Job-training programs regroup

October 28, 2005

By Ellen P. Gabler

Robert Robbins has trained for 18 months to become a quality-assurance inspector. He thinks it will help him get a job, especially since "a lot of people are standoffish about the ex-con thing," he said.

The 44-year-old has worked at PPL Industries since spending four-and-a-half years in prison for robbery.

His boss, Doug Jewett, said Robbins is talented, and has a good chance of "making it."

But these days, Jewett is scrambling to find enough jobs to help guys like Robbins make it, and end up in careers, not back on the "inside."

Jewett is the manager of PPL Industries, a Minneapolis nonprofit that provides temporary jobs and training to ex-felons, new immigrants and other populations who have a hard time landing work. PPL Industries is an arm of the larger nonprofit Project for Pride in Living.

About two years ago, Jewett was employing 300 people a day at the organization’s Minneapolis warehouse. This month there was only enough work for 67 people; 289 had their names on a waiting list.

The shortage of jobs is not unique to PPL Industries. Several other Twin Cities nonprofits have struggled in recent years to keep up with demand for employment and job-training programs. But many rely heavily on one customer, which makes them vulnerable. That client’s business could sour or it might shift low-skill work overseas.

In response, the nonprofits are looking to diversify. They’re stressing their organization’s flexibility, customized service, and quick turnaround time -- something they say factories thousands of miles away in China or Mexico can’t boast as much about.

Minnesota Diversified Industries (MDI), for example, is beefing up its fulfillment business to land more commercial clients. The St. Paul-based nonprofit saw its $66 million in revenue sliced by more than half in 2003, after government funding shook up its contract with the U.S. Postal Service. The nonprofit that employs about 550 disabled and disadvantaged people is now scaling back the Postal Service’s percentage of its business, said Mark de Naray, MDI’s president and CEO. In 2003, 90 percent of MDI’s business came from the Postal Service. This year, de Naray hopes he can get it down to 70 percent.

The same thing happened to PPL when its main client, ADC Telecommunications Inc., was pummeled during the tech downturn a few years ago. Eden Prairie-based ADC had to pull its fiber-optic work from PPL, and the nonprofit’s revenues eventually fell from $4.5 million in 2000 to $1.8 million this year.

Today, most of PPL’s work comes from a contract with Hennepin County, sorting batteries and disassembling electronics. Jewett calls the reliance on one major customer "very worrisome."

Traditionally, the jobs for organizations like these are simple, yet labor intensive; light assembly, packaging, sorting -- to keep bodies busy and teach basic job skills. That’s changing as nonprofits must adapt their jobs to compete with offshore outsourcing and more efficient technology in the states.

AccessAbility Inc., for example, is adding more warehouse, data entry, packaging and distribution space, and opened a new location in August for its division of converting paper files to electronic documents, said Barbara Arnold, president and CEO of the Minneapolis nonprofit.

"More and more simple assembly jobs are moving away," she said. "We’ve had to refocus what value we bring."

Both PPL and Rise Inc., a Spring Lake Park-based nonprofit that does similar work, are actively scouting out what they can do for companies.

Rise Inc.’s CEO John Barrett is trying to get more business by breaking out one or two steps from a company’s overall assembly process.

Jewett is after new-product development; he said he’s even willing to buy spot-welding machines and pay for employees’ safety training.

"We have to go to the next level," he said.

Source: Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal