The contract was for $166,000 with room for 300 job placements. To date, 500 low-income rural Americans have been placed in permanent jobs and over 24 more openings are now in and are being filled. Over 149 jobs have been opened up in the past three weeks. The average cost of training was only about $325 per trainee. Many of the other OJT programs now are priced from $600 to $2,400 with the JOBS program going higher than this. total income these placements have, or will have earned, will be $1.8 million.

The

We have found that in rural areas there are many jobs that go "abegging" because small employers do not know how to find good employers. For many reasons, including distance and understaffing, they do not use State Employment Services as much as they should. These small rural employers do not have formal training programs or personnel functions. Our program is one of the few OJT programs that is effective in serving the small employers in rural areas.

Despite the fact that we are now in a period of the highest unemployment in the past half dozen years or more, we have placed over 149 job contract orders for older workers in the past three weeks. We can now say we have at least one solution for the older worker.

The time nas come to experiment afresh with the whole range of manpower programs, including MDTA, New Careers, and others to see if they can be focused on the older worker.

We now have the key to jobs for the older worker.

Here are some of the things we have learned from our experience in Green Thumb, Green Light, and our other Farmers Union programs:

1. There is no upper age limit on ability.

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We have not been able to find any rural county that
does not have enough poverty among its older and retired
farm people to create a Green Thumb program in the county.

Older rural Americans who are poor are not lazy and often would rather starve than go on public welfare. Public welfare is humiliating to older people and usually provides too little too late. We must find a better alternative than a present old age assistance program in our country.

Older workers can perform effectively on a wide range of
Jobs
especially when their skills are utilized in

relevant projects.

Older people working in crews can supervise themselves
effectively.

The work which they complete is not only of a high
quality but something in which the local community
finds pride.

7. All elements in the local community like the work that
these older workers have done in Green Thumb, Green Light,
and the C. A. S. A. program.
The newspapers like it,
congressmen like it, and the public likes it. The men
and women themselves find great personal satisfaction in
the work they do.

8. State, county, and other local government agencies can
and will help the Green Thumb type program. Their
in-kind contributions equal nearly 50% of the federal
contribution.

9. State government, county government and local government
will eventually start hiring older workers after they
have seen the tangible results of their work.
Approximately 350 Green Thumbers are now, or shortly will
be, on the payrolls of state, county, and local agencies.

10. Local private employers will also see the results of the
Green Thumbers and with the help of the On-The-Job
Training program, can and will employ these workers.
Over 300 Green Thumb workers have been placed in private
employment through our OJT program.

Lets review our manpower policies to date. In summation, they have been short-sighted and too often keyed to putting out fires while ignoring the source.

1. The state Employment Services have offices and staffs
in all areas in the nation, but too often, in too many
states, they are desk-bound and limited to the inovations
which they will undertake. They need encouragement to be
creative. More of the monies given them should be
designated for experimental purposes. For example, the
experimental monies given to the states to develop various
kinds of job banks on the rapid exchange on job placement
information is important and will in time yield positive
results.

IBRARIES

3. The Neighborhood Youth Corps Program has operated relatively well. The cutting back of the 18 year olds in the out-of-school programs, especially in the rural areas, was unwise without any replacement program.

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The OJT program which had been in the doledrums because
of neglect has been better staffed in recent months
and should be encouraged. The proposed law should include
local, state, and national contracts as active competition
is very badly needed here. The Department should be
encouraged to drop many of the ineffective high cost state
and national contractors including a large number of
NABS contractors.

The Public Service Careers Program proposed by the
Administration still lacks congressional approval. It
appears to have some potential. Congress should withhold
funds from the Administration until the directives given
by Congress in the 1969 OEO Act about the present New
Careers Program are implemented. I believe that they
will probably divert appropriated funds into the Public
Service Careers Program without congressional approval.

Mainstream is by far the most popular program that the Department of Labor or OEO has and it is also its greatest unsettling program. If it was measured by the traditional manpower yardstick the program would not be permitted to exist. The Congress should give the Department of Labor a new yardstick by which the results of this program can be measured. Its widespread endorsement by the poor, conservatives, by local government, state government, Congressmen and senators of both parties, serve as a living testimony to its wide acceptance.