Real jobs for real people

The Wall Street Journal runs an extended feature on an employment program at Walgreen’s for people with disabilities.

The headline: “Erasing ‘Un’ from “Unemployable’: Walgreen program trains the disabled to take on regular wage-paying jobs”

Highlighted is 18-year-old Harrison Mullinax, who has autism.

“Mr. Mullinax works eight hours a day at a new Walgreen Co. distribution center, where he wields a bar-code scanner, checking in boxes of merchandise bound for the company’s drugstores. From his paycheck, he tithes to his church and sometimes treats his mother to dinner at Kenny’s, a local buffet restaurant. ‘It answered a prayer,’ says Mr. Mullinax’s mother….”

The distribution center employs 264 people, more than 40 percent of whom have various disabilities, and is 20 percent more efficient than the company’s older facilities.

“… an innovative program at the distribution center [in Anderson, S.C.] is offering jobs to people with mental and physical disabilities of a nature that has frequently deemed them ‘unemployable,’ while saving Walgreen money through automation.”

” … executives at Walgreen and the social-services agencies working with it believe the company’s program has a larger number of disabled employees, doing more-sophisticated work, than is typically available to people with mental and physical challenges. “

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