A growing number of companies are finding that it makes good business sense to hire people who might otherwise be consigned to sheltered workshops or remain idle

By Margo Rossevelt / Orange County Register

 
Five days a week, Lisa Scognamiglio takes the bus to a Newport Beach insurance office. Her main job is to remove paper clips and staples from piles of documents before they're scanned. She earns $8 an hour – minimum wage – for 6½ hours a day.

A tedious task?

Scognamiglio, 23, doesn't think so. "I love it here. I couldn't ask for a better job," she said. "People are friendly and nice."

Her co-worker, Adam Hogan, 25, feeds the documents into the scanner. "I like to scan," he said. "I check the papers for backsides. If there are backsides, I scan two sides. The pay is great. I love being paid."

Scognamiglio and Hogan suffered mild brain damage as children – Scognamiglio as a result of cancer, Hogan in the wake of viral encephalitis. They are among thousands of mentally and physically disabled Orange County residents who, by traditional market standards, are all but unemployable.

A growing number of companies, however, in partnership with Goodwill of Orange County and other nonprofits, are finding that it makes good business sense to hire people who might otherwise be consigned to sheltered workshops or remain idle.

Workers with autism, cerebral palsy and Down syndrome wrap silverware into napkins at California Pizza Kitchen restaurants, fold clothes at T.J. Maxx stores and repackage remote controls at Cox Communications.

Besides Alliant Insurance Services, which hired Scognamiglio and Hogan, companies such as First American Title, Nike, Oakley and Marshalls have hired teams of workers with disabilities through Goodwill.

While Goodwill is well known as a place to donate or buy used clothing and furniture, the nonprofit also is one of Orange County's biggest philanthropies, with 1,037 employees and an annual budget of $77 million.

"Goodwill offers a hand up – not a handout," said President and CEO Frank Talarico Jr., echoing the motto of the organization founded by a Boston minister in 1902. "The name of the game is jobs."

In recent years, Goodwill has broadened its mission to serving anyone with what it calls a barrier to employment. Mental and physical disabilities remain a primary focus, but the organization also works with job seekers with a history of drug use, criminal records, a lack of English skills, long-term unemployment, depression, homelessness or poverty.

Overall, the organization served about 10,000 Orange County residents last year with skills assessments, resume writing, vocational training, navigating public transportation, job placements and interpretation in American Sign Language. Goodwill case workers speak Spanish, Vietnamese, Tagalog, Chinese and Cambodian.

For job seekers with mental or physical challenges, the odds of finding employment are slim, especially in a still-fragile economy. According to California's Employment Development Department, only 20 percent of the state's disabled residents were in the labor force – either employed or looking for work – in February, as compared with 68 percent of those without disabilities.

Many of California's disabled are too severely afflicted or too old or lack the incentive to work. For those actively seeking employment, however, the jobless rate was 18.8 percent in February – more than twice the rate of nondisabled workers.

Aiding bottom lines

In July, the National Governors Association launched a yearlong effort to expand employment for the disabled. The group is holding forums "showcasing best practices of peer businesses to dispel myths around hiring individuals with disabilities," and will publish a blueprint for action, said Delaware Gov. Jack Markell, chairman of the association.

"Companies are recognizing that creating greater economic opportunity for these workers improves their own bottom line," he told fellow governors. "It doesn't matter whether you were born with additional challenges to face or – in the case of our wounded veterans, for example – acquired them later in life. What matters is what you have to offer."

Alliant, with a staff of 175 in Newport Beach and offices in 39 states, hired Goodwill-referred workers over a year ago to help digitize 25 years of paper records stored in hundreds of boxes.

"In the beginning, it was charity," said Nancy Chavez, Alliant's senior operations manager and first vice president. "I was patting myself on the back. But they earn every penny we pay them."

Scognamiglio, Hogan and a third worker, Amir Niavarani, who at first spoke only Farsi, have taken on other tasks, too. They tidy up the break room, wash interior windows, refill paper trays in copy machines and shred sensitive documents.

Disabled staffers may work somewhat more slowly, but "we would have hired temps at a much higher rate," Chavez said. "This is a win for us."

At Fountain Valley's VCA All-care Animal Referral Center, Administrator Tracey Johnson hired five disabled workers, referred by Goodwill, who clean cages, sweep floors and do laundry. They save the center $9,000 a month as compared with the cost of a professional cleaning service, she said.

Moreover, small businesses can take advantage of a tax break for hiring disabled workers, she added.

But that's not what her 135-member staff of veterinarians and other professionals appreciates most. The disabled workers "are extremely cheerful," Johnson said. "They are so happy to have a job. It adds a warm fuzzy – a morale boost for the staff."

The hospital pays the five workers minimum wage and offers benefits, including health insurance and paid vacation. The relationship extends beyond work: Johnson recently attended a Special Olympics volleyball game in which one of the workers played. Another staffer took the disabled employees trick-or-treating on Halloween.

