benefits, taxes paid and savings to taxpayers.
The more important benefits, however, may be in the lives that are changed by these jobs.
Lives such as Larry Wade's. The 48-year-old Vinton man is one of the fastest towel counters on the train crew kit assembly line. Wade was hit by a car while riding a bicycle when he was 12 years old. He lost a leg and suffered brain damage. Without this kind of job, Wade says, ``I'd probably be sitting at home watching TV.'' Preferring to work, he adds, ``I can watch a little TV, but it gets tiresome.''
West believes his jobs at Goodwill are training him for other jobs in the community. ``It makes me want to do better things,'' he says.
Carol Anderson, an ARC client, would like to get a job carrying food trays at Roanoke Memorial Hospital. Anderson says she has heard that Roanoke Memorial pays well, and ``if you make more money, you can save it.''
Mike Young tried an outside job once, but he couldn't take the pressure. He's in charge of the ARC's food service counter now and by all accounts excels in the job and takes obvious pride in it.
A particularly satisfying part of the job for Young is training fellow employees to make and sell coffee, run microwaves, inventory the snack machines and keep the lunchroom looking presentable.
Young, who lives with his parents and has been at the ARC for more than a decade, is saving for his retirement and hopes to travel.
Goodwill and the ARC share common goals: to provide their clients the skills necessary to work in the community and live independent lives.
"Slowly, society is becoming more aware of the value of such workers, and the community is more open to having workshops in the community," Dickson said.
Quarles folds another sweatshirt and says, ``I think the goal of everybody in here is to get out'' and have a job in the community.
While that may not be an achievable goal for every client, the work centers produce a few dozen success stories each year. Between them, Goodwill and the ARC placed 58 workers in community jobs last year.
But even those who do not move into the mainstream labor force are success stories in their own right. They no longer are shut away inside the house and no longer spend their days watching TV.
They are workers, much like the rest of society - people who come to work, get the job done, socialize a little along the way, and get paid on Fridays.
DISABLED AMERICANS
Number of Americans, aged 16 to 64 years, with work disabilities: 6,705,899 men and 6,120,550 women.
Of those, the number who are in the work force: 3,084, 402 men and 1,959,588 women.
Number of people who are prevented from working because of a disability: 3,185,993 men and 3,435,036 women.
Number of people with disabilities who chose not to work: 435,504 men and 725,926 women.
Source: 1990 U.S. Census data
LENGTH: Long : 174 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: Keith Graham. Debra Morton at ARC-Roanoke makes sure theby CNBright number of water conditioner packets are packaged for Tetra, an
aquarium supply company. color.