Mr. HAWKINS. The program that you have referred to may be an excellent program, and I'm sure that it is, as you describe it. We are not opposing that. We are simply saying that the moneys provided under this program, under the Job Training Partnership Act, were not intended to be used that way. That's all that we are saying.

We would encourage the county to use its moneys the way you describe it, but use its money. Don't try to reduce its welfare expenditures by using a program that was not intended to be so used. That's all this committee has jurisdiction over. We don't have jurisdiction over the use of county money in its own way.

I hated to interrupt but

Mr. SHAW. That's OK. I understand.

Mr. HAWKINS. I agree with all that you are saying. It's just not what this committee is authorized to monitor.

Mr. DYMALLY. Mr. Shaw, the only analogy I want to raise is that, if a poverty program in east Los Angeles or south-central Los Angeles had converted allocated funds for a different project, the director would be in jail today. That's what most of the poverty programs got in trouble for, not for stealing the money but because somebody needed help-he was not into the program and they gave him help. The auditor came and said, "Hey, no more funds. You misused funds." That's basically what happened except you have the umbrella of the county supervisors and the approval of the State. But it's just a misdirection of funds that we are concerned about.

I think all of us are very supportive of training programs.

Mr. SHAW. I realize that. I've heard that very clearly from this committee. However, in a program such as this, if you can derive other benefits from the program, why not do so? Benefits in a sense that it's going to help more people get jobs and/or keep their jobs. You know, the State of California and the county included, is in a crunch right now as far as their budget is concerned. Why can't we take these programs and dovetail them together? It's a natural. The State of California spends almost $1 billion a year in training programs. They put in $20 million out of general fund money for the general relief program. Under the JTPA program, you can't pay participants' wages. But when you kick in general relief funds, you can use some of those funds to pay wages so those people can live while they are on training. Why not do it? Why not put it together? Why not be creative in this thing and set something up that's going to help people get jobs. And believe me, it is. Mr. HAWKINS. Mr. Bluto, we'll get your view now.

STATEMENT OF PAUL BLUTO, CHAIRMAN, PLANNING
COMMITTEE OF PRIVATE INDUSTRY COUNCIL

Mr. BLUTO. Mine might vary just slightly from what Doug's are. I think, in general, the total PIC agrees that the kind of program that has been put in place as far as offering the truly disadvantaged people an opportunity to train and to find unsubsidized employment is something that we want to apply. I have reservations about the fact that all of the JTPA funds, or most of them, should be used for that purpose. I believe that the full PIC does. A reflec

tion of that thought is already in the plans for next year. We believe that general relief recipients ought to continue to be included in that program next year, but we don't believe that it should be done at the expense of other people that are just as deserving as the general relief people are.

We think the county ought to continue additional general funds in there to cover what needs to be done for GR's but not exclude all of the other categories of people that would be entitled to the benefit under the law.

I think, really, as far as whether the plan is going to be successful or not, at least as far as I'm concerned, the jury is still out.

But I think one of the things that you may not be aware of that ought to be in the record is how we arrive at what happened this year. I think probably you have to go back to previous years in order to evaluate that, where the county plan included a large portion of the funds to be used to aid the AFDC-U population. We were told at the time that that happened that there were some 2,600 people in that population that the State was no longer going to fund the benefits.

As it turned out, out of the 2,600 people, we ended up with somewhere in the neighborhood of 600 that actually went through the program. As a result of the efforts used, the total AFDC-U population was eliminated as far as the backlog that they had.

So from a county standpoint, that was absolutely a 100-percent success, and I'm sure that that is what parlayed into the program that was developed for the welfare recipients this time around. So, I thought that you should have some background in that because, as far as the AFDC-U population was concerned, the program in the previous year was a success.

The previous PIC, which I was fortunate to be on, also had reservations about utilizing all of the funds for the GR population. As Carl has told you, the new PIC was formed too late in the process, really, to be involved in the planning. They did approve it, said, "Let's give it a try," but I think it was on a contingent basis and with the thought that we're not going to be doing the same kind of thing to the same degree in the next year's program.