Some clients are able to work independently, but Goodwill also deploys 150 full-time job coaches to oversee teams of workers on-site. Paid with state and federal funds, the coaches handle any behavioral issues and train clients to master new tasks.

"It takes patience," said Francis Trejo, the job coach at Alliant. "Our program participants can get frustrated. If they have to count brochures, they might be able to count to 25, but not to 100. They can't sort things in alphabetical order."

Hogan said Trejo, a former preschool teacher, is a big help. His scanned documents go to her computer before they are sent, so she can catch occasional errors. In the break room, she makes sure forks, knives and spoons land in separate containers.

"Silverware is the hardest," Hogan said. "You have to do it one way, in a row. Sometimes I forget."

Job coaches must explain to some workers why they can't repeatedly hug their bosses, or allow food to fly out of their mouths in the lunchroom. Incidents arise: one worker hid in a closet when he was stymied by a task; another, during an anxious day, took 14 bathroom breaks.

Reducing dependency

As disability experts see it, the cost of coaching to the taxpayer is outweighed by the money that hard-to-employ workers are able to earn for their expenses, thereby cutting their dependency on Social Security and cash aid.

According to the National Governors Association, the U.S. spends about $300 billion annually to support unemployed workers with disabilities, while 67 percent of working-age people with disabilities would rather have a job than be unemployed.

Last year, Goodwill placed 1,119 disabled and disadvantaged clients in competitive jobs. Nearly half work at private companies, including 15 who operate inserting machines at the Orange County Register in Santa Ana, folding advertisements into newspapers.

About half were hired directly by Goodwill, in its 21 stores and drop-off centers, its document shredding business and its e-waste facility dismantling computers and televisions.

Disabled workers supervised by Goodwill job coaches also work for the government, for example at the federal courthouse in Santa Ana, where they serve as janitors and landscapers, and at Camp Pendleton, where they serve food in the cafeteria.

On average, these competitive jobs pay $8.38 an hour.

For the more severely disabled, however, Goodwill operates a program for about 360 clients who work two to four hours a day at a job, with the rest of their time devoted to recreation and training in day-to-day skills. They are paid between $1.50 and $8 an hour based on productivity.

To an able-bodied worker, the salary would be meager. But at Goodwill's community services office, twice-monthly paydays turn into parties. On a recent Friday, men and women with intellectual impairment, spinal cord injuries, cerebral palsy and other disorders happily waved their pay envelopes in the air, hugged each other, argued about baseball teams and chatted about how they would spend their money.

Working at Fountain Valley's T.J. Maxx is "easy breezy," said Cory Bowers, 32, who was born with Down syndrome. "It feels good. I sort clothes in sizes."

In addition to clients placed in the community, 213 disabled people work as trainees in sheltered workshops at Goodwill's sprawling Santa Ana headquarters. Some assemble kits with toothbrushes, toothpaste and soap for prisoners. Others learn how to operate heat-sealers and shrink-wrap machines for businesses that contract with Goodwill for packaging. Still others sort through donated goods or clean the facility. They earn between $2.15 and $8 an hour, depending on productivity.

Wages debated

Federal law allows disabled workers to be paid below minimum wage, but only if each worker's productivity is tested every six months by the labor department, and compared with that of an able-bodied worker doing an identical task.

Nonetheless, the National Federation for the Blind has organized protests at Goodwill stores in several states to protest the organization's use of subminimum wage.

Last year, the National Council on Disability, an independent federal agency, called for a phase-out of what it called "a little-known relic of employment policy that assumed people with disabilities were not capable of meaningful, competitive employment."

Talarico defends the practice, saying that workshops accommodate people who are unable to get jobs in the community, and that employers will not hire the disabled if they lose money doing so. "If you pay everyone the minimum wage, then it is an entitlement program," he said.

Talarico has set a goal to double the number of workers, including injured veterans, that Goodwill helps to "get and keep jobs" over the next five years – those he calls "the more difficult to serve, and some cases near impossible to serve."

A marketing program to raise awareness of Goodwill's mission is in the works. The organization is sending officials to chambers of commerce to explain the job coach system, and inviting the public to twice-monthly tours of its Santa Ana facilities.

The challenge is to dispel what disability workers say is a natural fear of the unknown among employers unfamiliar with developmental disorders and other disabilities. The organization must also confront workplace stigmas associated with mental illness, homelessness and long-term unemployment.

Chavez, the Alliant first vice president, is convinced that more businesses would open their doors to disabled workers such as Scognamiglio and Hogan if they knew about "their willingness to work and their kind spirits. We have gained so much. They do so much more than we expected."

And what happens when she runs out of documents to digitize? "We'll figure it out," she said. "They're not going anywhere."