Salem Auto Body and Paint – A Small Business with
a Big Difference
Ray Carson purchased Salem Auto Body
and Paint back in 1990. Approximately three years later he
encountered Dominick Spedale. Dominick was a Salem-based job
developer who was looking for employers who would be willing to
hire and train people who were having difficulty getting into
the workforce – many of them people with disabilities. That
early encounter led to a working relationship between Ray and
Dominick that has now spanned over a dozen years.
OBLN: Ray,
tell us a little bit about your business.
Ray
Carson: We do collision work, but we also do a lot of fleet
work – trucks, transit & school buses, etc. Our building is
about 13,000 square feet and we have about 20 people working
here.
OBLN: How
have you have worked with Dominick Spedale to recruit employees?
Ray Carson: In this industry,
like in most businesses these days, good people – honest,
hardworking people that will look you in the eye, tell you what
they will do and then do it – those people are really hard to
come by. You are always looking for people who need an
occupation or need a career change and are willing to work a
little extra for it and stay with it.
Dominick was very believable and
obviously not trying to sell us a “bill of goods”. Over the
years, I think we have hired twelve to fifteen people through
Dominick. I’m proud to say that only two of those people weren’t
successful. Dominick comes in regularly to check on the folks he
has placed and checks in with us. It has been a very good
alliance between him and me in placing these people in the
workforce.
OBLN: As a
small business owner, you have to be careful about every
decision you make. What made you decide to hire people with
disabilities through Dominick?
Ray Carson: There were quite a
few things that came along as a “package deal”:
Because these employees are gaining
skills and experience for real jobs, we were eligible to receive
wage subsidies for a period of time. As a small company having
to meet payroll, those wage subsidies are initially attractive.
If you provide a good training situation, however, those
incentives cover some very real additional costs that you are
likely to encounter. Financial incentives can’t be the only
reason for doing it.
We had the benefit of hiring someone who
was thoroughly pre-screened. Dominick and the organizations he
worked with would have spent more time in pre-screening
applicants than I would ever have been able to do because, as a
small business, I don’t have the resources. With this
pre-screening, I had a much better chance of getting somebody
that really fits into the job.
Finally, we had Dominick staying on top
of things – regularly stopping by and checking in to ensure that
everything is progressing according to plan.
OBLN: Can
you tell us a little more about the training that these new
workers receive when you hire them?
Ray Carson: Within the limits of
the training period, we couldn’t really train a person to be
proficient at any one particular job. We agreed that we would
focus on giving all the people that we hired a well-rounded
basic experience of the business. We would start with the basic
entry-level job of preparing cars for painting – teaching them
to sand, mask, and detail the vehicles. We would also give them
the opportunity to work alongside the body men so that they can
learn how the damaged vehicles are actually repaired. This gives
them better preparation for another job – or even working at our
shop.
I
don’t train them just specifically for our body shop. I train
them to go to any body shop because these people, like most
employees, don’t always stay with the same employer year after
year. When the people placed with us leave or finish up their
training with us, they will be able to go to any
reconstruction-type shop. They will understand both painting
fleet vehicles and collision work. They won’t necessarily be a
skilled craftsman, but they will be ready to be an advanced
apprentice with a journeyman. We try to give them good training
and a good outlook on the whole repair process.
OBLN: We
understand that many of the people that you have hired through
Dominick have been people with disabilities. Can you tell us
more about that?
Ray Carson: We have had people
with a variety of disabilities come through our shop. One fellow
in our front office has been with us for several years now. He
was injured in an automobile accident and has limitations on his
ability to do any lifting.
We hired one fellow who was deaf. It was
a tough situation in our shop. In our environment, verbal
communication is really important. Verbal communication is
“soft” whereas written communication is “hard”. It is hard to
build the subtleties of verbal communications into written ones.
Another fellow who has been with me now
for nine years isn’t able to read. He is now our lead man on the
paint floor. Everybody has respect for him and we help him out
as he needs it. We make sure we give him good verbal
instructions. In his role, he is essentially the foreman over
the whole shop now.
OBLN: You
seem to experience a lot of personal reward by making these job
opportunities part of the way you do business.
Ray Carson: As an employer, it
isn’t just about using people to accomplish the task. There
should be much more in a person’s day-to-day involvement with
other people - something that can be more lasting than just the
project that you are working on. When you are done with all your
work, you should have a collection of friends from all the
people you have come into contact with.
OBLN: From
all you have said, it seems that a key to your success in hiring
people with disabilities has been your ongoing relationship with
Dominick Spedale. Can you give us a little more insight into how
that works?
Ray Carson: You wouldn’t hire
most of these people if they just walked in the door. You need a
guy like Dominick who knows your business and does the
prescreening for you.
Dominick will stop by from time to time
and ask me if we have any openings come up but he will also
often come and say something like: “I have a person that I think
may fit well into your environment. I know about your business,
I know you and the jobs at hand, and I know the skill level of
this individual. Do you have an opening and, if so, would you
like to meet this individual?”
Usually he recommends people that are
really keen on our line of work. He will say something like;
“This guy really likes cars and would really like to do it
professionally. Do you have something? When could you meet with
him?”
Dominick’s approach is that he knows our
business, he’s done his homework, he’d like me to see what he’s
come up with, and he’d like to know if I think it looks like
something that will work for both him and us.
Among
the thirteen women recognized by Glamour Magazine as “women who
are changing your world” is Rachael Scdoris. Rachael is a
professional sled dog racer from Bend, Oregon. In March of 2006,
she joined an elite group of people who have managed to complete
the Iditerod – the famed 1150-mile sled race across Alaska. More
people have climbed Mount Everest
than
have completed the grueling Iditerod. 
Interestingly,
another woman with a disability was also one of Glamour
Magazine’s Women of the Year – Major Tammy Duckworth. Major
Duckworth lost both her legs when her helicopter was shot down
in Iraq in 2004. Now, only two years later, as the Democratic
nominee, she recently narrowly lost a race for Congress in the
sixth district of Illinois. In late November, however, Duckworth
was appointed the director of the Illinois Veterans' Affairs
Department. 
135,000
jobs over the last four years, and we are building a strong new
foundation for Oregon’s future. Yet we must continue to develop
hope and opportunity for all Oregonians to compete in a global
economy. Oregon has a changing demographic of an aging
population, which does demand us to respond with more flexible
solutions to ensure we have the skilled workforce to replace
those retiring over the next 20 years. We must ensure that
every Oregonian, even those with limited literacy or language,
has an opportunity to contribute to our economic success. We
must capture the talents of diverse workers and develop more
flexible work environments so people with disabilities can
participate as well as working parents, and older workers. We
must develop alternative education models like distance learning
and career pathways that are flexible and responsive. And we
must offer opportunities for all of our citizens to attain the
skills they need – and that our businesses need- to be
successful.”
He
told the audience: “A 2003 Work Trends study conducted at
Rutgers University found that "people with physical and mental
disabilities continue to be vastly underrepresented in the
American workplace." In Oregon, there are 400,000+ working age
people with disabilities. Of these 38 percent are out of the
workforce compared to18.8 percent of people without
disabilities. They include homemakers, students, retired
persons, and people who describe themselves as unable to work.
Cathy
Healy is a Program Officer at the Center for Workforce
Preparation at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. In a recent
teleconference hosted by Virginia Commonwealth University, she
explained the value that small business owners can experience by
recruiting employees with disabilities from trustworthy
community organizations.