Don’t Judge The Disabled By What You See or Hear!!

As many of you know I work with S.C. Vocational Rehabilitation. My job is to contact companies in a five county area and talk to them about our services and hopefully find work for our disabled clients. What many people don’t know is that we handle over 150 different disabilities including diabetes, obesity, cardiac patients, stroke victims, learning disabilities and social disabilities. Many of our clients were not born with their disabilities but rather developed disabilities over time. That means that some of them have college degrees in different areas and many have worked in production, manufacturing and various other fields. With that said, most of our clients have difficulty finding and maintaining employment because of their disabilities or, more often, because of employers lack of understanding of their disabilities.

Recently I’ve had the pleasure of working with a family who didn’t even see the disabilities, but were more interested in the skills our clients possessed. I met Tyrone Wilson shortly after he and his family opened a garage out on Peach Orchard Drive in Sumter. It’s right behind the base and you can’t miss the bright yellow building. I was out on one of my drives knocking on the doors of local businesses when I noticed that a formerly closed garage was up and running.

I made an appointment for the following week and presented our programs to Tyrone. After I was finished he told me he needed a mechanic as soon as I could get him one. That was in early January. So far, we have provided two mechanics and two car detailers for his operation at Wilson’s Auto Repair and Car-Wash.

Between providing the first and second mechanic I had the opportunity to meet Dionne (Dee) Wilson, Tyrone’s wife. Together they are opening a high end coffee shop out on US 378, called Moca Soul Café. Dee told me that they were interested in our agency helping them to find a Barista to help out in the café. We provided three candidates and the Wilson’s selected one ,who will start on March 1, 2010. Oh!! I almost forgot, Dee also does hair. You can get information on her skills and contact information  at www.hairstylist4hire.webs.com or click the link to the right.

So altogether, they have given employment opportunities to five (5) clients and not once did they ask about the clients particular disability.  Additionally, by using our clients they have the opportunity to get tax credits for hiring the disabled and we help them to pay the wages for a specified trial period. This gives them the chance to get to know our clients and their abilities before committing to hiring them permanently.

We need more people like this. They chose not to judge our clients but instead decided to give them a chance, where others wouldn’t.  With 14% of South Carolinians being disabled and more than 1,000 of them on our caseloads in Sumter and Camden, we need a lot more employers to look beyond the disability and see the person beneath. Are you judging people with disabilities because of what you have heard or how they look? If you are, then knock it off and give them a chance!!

Call It What It Is: Unemployment Office

In order to be politically correct, we refer to the state office that is supposed to help people find work, as the Employment Security Commission or ESC.  The ESC is where you go to file for unemployment benefits when you lose your job for any number of reasons. When you arrive you sign in and wait and wait and wait. Eventually, you will be called by an employment coach or counselor. They will take all of your contact information and then ask questions to determine what kind of position you are suited for. Once this is done they match you with a series of occupations, each assigned a numeric code. Using the assigned occupational codes they can now search for openings in those particular fields.

If all goes well, they will actually give you a couple of leads and you can begin your search for that new career.  What usually happens, is you will apply to the selected companies along with multitude of other clients they sent there before you.  You will then go home and begin your own job search using the local paper and the internet. 

When and if you find a job, it will be due to your own efforts and not those of the Employment Security Commission or as I prefer to call it ” The Unemployment Office”.  The reason I prefer unemployment office is that as long as you are depending on them to help you find work, you will remain unemployed.

After the initial visit you will be told how to call in each week to get your weekly check. Beyond that you will receive a monthly notice to report to the unemployment office and update your file. This generally takes about 45 minutes to an hour. It takes two minutes for the counselor to verify that your information is current. The rest of the time is spent waiting to be called.

This is how the system works. They do not help you find work, they simply issue your weekly benefit check and verify your contact information once a month. This is their job and they get paid pretty well, not to mention all the state benefits and holidays they get.

I know all this from my own experience and unfortunately, both of my sons are now going through it. They are supposed to help you with retraining as well as finding work but the system is so screwed up, I’m not sure anyone really understands what  to do. After months of being out of work Tommy and Joey, both asked about retraining opportunities. It seems that what they do is provide additional training in the career you currently CAN’T find work in. Let me clarify, Tommy was laid off from a customer service position in the insurance industry. He had been looking for months for a similar or better opportunity. When he couldn’t find one he asked the unemployment office about retraining. They said they would help him with classes in customer service. WHAT?

Anyway, that’s the way it works. You have to follow the rules and make the monthly appointments of they cut off your check. But, if you really want to find a job you have to work at it on your own. Although the local paper and the Internet will be key to your search, letting everyone know you are looking can come in handy as well.

So good luck and hang in there. Remember, finding work can be a full time job in itself.

America Needs To Get Back To Making Goods, Not Repairing Overseas Junk

Well, it looks like we will be waiting for health-care reform for awhile now. Since the people have let it be known that JOBS are the priority, the administration and our Representatives have changed tactics.

I think it’s important that we understand, the best way to get people back to work, is to ensure that jobs stop leaving the U.S.  In my profession as a Business Development Specialist, I travel around the state talking to various companies. Many of these organizations have sent work overseas to China or Indonesia. Some of it is for initial manufacturing and some for further processing of goods. One thing that I hear often, is that the quality sucks and improvements must be made once the goods return here. Some companies have set up entire processing areas just to fix the problems coming back.

What I don’t understand is, why they continue to send the work out, knowing what to expect on the return. I think that the low cost of manufacturing overseas is just part of the problem. When we export goods to other countries, we pay taxes and tariffs that drive up the price of the finished product to be sold overseas. That makes our goods much less competitive. When other countries import goods to the U.S.,we make it easy for them by not charging those same taxes and tariffs and therefore Chinese goods have a better price point then American made products.

Having trade relations with numerous countries may be good when considering a diversity of products available to our consumers, but do we really need to have junk flooding the market, which, in many cases is unsafe or unhealthy for the consumer.

What we need to do is make laws that encourage American products to be designed and produced right here in the U.S. Give businesses reasonable tax breaks and incentives to keep jobs at home. Stop overtaxing companies that do well and bring jobs home to the U.S. Make it as attractive as possible to do business here and maybe other countries will start producing here in the U.S., in order to ease distribution and get true quality products.

All I’ve heard lately is that we need to put more money into infrastructure like bridges, buildings and now rail systems. Well from what I’ve seen, the people who get theses contracts, at least here in South Carolina, are using the same people they already had on the employment roles and if they don’t have enough they sub-contract. In reality, there are no new jobs, just some folks getting more hours on the jobs they already had.

We need American to get back to making things, before we become a strictly service nation, where we do nothing but repair products from overseas.