|
Year |
Decision |
Result |
|
1996 |
The roles of
Team leaders was established along with health and
safety delegates and fire wardens appointed. |
Training was given in their new
roles and systems and procedures were established where
we could obtain regular feedback on the direction that
the people attending SDE wanted their organisation to
go. |
| A workers
committee was set up to provide the conduit to address
employment and conditions of service issues. |
This later became SDE’s workers’ own
formally incorporated union. |
| The Wool Pack
had to close, as wool packs were no longer available.
|
Three staff members moved into other
full-time employment and three returned as workers to
SDE. |
|
1997 |
Working
uniforms were designed and implemented and individuals
had a choice of skirt and blouses, trousers and shirts
or overalls, all with the SDE logo and their first names
embroidered on them. |
The decision to wear these uniforms
was an individual choice for both staff and workers,
from the General Manager down, with the majority
electing to wear them. |
|
1998 |
Special cages
were built and placed in twenty-seven sites throughout
Invercargill, for people to deposit their aluminium cans
into. |
SDE collected the cans, cleaned and
crushed them and the community group got paid for the
weight of aluminium collected. On average we process in
excess of six tonnes of aluminium cans each year. |
|
1999 |
The Cane Room
processes were inherited from the Rehabilitation
League. Staff turn their hand to a range of tasks.
Eventually, they reduce their reliance on furniture by
growing their own willow. |
Cane Room workers de-zip and
de-button clothing and then cut the clothing into rags.
They harvest the leaves from Red Poker plants, dry them
and turn them into a rush weave for mending old chairs.
They rebuild beaded car seat covers using thread that
doesn’t break down under ultra violet rays. |
| A formal
contract with MSD initiated Supported Employment
services. |
As this was something that SDE had
always provided, formalising the arrangement and being
paid to place and support people in main stream
employment was a natural progression. |
| The decision
was made to become serious about supplying kindling wood
and firewood. SDE’s kindling wood would be of better
value in both quality and quantity, than any other on
the market. |
A new Kindling splitting machine was
designed and built and a contract established with the
New Zealand Aluminium smelter to take all surplus wooden
pallets and scrap wood off site for further
processing. The pallets were dismantled by hand, the
wood de-nailed and then graded into either firewood or
kindling wood. Any boards that were still in good
condition were put aside and made into second hand
pallets as there was a ready market for these. Wood
that was not suitable for resale was used to heat our
main premises and the purchasing of coal for this
purpose ceased, creating further savings in energy
expenditure. |
| SDE established
a Resource Recovery Centre at the city Transfer Station.
|
Over time, this was built up to
where it was paying two full wages and six part wages
(two days full wages per person per week and three days
on an “Activity in the Community Project”). |
