Program Paves the Way for Disabled Workers

For the last three months, Sky Chefs, an airline catering company that operates at Lindbergh Field, has been paying six handicapped workers about half the $4.25 minimum wage. But the program is not only approved by the state of California, it has the blessings of the company’s employees and union.

Sky Chefs, a Canada-based caterer that prepares passenger meals for five airlines flying out of the San Diego airport, hired the handicapped workers as temporary employees in July from a nonprofit placement agency called Partnerships With Industry, said Juergen Brinker, Sky Chefs’ general manager.

The workers, most of whom are developmentally disabled, were hired under a six-month agreement with Partnerships With Industry. “We pay the agency. Our payroll treats them as temporary employees. It’s very convenient,” Brinker said. The workers are supervised on the job by a full-time “job coach” who spends the entire work day on site.

The program is one of several operated by Partnerships With Industry, a state-funded program that is designed to get handicapped workers into the work force. PWI has a staff of 60 people, most of whom are job trainers, Callstrom said. They oversee the work of PWI workers, encouraging them and making sure they understand their tasks.

PWI is one of about 10 nonprofit companies in San Diego involved in placing handicapped workers in jobs and is funded by the state Department of Vocational Rehabilitation, said Peter Callstrom, the company’s executive director.

The 6-year-old company is the largest of the placement agencies with offices in San Diego, Vista, Riverside and San Bernardino to serve about 350 clients, Callstrom said. About 250 of them live in San Diego.

The clients come to PWI through a referral from the San Diego Regional Center for the Developmentally Disabled, Callstrom said. Their disabilities include mental retardation, cerebral palsy, epilepsy and autism.

But “we don’t refer to them as disabled workers or disabled people,” Callstrom said. Instead, “we say it’s a person with a disability or a worker with a disability. We want everybody to look at the person, the individual.”

Partnerships with Industry first approached Sky Chefs in response to an ad the company had placed in a newspaper for general help, said Tim Carasiti, PWI’s job developer.

Carasiti went to Sky Chefs with a particular handicapped worker in mind, but Sky Chefs ended up hiring more, contracting for a six-person group of workers, at first for a six-month period and then indefinitely.

The workers came at a good time, helping the airline catering company during its summer peak, Brinker said. The company runs a 24-hour operation, supplying 5,000 flight meals a day on domestic flights from Honolulu to New York, Brinker said. It services American, Delta, Northwest, TWA and American Eagle airlines.

Working an 8 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. weekday schedule, the group of workers displaced none of the company’s 175 employees but rather helped the company reduce its overtime during the summer, Brinker said.

The workers fill salt and pepper shakers; pack glassware, flatware and china for shipment to other Sky Chefs locations; assemble food baskets and perform other tasks.

Under the agreement, Sky Chefs is not required to pay the workers the same wage as non-handicapped workers, Brinker said.

“To start the program, we were at 50% of the typical rate for an entry-level position,” Brinker said. “We are not burdened with paying a wage for 100% performance if the performance is less.”

After a training period of 60 days, the workers are evaluated, and their pay is increased based on how fast they are going, said Delva Scavo, a PWI job trainer and a former social worker.

The work, which, also, includes putting napkins in trays, is often tedious and time-consuming, but the workers have consistently maintained the standards set for them, Brinker said.

He had a good experience hiring the handicapped at other Sky Chefs offices, including his last assignment in Dallas, Brinker said. But one of the best parts of the PWI program is the concept of bringing in a group of people with a job coach that “we could communicate with, and who could communicate with the workers.”

The enclave contracts run from six months to a year and can be extended, Callstrom said. For businesses, the advantage of the program is that “nobody is locked into it forever. We’re not holding them to a situation that’s not to their benefit.”

PWI, also, has an enclave contract with the Nordstrom Rack with workers attaching security tags to clothing and straightening the store. Other enclaves do microfiche work at the Family Fitness Corp., help with animals at the Helen Woodward Animal Center, work in food service at the Army and Navy Academy in Carlsbad and perform litter abatement for the city of Vista.

PWI, also, contracts with companies to do piece meal work such as labeling envelopes at PWI offices, and it places some of its more seasoned workers in full-time jobs.

The group of 20 to 25 piecemeal workers performs a range of services such as packaging bows and assembling sprinkler heads, said Carole Pope, program director for PWI in San Diego.

They are often new clients and they are paid according to how many pieces they complete and how quickly, she said. Others are waiting for placement in an enclave situation or a full-time job as a regularly hired employee.

Clients from PWI have gone on to full-time jobs in the San Diego County public defender’s office, the San Diego County Credit Union, El Pollo Loco, Pick ‘n’ Save, Mann Theatre, Baker’s Square Restaurant, Long’s Drugs and Sea World.

Companies who hire workers full time are eligible for the state’s Targeted Jobs Tax Credit. For the first $6,000 an employer pays the worker, the employer will receive a 40% or $2,400 tax credit.

The worker comes with a job trainer who will be there to provide support and supervision until the employee can work on his own, Callstrom said.

Brinker said he is hoping that at least one of the workers in his enclave will go on to full-time employment with his company, and open up a spot in the enclave for another person.

It helps, Brinker said, that, “in our business, we have tasks easily taught and comfortably done by handicapped individuals.”

“We try to have a task that’s going to last long enough for them to get used to it and, also, introduce new tasks so boredom does not set in, and, also, to see if there’s something they are better suited for.”

The bottom line in hiring the handicapped is less an economic decision, Brinker said, than a matter of fulfilling the company’s responsibility to the community.

“We don’t do it for the glory. We want to do it quietly and have it succeed,” he said.

“Every day there is something that makes this a pleasant experience,” Brinker said. “I asked one of the men if he was having a good day, and he said, ‘Mr. Brinker, I’m having a great day. It’s better than staying home and watching TV.’ ”