The goal of Employment Services at Riverside Industries, Inc. is to teach people the necessary skills to secure employment as well as to support them to identify jobs they like.

This goal demands an intensive, complex process of job evaluation and training in most of the aspects of work, viz., identification of preferred work, punctuality and dependability, hygiene and dress, ability to follow instructions, and, of course, the skills to do the job.

Food Services

Maintenance/Lawn Care

Contract Packaging/Hand Assembly

Tucson & Savannah's Restaurant at One Cottage Street each day serves about 200 customers among whom are Riverside affiliates, tenants of the building, and the public.

This operation is also the scene of training for almost a dozen persons, who, by a combination of learning sessons and paid online work, develop an extensive range of food service skills ranging from meat-slicing and sandwich-making, to customer service and cash register operation.

Kim Pietraskiewcz

Nicole Hill with Vocational Instructor Doug Baldwin

Food Services has been a fertile source of job opportunities for people both in-house and out in the community.

The large building area of One Cottage Street serves as a training site for a crew whose days are filled with a variety of tasks essential to the upkeep of a century-old factory building that continues to house businesses.

Robert Hakkinen ("Hakky")

This Vocational Services crew (Glendale Lawn Care) is also a highly successful and profitable business enterprise in the community.

During the warmer months, the crew provides lawn care services, grounds maintenance, spring and fall yard clean-ups to commercial, municipal and individual customers throughout the Valley.

Richard Hendrickson mows the grounds of the
Easthampton cemetery.

The tasks the crew performs are analyzed and arranged in simple. teachable steps which permit the trainees to develop building, maintenance, and lawn-care skills while on the job.

Riverside employs forty machine operators and hand workers in its Packaging Division. These trainees and competitive employees fill contracts for a variety of customers that have included Milton Bradley, Erving Paper, Greenfield Industries, Chartpak, Tubed Products, J.H. Smith, Titeflex, Kellogg Brush, Tambrands, Tubed Products, Yankee Candle and the United States Government.

Arthur Arterton

Melvin Kuzia

The goal of the trainees, beyond remuneration for their labor, is improvement of their work performance in order to meet standard job requirements. These objectives are charted individually with the intention of placing qualified persons in similar operations at other businesses.

Riverside Industries'
Job Placement Program