En-Abling disabled workers at
Wagner’s European Bakery & Café
By Julia
Voss
Published June 2005
How can businesses
address the problem of high
turnover in low-skilled jobs?
Wagner’s European Bakery and Café
of Olympia has developed a
solution to this issue with the
help of Morningside Services, a “community
rehabilitation program providing
employment services to individuals
with disabilities.”
This business decision, along with
many others, has helped Wagner’s
number among the largest
independent bakeries in Washington
State. Wagner’s has two bakery and
café operations and several
grocery store outlets in the
Olympia area. They offer a full
range of baked good with a focus
on European products, from cookies
and breads to tortes and wedding
cakes, catering to both retail and
wholesale customers. In 2005,
Wagner’s introduced a new line of
sugar-free cakes in response to
the country’s recent fascination
with low-carb diets.
Wagner’s, a local,
family-owned business operating in
Olympia since 1938, was having
trouble with the ‘high-schoolers’
it employed to clean up their
facility. Wagner’s would hire the
student and train them, and they
would enjoy a good working
relationship for a few months.
However, track season or the
spring musical or prom committee
meetings would soon start up, and
the student would have to quit
working because of these other
commitments. From Wagner’s end,
this meant they were constantly
training new workers.
Then, about seven
years ago, Morningside services
entered the picture. They
approached Wagner’s owner, Todd
Wagner, about the possibility of
hiring people with disabilities to
take over these low-skilled jobs,
with the support services
Morningside provides. Morningside
proposed that instead of Wagner’s
hiring high school students for
these low-skilled jobs, they
should hire clients from the
Morningside Training Institute,
who Morningside could then provide
with job coaches and other
workplace support services to help
them learn their job and perform
it well.
That was seven
years ago, and, according to Mr.
Wagner, the employees referred to
them through Morningside (Wagner’s
usually employs about five at a
time) have proven to be excellent
workers, providing the Bakery with
high quality and low-incident
performance. The Morningside
workers have much better retention
rates and take their work more
seriously than their high-school
counterparts, and Wagner’s has
been highly satisfied with their
choice to work with Morningside’s
referees.
Companies like
Wagner’s Bakery working in
conjunction with disabilities
employment service organizations
like Morningside account for what
H. Stephen Kaye of
the University of California San
Francisco sees as a dramatic
decrease in unemployment among
disabled people.
In Dr. Kaye’s 2003
study, “Improved Employment
Opportunities for People with
Disabilities,” which examines the
effectiveness of the Americans
with Disabilities Act (ADA) during
its first 12 years in effect, he
demonstrates how changing methods
of definition “disability” and
“employability” changed the way
the government and private,
not-for-profit 501-(c)(3)
organizations like Morningside
connect disabled people seeking
employment with companies like
Wagner’s. The post-ADA practice of
having disabled people rate their
own disability and employability
has helped service organizations
like Morningside connect “the
segment of the disability
population most likely to respond
to employment opportunities when
they are offered” with companies
like Wagner’s which want to hire
them.
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2006 All content property of European Weekly unless where otherwise
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