BAGEL PACKERS' BONDS; DISABLED FIND JOBS IN BOOMING ECONOMY.

Byline: Dennis McCarthy 

Del Albarran was having a bad morning at work Monday. He just didn't feel good.

``What's the matter?'' Chris Hawkins asked him, grabbing a stack of boxes and starting to fold them.

Del shrugged his shoulders. He didn't know.

``Maybe you have a headache,'' Ron Igne said, putting plastic bags in the boxes, which Chris had already folded, and passing them on to Refugio Sanchez and James Shumey for labels.

``I know what's wrong with you,'' Don Carelli said. ``You just can't see good.''

Del laughed. ``No,'' he finally said. ``I know what's wrong. I just didn't get enough sleep last night.''

The guys laughed and told Del to get to bed earlier. Then they went back to work - making boxes at the Manhattan Bagel plant in San Fernando.

Seventy bagel boxes down by 9 a.m. and 700 more to go for the day.

Welcome to one of the beautiful stories of a full-employment economy - one of the hundreds of workplaces in this city where men and women who were basically written out of the old work force are thriving in the booming new one.

The developmentally disabled are finally getting their shot at decent-paying, full-time jobs. And they're doing great work.

In this case, six developmentally disabled people found more than a job. They found each other, and they found friendship.

Wall Street and Alan Greenspan may be worrying about the economy's overheating, but these folks are smiling all the way to the bank.

``Ten, 15 years ago, it was like pulling teeth to get our clients jobs like this, with good salaries and company benefits,'' said Susan Brown, supportive-services administrator for New Horizons, a North Hills nonprofit organization that provides job placement and training for more than 500 people with developmental disabilities in the San Fernando Valley.

``Now, with the economy booming and more job opportunities, people are finally realizing their worth,'' she said.

For Manhattan Bagel's plant manager, Brad Mackenzie - as well as his counterparts at businesses like Food-4-Less and Mervyn's, which are among New Horizon clients - these employees are worth every dime of their wages, $6 to $8.25 an hour, as well as the costs of full benefits, to put together those bagel boxes.

``They are an integral part of our business, a strong link in the chain,'' Mackenzie said. ``The bottom line is their disabilities do not get in the way one bit. They produce.''

That's the business bottom line. It's important because it shows other companies out there that hiring the developmentally disabled is not the risk they may think it is.

But it's not the only bottom line. There is another one that few saw coming before the economy heated up and gave these people jobs.

There's the social bottom line.

Kassie Payne can smile now when she sees her guys, 25 to 55, come to work every morning and start kidding around with each other. But it wasn't that way when most of them started two years ago.

It was awkward at first, says the New Horizons job coach, who monitors their work and makes sure everything is all right with them.

It had to be awkward. It couldn't have been any other way.

You can't just take six men - most of them middle-aged and five of them still living at home with their mothers - and throw them together in a daily work situation, then expect everything to be just fine. Especially when a job is something new to them, and their disabilities don't let them verbalize their thoughts the way they want or fully understand everything that's going on around them.

``They were quiet toward each other, real shy,'' Kassie said. She smiled Monday as she watched her guys, with shyness gone, tell Del to get more sleep.

``I knew we had to have more conversations to get to know one another, but I didn't want it to be at work,'' she said.

So they went out together a couple of times a week - to McDonald's or El Torito for lunch or to Baskin-Robbins for ice cream after work, she said.

Kassie was smart enough not to push. If the ice was to break, it had to break at their pace, not hers, she knew.

After a few weeks of lunches and ice cream, it cracked. The guys putting on the labels started to know and care about what made the guys folding the boxes tick, and vice versa.

Pretty soon, six workers became six friends.

Going bowling or taking in a movie together on the weekends. Inviting each other over to their homes to meet their mothers and see their rooms.

Worrying when one shows up for work on a Monday morning not feeling good.

Looking out for one another, as friends do.

All because of a booming economy.

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Photo: Developmentally disabled workers enjoy friendship along with jobs at the Manhattan Bagel plant. In front are, from left, Del Albarran, James Shumey and Donald Carelli, while at rear are Christopher Hawkins, Ron Igne and Rufus Sanchez.

Phil McCarten/Staff Photographer