Original Date: 07/21/2003
Revision Date: 01/18/2007

Electric Boat Corporation, Quonset Point Facility provides janitorial work opportunities for persons with disabilities. The arrangement has been in place since 1998 and has been well received by all employees who know these workers by name and appreciate their dedication.

In 1998, representatives from the J. Arthur Trudeau Memorial Center contacted Electric Boat Corporation, Quonset Point Facility (EBQP) to advise the company of its available services. The J. Arthur Trudeau Memorial Center is located in Warwick, RI and is a private, non-profit organization that provides a wide variety of services to children and adults with disabilities. Since EBQP had already utilized the Trudeau Center’s clients to cut and assemble non- flame retardant protective hoods for production workers, a respect for what they could accomplish already existed.

Based on the Trudeau Center’s services, a contract was signed whereby 18 clients, accompanied by a Trudeau job coach, provide cleaning tasks such as window washing, waste collection, and sweeping and mopping, and one client was assigned to work in the cafeteria area. Currently, four clients are on-site daily and are well known to EBQP’s workforce. Each of these clients has more than three years’ experience working at EBQP, and one client was hired as the full-time dishwasher by the food service provider in the cafeteria. The Trudeau clients provide custodial service for the office areas, but do not work in the heavy manufacturing areas due to safety concerns.

The arrangement with the Trudeau Center allows EBQP to extend its employment opportunities to persons from the community who experience barriers to social and economic independence and may have been overlooked in the past. EBQP’s workforce respects these clients and has adopted them as part of its family of employees.

For more information see the Point of Contact for this survey.