Dallas dry cleaning firms. Pay was to be $1.60 per hour to start and $2.75 after 9 months in the program. A total of 355 persons entered the program, and the termination is now 100%. After the program had run for about eight months and spent $424,607, the contract was cancelled May 1 by the Department of Labor. Assistant Secretary Arnold Weber said that "most of the persons in the program had not been hired by the dry cleaning shops as is required by the contract, but were enrolled as 'students' receiving $1.60 an hour from the consortium, paid out of Federal funds." (A fundamental of the JOBS program is supposed to be the fact that every person in the program is hired in a permanent job from his first day in the program.) On April 25, 1970, the Dallas Morning News quoted a Dallas dry cleaning executive, Glen Sparks, as stating that it was "unrealistic and ridiculous to train 450 silk finishers and wool pressers in Dallas." All the dry cleaners in the city put together do not employ 450 finishers or pressers, he said. The 19 companies covered by the contract probably don't employ more than 100 in all their cleaning and pressing jobs, he said. The Dallas contract provided for these payments: Purpose; On-the-job training (1192 hours) (Trainees will be assigned to a job project where each will be Orientation and counselling (50 hours) hours) Job-related basic education (318 hours) Special counselling. (By Behavioral Science Research Laboratories, a division of Skills preparation (80 hours) (By Fellowship, Inc.) Supervisory and human relations training (40 hours) Medical and dental services_ Transportation for 195 days Visits from counselors__ Child-care assistance (324 trainees for 39 weeks) Evaluation package-tests.. 249.00 500.00 205.60 198.87 55.00 25.00 211.75 28. 28 202.80 100.00 (Biographical and idiographical information for use in correla- Consortium expenses (Director salary, $10,000; clerical expenses, $5,000; shrinkage 66.67 The contract was approved by F. E. Edwards, assistant regional manpower administrator. President of the consortium obtaining the contract was Jasper Baccus, who reportedly owns seven dry cleaning stores. After Baccus got the contract, the Small Business Administration approved a loan guarantee of $35,000 to help him clean up some accounts, the Dallas News reported. The director of the SBA regional office stated that, when SBA approved the loan, "we were counting on him making $1,000 a month" as manager of the dry cleaning consortium which got the JOBS contract. In cancelling the contract, Assistant Secretary Weber said that "355 persons had been placed in the program, 59 had dropped out, and 296 were still in training at the end of March." However, Mr. Weber said, "accurate information on enrollments and costs is not presently available." All the trainees will now lose all their benefits promised under the contract. They have not been paid for the last 10 days, and Mr. Weber said no further vouchers will be processed until the audit is completed and financial responsibility is established. The Labor Department investigation began about in mid-April after some trainees' paychecks bounced. The Dallas First National Bank had frozen the funds, reportedly because of a feud between Baccus and the Rev. Sammie Davis, of Fellowship, Inc., a subcontractor. [From Los Angeles Times, May 3, 1970] LABOR DEPT. QUIETLY CUTS BACK JOBS PLAN CAMPAIGN TO EMPLOY HARD-CORE POOR FALLS VICTIM TO ECONOMIC By Murray Seeger, Times Staff Writer Washington.--The Labor Department has quietly decided to reduce sharply the JOBS program, the much publicized campaign to find work for thousands of hard-core, ghetto unemployed in partnership with the National Alliance of Businessmen. JOBS, which stands for Job Opportunities in the Business Sector, is a victim of the current economic slowdown and over-optimism by its sponsors. In addition, the program is under heavy attack by the Senate antipoverty subcommittee and the General Accounting Office. Without public announcement, the Labor Department has asked the Budget Bureau to reallocate JOBS money to other training programs with new emphasis on a plan to subsidize hiring workers by state and local governments. The staff of the Senate subcommittee, in a study to be published soon, has found that JOBS is highly vulnerable to an economic recession, has been used by companies to get government support for hiring cheap labor in dead-end jobs and has not provided all of the training and educational services it was designed to produce. FIGURES CHALLENGED In addition, both the subcommittee staff and the GAO challenge the official claims of the NAB and Labor Department that JOBS has produced employment for 433,000 persons. The JOBS program was started in January, 1968, by former President Lyndon B. Johnson when he suggested a government-industry partnership to find jobs for persons usually considered unemployable. The government would find the hard-core jobless and business would hire them and then train them. Henry Ford II, chairman of Ford Motor Co., was enlisted to head the industry half of the partnership organized as the NAB, a nonprofit corporation. Employers were told that if they signed a contract with the Labor Department the government would pay the difference between what it cost to train the usual kind of new worker and the "hard-core" worker found by JOBS. A combination of voluntary hiring and subsidized hiring was aimed at employing 100,000 persons from the hard-core unemployed by June, 1968, and a total of 500,000 in three years, or by next January. President Nixon in his February budget asked for $375 million for a revised JOBS program which was described as "the federal government's principal onthe-job training effort." The federal money was to be used to enroll 173,000 trainees. Now, it was learned, the Labor Department has reduced this proposal by $135 million with more than half it, $72 million, going to the public service careers program and $40 million diverted to traditional institutional training programs. The JOBS budget reduction means a cut of 45,000 potential hardcore trainees. Last year, Mr. Nixon asked for $420 million for the 1970 JOBS plan but finally got $280 million after a long budget fight with Congress. Now the department estimates it will need only $175 million and would divert $49 million each to the public service and institutional program before the fiscal year ends in two months. "The large employers just don't feel they can hire people in this period of economic contraction," one department source said. "We have also found that clients sign up for a lot more trainees than they actually get." The staff of the Senate antipoverty subcommittee headed by Sen. Gaylord Nelson (D-Wis.) found the JOBS program was well-conceived in the period of rapid growth but that it is "particularly vulnerable to an economic slowdown." "Businessmen simply cannot be expected to simultaneously hire the disadvantaged and lay off their regular workers," the staff report said. 'FLY-BY-NIGHT' FIRMS "Not only are fewer workers now being hired under the JOBS program, but many of those previously hired are being laid off. Governed by the rule 'last hired, first fired.' they are losing jobs which they desperately want and at which they have been successful." While Nelson and the subcommittee staff are sympathetic to the concept of the JOBS plan, the staff found that "shortcomings in the program appear to be substantial." The report was particularly critical of the failure of subcontractors to deliver such supporting services as education and medical care for JOBS trainees hired by employers getting government subsidies. "The program has generated a large number of firms offering to subcontract for supportive services," the staff reported. "Some appear to be fly-by-night outfits, unable to carry out what they promise." While the employers operating with government contracts hired only about 25% of all JOBS trainees, the staff report said there are no reliable statistics on the number of "voluntary" hirings under the program which makes "any solid evaluation of the program-and any comparison with other manpower programs-extremely difficult." "It is difficult to establish whether beneficiaries of this program were truly hard-core disadvantaged or whether the most qualified trainees have been 'creamed' from the upper layers of the largest group, intentionally or inadvertently." The staff also criticized the Labor Department for having a "30-minute rule" for its staff members to make contracts with employers. The "haste" in contract-making, the staff said, "has led to frequent misunderstandings of contract obligations, the danger of fraud and an inability to catch problems before they become serious." "To the extent that a company's programs are poorly planned, offer such low wages that the poor are actually being exploited or offer jobs which soon disappear due to seasonal cycles or poor management, trainees may end up back on the streets more bitter than before at the American economic system and less inclined than ever to believe that either government or business will give them any opportunity in American society as it is now constituted," the report said. Alerted to the critical nature of the staff report by Republican members of the subcommittee, Asst. Labor Secretary Arnold R. Weber prepared a rebuttal which asserted "there are several areas where the majority staff report can be improved upon." "The JOBS program is a landmark program of cooperative effort and should be a cornerstone of our future manpower programs," Weber said. "It is recognized that there are problems in the JOBS program as is the case of any large undertaking and growing pains are to be expected." Weber did not mention the decision already made to scale down the planned spending for JOBS, a change that must be approved by Congress. Business, Stocks B-9 THE EVENING STAR Washington, D. C., Thursday, March 5, 1970 To companies who need more employees now or in the In cooperation with the National Alliance of Businessmen and the U.S. Department of Labor, American Learning Systems can supply you with trained, full-time men and women employees. There is NO CHARGE by American Learning to the employer for any of the services listed below, where there is a valid requirement for additional employees: ORIENTATION JOB-RELATED EDUCATION Reading, writing and arithmetic English language training where necessary. DAY CARE CENTERS For children of women employees. MEDICAL & DENTAL EXAMINATIONS YOUR INQUIRY INVITED American Learning Systems IN WASHINGTON: 1025 Connecticut Ave., N.W. IN NEW YORK: 229 Park Ave., Couth New York, N.. 10023 (217) 000-0174 |