I'd be happy to respond to any questions.

Brother Dymally, it's good to see somebody out of my local union here today.

Mr. DYMALLY. Mr. Bluto, do I understand correctly that the new PIC is a continuation or an expansion of the old PIC?

Mr. BLUTO. The answer is "No." There are a few of the people— Doug and I included-that were on the former PIC. I think there's a total of six that were on the previous PIC that are now on the new PIC. But, other than that, this is a totally new PIC.

Mr. HERMAN. That's out of about 19 members.

Mr. DYMALLY. How did you come about organizing the new PIC? I know the law permitted you to organize it, but who said, "I am the leader"?

Mr. BLUTO. From the business standpoint, the chamber of commerce submitted all of the nominations to the county board of supervisors for their consideration on the county PIC.

From the other organizations, such as labor, the names were submitted by the labor groups in the area. We only have one labor person on the Los Angeles County PIC, which is myself.

Mr. DYMALLY. I have to withhold my questions until I see the list because I want to ask some questions about the makeup of the PIC. Mr. HERMAN. OK. Insofar as how we proceeded from that point, we did the normal process of establishing some bylaws and elected our chairman, the various planning committee members, and the executive committee.

Mr. DYMALLY. Thank you.

Mr. HAWKINS. One of the most difficult jobs that this committee and the Congress had in drafting JTPA was trying to structure a real partnership. It was contemplated that the partnership would consist of the local elected officials, acting through the chief elected official of a county, for example, and the members of the private industry council. The county board of supervisors then would name, upon nomination by the various groups, as Mr. Bluto has indicated, representatives from the various groups and these representatives would constitute the private industry council. But the law clearly stipulates that both partners would be involved from the very beginning, that all of the planning, as well as the implementation, would be a joint effort and that neither one would dominate.

A few weeks ago we were in San Francisco, and Mayor Feinstein has gone the opposite direction. She has literally called in the private industry council and said, "You run the program. You do the planning and you run the program." We were a little concerned about that because it didn't seem to be an equal partnership. We are not sure they're moving in the right direction, however, on making it a true partnership.

Here, 400 miles south, as usual, there's a difference of opinion and the county went the other way.

Mr. DYMALLY. Once again it is as though the north and south are different States.

Mr. HAWKINS. Yes; apparently, according to your own statement, you were in a sense handed something on the table when you walked in, which is purely contrary to what we had contemplated in devising this partnership. That's why it's in the title. And we emphasize that it is a partnership. Neither one is supposed to run the entire show. They are supposed to do things together, not necessarily the way San Francisco did it. Heaven knows that we would never do. The manner in which Los Angeles has implemented JTPA is also questionable. Now somewhere between those two is the correct method. In both instances, two major cities seem not to have developed the plan according to the way the law contemplated it. I think it's a terrible mistake not to involve the private sector from the very beginning because that's where the jobs are. We recognize that when we were drafting JTPA. The focus of JTPA is to train individuals. One of the practical results is that you would be involved in who should be trained, how they should be trained, and the quality and duration of the training.

You've indicated, I think, in a very magnificent way, that we have larger problems in the economy than just the handling of one problem at the local level. We thought that we would have the ben

efit of the involvement of the private sector. We would have the benefit of your views, for example, and those who think the way you do at the very beginning. Now apparently that doesn't seem to be precisely the way it's being done here in the county. I don't want to be overcritical, but I think that we contemplated this situation could happen. Out of our experiences, we think that if it goes one way too far or the other way too far, it's going to fail. That's why we are concerned about whether or not the local plan is going to succeed. We hope that the county plan involves the private sector. I think Senator Greene correctly characterized what could happen. Can these people be adequately trained in 4 to 6 weeks for jobs that are available in the private sector? Will creaming occur? In other words, we don't want you to take only the individuals who can be easily trained. We want individuals who may be on general relief, but obviously all of them can't come from general relief. We don't want just the ones from Mr. Dymally's district or Mr. Martinez's district. We want them from all over. But we don't see that happening. I just think, to some extent, that if the private industry council is not thoroughly involved in this program, it would be a mistake. It was a mistake not to do so from the very beginning.

Mr. HERMAN. Mr. Chairman, I mentioned that the train had left the station when we got on board last summer. We revisited the subject the second we are on board. I have in my briefcase our draft plan and I would spare you the burden of carrying that back with you right at the moment, but we've gone over that draft plan with representatives of the board of supervisors. We will have several public forums to discuss that plan. I think that participation is there. I wouldn't be so presumptuous as to think that, in every aspect, the private industry council and the supervisors are going to agree. But I think I can guarantee you one thing at this stage of the game. It will be a participative effort this time, looking at the 1984 to 1986 plan, and that we will, in fact, have had enough time to take a look at it and it will represent our best effort as a private industry council, and we'll let the chips fall where they may. Mr. HAWKINS. Mr. Martinez.

Mr. MARTINEZ. I would like to mention a couple of things.

One is you did come in late, but one of the things that you were supposed to do was to develop or provide for the whole plan the kinds of job training that was needed, and that I assume means the jobs that there was a need for people.

One of the cruxes of the problem with what the county has done, and maybe that which was mandated to you, is to force people who were on general relief to make themselves available for job training or not receive that benefit.

It sounds to me like you're pretty astute about business and employment training but it doesn't seem that it would be productive in the long run to force somebody into a job that he doesn't want. It doesn't give a program a very great of a chance of success to train a person for a job they don't want and then expecting to keep that person in that job for a long period of time. After all, it's a basic thing that a person has to enjoy what they are doing or they're not going to last very long at it.

As I mentioned before, the people that were laid off at Bethlehem Steel who had worked, let's say, since the Korean war

they're not that old; they're 51, 52 years old, and they still see a whole work career ahead of them but their work career in what they had has been cut short because of the closing of an industry. There's Huffy Bicycle, which is another one. There are several instances that I can-the Ford Motor plant out in Pico Rivera is another one. So those people have a track record of willingness to work, have a track record of being a provider of a household-the chief provider of a household, and wanting to, needing to-if you take 12,000 people and put them where there are 9,000 slots of general relief people, what does that leave you for those other people? In this program there was a definite set-aside for the youth which should not be included in program statistics. If you exclude that from their figures, then what you have is over 50 percent of the money going to general relief people, which-I agree with Mr. Shaw. There is a need for it and it does provide a lot of these people, but I'm wondering if-let's say a guy who was in steel work is going to be willing to work going door to door for as long as it lasts in dog licensing. The only reason I refer to that is that here again I'm talking about taking people that have aptitude for a certain thing and training them for a certain kind of a job since a whole part of the plan was to find specifically what jobs were needed and find the people that were in need of retraining because now they've exhausted their unemployment funds and now they are going to be welfare recipients. To say that the degradation to these people who have been, like we say, primary bread winners in a household-the degradation because-as we went through different parts of the country on hearings about what happened to people when plants have closed and they've lost their jobs, that the head of the household-how degrading that is to them and what it lead to, alcoholism, child abuse, wife abuse, sometimes even suicide.

So, thinking that there were a lot of people like this that needed this, that was the program-what it was enacted for. Now we find in Los Angeles County-I'm very concerned about what Bill Greene said, that, if we allow Los Angeles County's JTFA program to continue as it was, there are six entities willing to jump into that same kind of a situation. I don't think we can allow it because that wasn't the intent of the law.

Mr. HERMAN. Let me take the forward view for a moment and then possibly Paul or Doug would like to respond to your question as well because of their roles in the planning and operations committees.

Our intention in forging the 1984 to 1986 plan is essentially to overcome some of the problems that you have indicated. Yes, there was a disproportionate share, if you will, of the activity and the resources dedicated to the general relief population.

Do we need to target more carefully on the specific jobs that are available? I don't think there's any question about that.

In looking down the road, and you, gentlemen, in your particular roles in Government know too that, when we start talking about increases in the labor force, that really is very, very deceptive. As a matter of fact, the labor force is only going to grow essentially in a very limited number of the so-called 1,200 or so demand occupations that are classically used. The growth may occur in as few as