Stu Bykofsky: A place of helping hands that works for 'problem' people
We get too soon old, too late smart. - Pennsylvania Dutch proverb HARRIET NELSON is 32, and she's gotten smart.
We get too soon old, too late smart.
- Pennsylvania Dutch proverb
HARRIET NELSON is 32, and she's gotten smart.
After spending half her adult life in prison, she now commutes up to 2 1/2 hours - each way - from a halfway house at 6th and Luzerne to a no-benefits, minimum-wage job at Baker Industries, in Malvern.
She was jailed on drug- conspiracy charges the last time, but her dossier also includes time served for bad checks and identity theft.
What connects the halfway house in the gritty inner city and the 35,000-square-foot warehouse in the leafy suburb is desire - Nelson's desire to restart her life, and Baker's desire to create transitions from down-and-out to up-and-coming.
Baker didn't begin with such lofty goals. It was birthed by the love of two parents for an epileptic son who they knew was not employable in the harsh "real world." In 1980, Charles and Louise Baker created a parallel world in their garage in which their son, Justin, could make his way.
They called it Baker Industries "to make it sound like a real business, which it is, which has real standards and encourages a real work ethic," explains human-resources director Dave Adams, 44, who came to Baker from a work-release program and climbed the ladder of responsibility.
After its launch, the nonprofit slowly expanded its horizons to hire and train other "problem" people. About half of today's workers are physically or mentally challenged, the rest are ex-offenders, those with drug or alcohol addictions or homeless.
The firm's motto, "We're trying to lose our best people every day," means putting them into better jobs, says Baker president "Turk" Thacher, 65.
Practicing small-bore capitalism, Baker takes no government money, Thacher says, because of "strings attached" and burdensome paperwork and reporting requirements "which may be necessary when public funds are being spent, but can break a business' back anyway."
In addition to the Malvern warehouse that is as plain as a widow's rolling pin, there's a 70,000-square-foot warehouse on F Street in West Kensington. Baker has 110 employees now, while last year there were 120 at Malvern alone. The cratering economy has hurt Baker just as it has everyone else.
Baker's specialty is hand assemblies and mailings. Grunt work.
"If it can't be mechanized, use Baker hands to customize," Adams tells me on a tour of the Malvern operation. Baker promises competitive pricing, high quality and on-time delivery.
I see lots of skids holding cardboard boxes ready to be broken down and recycled, stacks of flat cardboard to be made into boxes. I see a familiar logo.
It's FiOS Verizon, and Adams calls it "the account that saved us."
It couldn't be mechanized, so Verizon turned to Baker. Verizon is one of about 130 regional companies to do so over the years.
Another current hand-intensive job, courtesy of Philadelphia's Center City District, is recycling colorful lightpole pennants into shoulder tote bags.
Adams reached out to me after a September column noted that the Eagles had given dog-killer Michael Vick a "second chance" but that Philadelphia has about 48,000 other people on parole or probation. What about a "second chance" for them? I highlighted two well-qualified candidates and challenged anyone on the Vick bandwagon with a job to spare to give me a call.
Maybe it's the economy, maybe it's inertia, maybe it's fear, maybe it's hypocrisy, but the only call I got was from Baker, which hires the hard-to-place.
How hard?
Baker gets jobs for an average of 71 people a year, says Thacher.
It may sound small to you, but it's huge to each of them.
Baker's looking to lose its best people. Are you ready to take them?
E-mail stubyko@phillynews.com or call 215-854-5977. For recent columns: