Sucess Story

A Wellspring of Resources for Dislocated Employees  

John Lundin, President Goodwill Industries of Northern Illinois, likes to add a thought provoking question to that time-tested saying: “Give a man a fish, and feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and feed him for a lifetime.”  

He asks, “What happens to the fisherman when the lake dries up?”  

In Rockford, where Lundin lives, and in other communities economically drained by factory and plant closings, layoffs, and downsizing around the U.S., Goodwills are meeting the challenge to divine creative solutions for locally parched pools of employment opportunities.  

The once-robust United Airlines maintenance hub at Indianapolis International Airport employed at its peak 2,600 skilled aviation technicians. But after September 11, 2001, the airline rapidly began laying off workers until mid-2003, when it announced it was completely shutting down the facility.  

In 2002, The Airline Industry Recareerment (Air) Project, a government-funded jobs program administered by Goodwill Industries of Central Indiana, was created to slake the job losses. In partnership with the Indianapolis Private Industry Council, the Indiana Department of Workforce Development and the AFL/CIO Labor Institute for Training, the Goodwill, to date, has seen about 1,800 of those who lost their jobs cross its doorstep.  

Air Project employment services, centralized at the Goodwill for convenient one-stop access, include assessments, workshops, basic computer courses, job clubs, job placement and career counseling to help workers to move to jobs in other industries.  

“I believe the AIR Project’s impact…has been tremendous,” states Ben Nunnally, President of Hoosier Air Transport Local Lodge 2294. “Without the services offered by this program, I don’t know what many of our members who have lost their jobs would have done. Now they are getting training, job assistance and support they need to make it through some really rough times.”

*************

Florence Conti, CEO of Goodwill Industries of Western New York in Buffalo, says of the “teach a man to fish” adage, “We’ve learned to calmly bait our hook and cast for a new fish. We were particularly lucky recently when we landed one almost immediately.”  

Eighty-five people employed by the Goodwill were facing jobless status when Buffalo China, a division of Oneida, Ltd., announced it was closing its operations in Buffalo. The Goodwill had operated a contract for the china manufacturer for 14 years, a business arrangement that provided simple assembly jobs primarily for persons with disabilities.  

Anticipating the coming layoffs, Buffalo Goodwill Board Member Bill Lunney forged an innovative relationship with another local company, Safetec of America, a manufacturer of infection control and first aid products.  

The company needed workers who could count and package a product, and who could demonstrate a high degree of accuracy and quality control. Goodwill landed the job.  

Goodwill Case Services Director John McEnroe says retraining some of the workers for the new multi-step assignment required a creative approach. “Adapting to change was tough for some of the workers who didn’t want to leave the jobs they had been doing.”  

For those who could not count, McEnroe devised a method for pictorially displaying the exact number of ointment packets needed for a box. When exactly matching the product to the display, the workers collect the packets, box them up all facing in one direction, and then carefully seal the boxes.  

The contract has enabled 95 percent of the former Buffalo China workers to remain employed and upgrade their job skills.  

Conti says, “You could say we helped them help themselves by giving them new poles and tackle boxes. They learned new angling techniques and are able to continue reeling in their paychecks.”

***************

Back in Rockford, IL, the town is basking in the dubious limelight of being dubbed by The New York Times earlier this year as a “case study of how an industrial area can respond to a shifting economic landscape.”  

The area has lost over 11,000 jobs in the last three years, and the community is struggling to reinvent itself. John Lundin says the history and culture of the community is rooted in manufacturing, and trying to branch out into other areas might not work. “It’d be like planting cotton out here,” he says, adding, “We’ve got to find a way to get people moving up the technical career ladder.”  

He is spearheading a new nonprofit subsidiary of the Goodwill, Rockford Area Ventures. The nonprofit plans to establish the Rockford Advance Manufacturing Technology Center (RAMTeC), to extend the work of the Rockford-based EIGERlab, a Department of Defense-funded lab for exploring miniature machine tool technology.  

RAMTeC would help commercialize the technologies fostered by EIGERlab by providing enterprise education and consulting for early-stage entrepreneurs and business owners. RAMTeC would help them identify sources for startup funding, and provide an early stage collaborative manufacturing test workshop, business administration resources and more. A web gateway will link RAMTeC clients to resources, networking and the latest technology news.

Lundin sees the venture as a way to restore social and economic value to the community, making it thriving high-tech place to “fish” for jobs.

Source: Working! Magazine, Winter 2004