Precast Inc. - July/August 2008 - (Page 38) courtesy Mayer Brothers Inc. NPCA photo MARVIN WOLFE, THE PRODUCTION SUPERVISOR, HAS BEEN WITH THE COMPANY FOR 37 YEARS. employees who have remained with them for years; in fact, Marvin Wolfe, the production supervisor, has been with the company for 37 years. But Nancy still needed help filling those few vacant hourly positions on the plant floor. “I was desperate for a reasonable-quality, hourly employee,” Nancy says. “I was looking under every stone that I could, and somehow I found this pre-release program.” In conjunction with the Maryland Division of Correction, the program selects inmates who have been deemed with the potential to be safe and hardworking employees. The inmates arrive in the van every morning and ride back to prison following their eight-hour shift at the plant. For Nancy, it has been a wise business decision, and for the inmates, it has been an absolute blessing that has changed their lives. Lancey Gaines spent a good portion of his life in the prison system. On his last stint, he was serving five years for drug possession and distribution. With less than a year remaining in his sentence, the prison counselors saw that Gaines was serious about changing his life for the better. After a thorough interview process, prison officials decided that Gaines would be a good candidate for the work-release program. Gaines’ first chance at employment was a job that would allow him to be outside and require a certain amount of physical labor, two things that he was excited about. He was taken to a meeting with Nancy, where she interviewed him just like any other person applying for the job. She was impressed, and he was eager to take the position. “I didn’t want to pass this opportunity up,” Gaines says. “Who knows where I would have been without this?” Gaines is now into his fourth year working at the plant. Nancy says that the prerelease program has been one of the best business decisions she’s ever made. “I have five full-time employees that have since left prison and still continue to work for me full-time,” she says. “We’ve had more problems with non-inmates than what we’ve had from our prison employees. They’re usually within six months of being 38 JULY/AUGUST 2008 | PRECAST INC. paroled, so they know it’s not the time for them to be messing up. They’re all very thankful for the opportunity. They look me in the eye, they shake my hand and they thank me for the job. It’s amazing.” Upon the employees’ release from prison, Nancy typically gives them some time off to get their affairs in order. “You’d be amazed at what that means to them,” she says. “They’re totally displaced when they get out, and they have to start from scratch. They don’t have identification, they don’t have a driver’s license or a car, so they get time to get those things in order.” Nancy also encourages the inmates to start planning while they’re still incarcerated. “For me this was a good opportunity and certainly a benefit,” Gaines recalls. “I was able to start saving while I was incarcerated. That was a major thing right there. I had a bank account set up, I had an apartment set up and I got a social security card. I got all that set up before I even got out into the streets. I had that structure in place when I got out. So I’ve seen both sides of it, and I know what it’s like to be on the other side.” Some may find it hard to believe that a single mother of three children would take on inmates as employees in the business, but not Nancy. In fact, it seems to make perfect sense to her. “I might get that from my mom – nothing challenged her,” she says. “Mom was a Marine during World War II. She was standing outside the gates of a base one day, and the Marines at the gate said, ‘You can’t be a Marine.’ Mom said, ‘You want to bet?’ So she went and joined the Marines the next day and went on to become an aircraft mechanic on Corsairs.” It’s that same tenacity and determination that has helped Nancy guide the family business in the right direction. It’s something that would probably make her father and grandfather proud to see today. The pre-release program seems to be a win-win situation for everyone involved. “I think Nancy took the time to find out what the program was all about,” Gaines says. “Not many people are willing to take that kind of a chance with these guys.” But then again, Nancy Mayer isn’t your typical employer.
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