Made in Greater Binghamton: Sheltered Workshop

NewsChannel 34's Steve Craig visits a factory where the workforce of more than 300 is busy, despite the recession.

Since it's founding in 1942, the Sheltered Workshop for the disabled has never been about making profits for shareholders. This nonprofit exists to provide meaningful work, to people with a wide range of disabilities, which translates into an equally wide range of products. Some workers build electrical assemblies sold at home improvement stores. Others package colored paper and books that end up on shelves at discount outlets.

"We're a subcontract manufacturer, and we just want to be a good subcontractor. A low-cost alternative for anybody that needs work done, and we'll provide quality work, we'll do it on time, and we'll do it at a good cost."

The operations that add the most value to finished products, involve wire. Adding connectors and terminals, and cutting it to size, and bundling it into complicated cables and harnesses.

"If you ride subway cars in New York City or Boston or New Jersey or Washington or California our wire will be in there. Electrical wire prepared for installation is in those cars. Anywhere from 12 miles in a New York City car, to 20 miles in some of those New jersey cars." Electrical assemblies built here also wind up in military and civilian airplanes. Snowmobiles, blood analyzers, automated pharmacy dispensers, and EZ pass toll booths.

CEO Ron Charsky says most of those industries are weathering the recession, or even in the case of mass transit cars, growing, because of federal stimulus money." So the diversity's saving us right now because we're not in any one big time and I think that's the challenge. And it's great to work with the people by the way, so that's why we're all here is we're very proud of the people." The labor of the Sheltered Workshop's disabled employees creates an estimated 3 million dollars of product value, every year.