Prestigious disability jobs program struggles to stay afloat

From the Wall Street Journal:
A Toledo employment program that works with automakers to train and employ adults with developmental disabilities like Robert Ertle (left) is in danger of becoming a casualty of the recession.

Lott Industries, which employs 1,200 workers, is said to be the only program of its kind to have earned the auto industry’s prestigious Quality One supplier award. Now it’s lost more than 80 percent of its business since the Ford Motor Co. closed a nearby stamping plant in 2007 and business with General Motors and Honda dried up. Lott has reduced wages and benefits for its employees to avoid layoffs.

For many, the realities of the downturn are tough to process. Lott’s employees don’t understand why their work went away or that broader remote forces — like oil prices and imports — have been partly to blame. They thought they had done something wrong. Many refused to do other work, less out of stubbornness than bewilderment. “I do Ford. I make those cars,” they would tell Gail Little, the Lott supervisor who was the customer liaison with Ford. “I would say, ‘Honey, Ford isn’t here.”

Some had been with Lott since high school. Now middle aged, they had come to rely on Lott for a livelihood and self esteem that is often elusive for those with disabilities.