When 18,000 riders signed up to participate in Bike the Drive, Michael Girgis faced a challenge. As registration coordinator with the Chicagoland Bicycle Federation, the agency holding the event, Girgis needed to get each of these riders a goody bag filled with inserts and promotional materials advertising the event’s sponsors.
Girgis turned to the packaging business run by Chicago’s Lester and Rosalie Anixter Center to help meet this challenge. The workers in the Lincoln Park-based center stuffed 21 different inserts into 9,000 of the empty goody bags, and then delivered them all to Girgis right on time, about two weeks before the June 15 Bike The Drive.
This story isn’t unusual, except for one factor. The Anixter Center’s packaging business employs only workers who are physically or mentally disabled. Girgis, of course, was happy to work with a company providing this valuable service for the city’s disabled population. But this wasn’t the deciding factor in his decision to send half of his empty goody bags to the Anixter Center. He needed to get his products out on time and in good shape. After meeting with center officials, he felt confident that the workers at Anixter could do the job, and do it properly.
“They did a great job for me,” Girgis said. “I would not hesitate to use them again. Working with them has been a hassle-free experience.”
Officials with the Anixter Center, which was founded in 1919, serve more than 4,000 Chicago-area residents who have a wide range of disabilities, offering a host of traditional therapy and rehabilitation services. But it also runs three businesses: a packaging business, imaging service and janitorial company. All three are staffed entirely by workers with disabilities. And all three also claim some big clients, such as the University of Illinois and the City of Chicago.
The goal of the Anixter Center Businesses, all of which operate from a more than 100,000-square-foot factory building at 2032 N. Clybourn Ave. in Lincoln Park, is to provide people with disabilities the skills they need to compete in today’s workforce. But all three divisions have another goal: To operate as efficient businesses that customers work with not because they feel sorry for the disabled employees who work there, but because they know that the Anixter businesses will provide them with good service and high-quality performance.
“Our employees are real workers. They are not doing make-work, something to keep them busy. They are doing actual work,” said Albert Pennacchio, director of industrial services with the Anixter Center Businesses. “This is a real business. The things we work on here end up in stores like Kmart, Wal-Mart and in dollar stores all over the city. We have all the same rules of a business here. We don’t tolerate absenteeism. We don’t tolerate non-performance. Yes, we are a major rehabilitation agency. But in here, this is a business. That’s the beauty of this place, the uniqueness of it.”
It’s hard to miss the home of the Anixter businesses. It swallows a lot of space along busy Clybourn Avenue, after all. But many city residents know little about what the center provides. And even among those who do know that the center works with the city’s disabled population, many would be surprised at exactly what goes on inside the center’s brick walls.
All three Anixter businesses call the Clybourn Avenue building home. During a recent visit, some employees in the center’s packaging division were busy packing paints and supplies into colorful boxes, all part of assembling a children’s tie-dye kit. The center’s employees were responsible for putting together 5,000 of the kits. Others were inserting dog chew toys in plastic, while still others were separating the rubber from the plastic in a series of window and door jambs.
Heriberto Rivera, who has a developmental disability, has been working at the Anixter businesses for four years.
“I like coming here,” he said during one of his 15-minute breaks. “I do the best here that I can do. We get things in and then we get them out, as fast as we can. I’ve met a lot of friends here, too.”
When break time arrives, at 10:15 a.m., the center’s employees file off the work floor. Some gather in the cafeteria. Others head outside to smoke. As break arrives the radio pumping music across the packaging room plays “Mellow Yellow.”
Christopher Math has worked for the Anixter Center for 18 years. Much of this time he spent as director of industrial services for the businesses, supervising the activity on the floor. Today, he works as the company’s director of sales. Like all officials here, he stresses that no outside business ever works with the center’s packaging, imaging or janitorial business solely because they want to help people with disabilities.
“We have people take tours of our facilities all the time,” Math said. “That way people can see that we’re all about giving the best service we can. I never sell us on the fact that we work with people with disabilities. We can do the same things that any other business can do.”
The Anixter Center annually places about 200 disabled residents with outside companies. That, in fact, is one of the center’s main goals. The residents who work at the Clybourn site are ones who either could not be placed in an outside job or, for whatever reason, chose not to be placed.
Though the Anixter Center’s businesses have helped many, they are not the only services the rehabilitation center offers, said Stuart Ferst, the center’s president. The center annually serves more than 4,000 disabled residents of the Chicago area through more than 70 programs at 35 locations. These programs serve people with hearing impairments, children, those suffering from brain injuries and even juveniles who have run into trouble with the law.
The center’s imaging, janitorial and packaging industries, though, are unique because they are run as real businesses. Pennacchio, for instance, is quick to point out that the Anixter Center participates in open bidding for all the packaging jobs it receives, often competing against large for-profit companies that have more resources at their disposal.
Center officials, then, are proud of the range of customers that Anixter boasts. Members of the center’s janitorial division, for instance, are celebrating a new relationship with the Barnes & Noble bookstore on Division Street. Disabled workers from the center will now handle the janitorial duties at the store. Center employees now clean 19 buildings throughout the city, including the State of Illinois building at 160 N. LaSalle St. and the Thompson Center on Randolph Street.
“We are growing more as a business all the time,” said Ana Presentado, who has headed the center’s janitorial department for the last two years. “When we grow more as a business, we can give more jobs to people with disabilities.”
Tyrone Mallry is one of the disabled employees who has benefited from the janitorial department’s growth. He has worked in the department since 1996 and now supervises a crew of six employees who clean the offices and hallways of the State of Illinois building.
“I enjoy the work I do,” Mallry said. “I like teaching the guys who work for me. When we first got to 160 North, we had guys who didn’t even know how to clean a toilet. I showed them how it was supposed to be done. I’ve had no problems since then.”
In all, the Anixter businesses employ about 50 disabled workers in the imaging department, several hundred in packaging and more than 100 in janitorial. The center has been able to grow its businesses as their customer base continues to expand.
“Nobody gives us business because they like us,” said Ferst. “They give us business because they like the service we provide. They have customers, too. We pride ourselves on doing high-quality work.”
Richard Isaacs, creative director with Curious Pictures, a New York-based company that produces commercials for advertising agencies, recently used the Anixter Center’s packaging business to put together a promotion for the company’s marketing department.
Isaacs, though he now calls New York City home, grew up in Chicago and lived here until five years ago. While living in Chicago he drove by the Anixter Center several times, noticing a sign advertising the center’s different businesses, including its packaging department.
“I like the fact that they work with a special-needs population,” Isaacs said. “I found that to be rather gratifying. But I was also impressed with the services they offer. They’re very flexible, and I liked that. The quality of their work was very important to me.”
This is the kind of review that Ferst craves.
“We have had some customers who have been with us for many, many years,” he said. “It’s better to keep your good customers. That’s better than having to go out and get new customers all the time. It’s the same thing with us as it is for any other business.”
