THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, September 9, 1994 TAG: 9409090562
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: D1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY STEPHANIE STOUGHTON, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: Medium: 61 lines
Eunice Stepp's job is to carefully insert white blankets into a gigantic rolling iron. And while the 26-year-old woman with Down syndrome dreams of one day being a photographer, she's not complaining.
``It's OK,'' Stepp said Thursday of her laundry job at the Louise W. Eggleston Center.
Organizations that find employment for people with disabilities are now worried jobs like Stepp's may disappear.
Downsizing in the military, which contracts work to the Eggleston Center and others, are eliminating many of those jobs nationwide. The National Industries for the Blind, for example, has had to lay off some of its workers.
``The military downsizing has reduced the number of contractors, and it has made projects smaller and harder to find,'' said Lou Bartalot, staff member of a presidential committee trying to increase the number of jobs for people with disabilities.
The panel - the President's Committee for the Purchase of Services for the Blind and Severely Disabled - met at the Norfolk center Thursday to discuss strategies for finding new employment.
``We've got to identify more contract work,'' Judith D. Peters, president of the National Industries for the Blind, told the committee. ``We do not have enough work for everyone.''
Peters suggested that her organization and NISH - formerly the National Industries for the Severely Handicapped - stop fighting over the same contracts and work together to find more jobs. She suggested pin-pointing jobs in other areas, like hotel reservations, instead of relying on the traditional packaging and folding jobs.
In Norfolk, the Eggleston Center and it 160-member work force has been fortunate, said Stanley Hurst, president of the organization's board of directors. They have escaped much of the impact of defense downsizing, he said.
The Eggleston has held onto its biggest customer: the Navy. At the organization's laundry facility in Norfolk, workers wash, dry and iron blankets and sheets for the Portsmouth Naval Hospital. The center also has contracts to work in Navy food service and with a number of companies in Hampton Roads.
Adm. Bob Moore, a committee member and commander of the Naval Supplies Systems Command, said the issue isn't defense cutbacks. Rather, it's getting more aggressive about finding those jobs.
Moore said the military still can generate more jobs for organizations like the Eggleston Center.
``We just need to identify those opportunities,'' he said. ``We're barely tapping the surface.'' ILLUSTRATION: Finding jobs for workers with disabilities
IAN MARTIN/The Virginian-Pilot
Eunice Stepp works at her laundry job thursday at the Louise W.
Eggleston Center in Norfolk.
by CNB