SHELTERED WORKSHOP SUPERVISORS PROTEST WORKING CONDITIONS

LaVesta Colin is the facility director at Terrace Gardens of Perryville, a group home for workers at VIP Industries.

PERRYVILLE -- Four supervisors of a sheltered workshop blame harsh working conditions for their handicapped employees as motivation for resigning last week, said Bill Tweedy, one of the four.

"Our main theme is that they are being pushed too hard," said Tweedy, who was on-site manager of VIP Industries' Perryville workshop until last Friday.

In his two years as manager, Tweedy said he has seen the mentally handicapped workers grow tired and frustrated by attempts to make them work faster at the piecemeal assembly tasks they do at the workshop.

"People were leaving during the middle of the day, since their nerves were shot," Tweedy said. "Some didn't show up for work."

The Perryville sheltered workshop is managed by VIP Industries, which also has workshops and residential facilities for the handicapped in Cape Girardeau and Marble Hill.

These complaints are the first of their kind against VIP Industries, said Hillary Schmittzehe, president of VIP Industries. Schmittzehe declined to comment on the complaints Tuesday.

Leaving the workshop was a difficult decision, said Lauren Mattingly, a former supervisor.

"We're very close to these adults, who we call our kids," Mattingly said. "But we saw it as the only way to draw attention to the problem."

Before leaving on Friday the supervisors made sure production was completed for Monday, and they told their handicapped workers about the resignation plan, they said.

Several workers took the news hard, said LaVesta Colin, who directs Terrace Gardens, a residential facility for the handicapped. Nine of the residents there work at Perryville's VIP Industries.

"They are angry at Hillary Schmittzehe because Bill [Tweedy] is not there," Colin said.

In 10 years at Terrace Gardens, Colin said she has seen many of her residents frustrated or exhausted by varying workloads at the workshop. On some days when there was no work they would sit on the job and do nothing, she said. Other days, the pace would make them return and do nothing but sleep after the six-hour workday.

"You can only push a handicapped person so far," she said. "They need encouragement and guidance."

Tweedy said that when he came to the workshop he engaged workers in more training. "When I first came there were about a dozen people doing absolutely nothing," he said. "So I trained them to be more efficient."

An employee-of-the month program was started to build self-esteem, he said.

"We didn't simply pick a person every month to hand this out to," Tweedy said. "They had to earn it."

The handicapped workers appreciated the changes, Colin said.

"Bill was able to find a niche for every client," Colin said. "This was not attempted in the past."

As the handicapped workers became more efficient, Tweedy said he received complaints at VIP Industries managerial meetings. Wages were getting too high compared to other workshops, he said.

Many still make 52 cents an hour, while others earn a little more than $4 hourly by placing stickers on pots or bolts into plastic bags, he said.

Supervisors had been told to train workers on two different jobs, then assign them to the more difficult one so that they made less money, Mattingly said.

Although wages at the sheltered workshop average $1.90 an hour, Tweedy said this is not their main issue. "We want to have Perry County run its own workshop," Mattingly said.

A rally was held on Sunday at the Perryville workshop to protest VIP Industries' management, Tweedy said. Parents of the workers, friends and others made up a crowd of nearly 100, he said.

The supervisors have been overwhelmed by the support they've received from parents of their former workers, Tweedy said.