Statement of Jack Howard, representing American Learning Systems, on Employment, Manpower and Poverty May 6, 1970 On behalf of American Learning Systems I wish to express appreciation for the opportunity to lay before the Subcommittee some of our experiences with the JOBS program, and to suggest program changes that will help to achieve the goal of the program. At the outset I should note that certain of our activities, and of an employer we serve, have been discussed in the staff study released last week, and in a staff report released April 28. I will expect to comment on these reports more fully later on in my testimony, but first I would like to outline our activities and our experiences. The role of a learning company is to assist employers in carrying out the objectives of the particular program under which government help is sought. In some cases, this help consists of initial design of the program, explanation of it to employers and supervisors, and guidance through the negotiation process. In many cases, employers come to a learning company after NAB and the Department of Labor have already completed the earlier work of explanation and design. Often larger employers will establish their Own staffs to carry out a training program. Characteristically, smaller employers will seek out a learning company, and for efficiency and economy smaller companies are often brought together in a consortium so that training costs can be shared. Once the program is approved the training company faces a variety of challenges. In some cases recruitment--whether specified in the contract or not--becomes a training company responsibility. Traditionally the program begins with an orientation conducted by teacher/counselors with a program input from the employers. Training companies provide facilities for such orientation sessions near the place of employment, or, in the case of a consortium, in a centrally-located place. Orientation can include a host of mundane activities the average worker takes for granted: explanation about social security, description of job application forms, how to cash a check, how to use the bus or subway system, the significance of coming to work on time. We include pre-vocational training in several activities, designed in close coordination with the employer, to help workers make the leap from unemployment to the pressures of the job. Then workers are placed on the job and the real test of the program begins. Now the employer and the training company must work in intimate cooperation and coordination, and I suggest it is in this phase that most of the difficulty arises. The worker newly on the job must have the support necessary to help him achieve an understanding of being a regular employee, and not just a temporary coming in to earn a few dollars for the rent or some other immediate need. Supervisors on the job are critical in this activity, and so sensitivity and other forms of training are provided to them. Special counselling is also provided to trainees during this period in order 40-963 - 70 pt. 4 10 to discover and deal with problems before they become either firing offenses or causes for quitting. Meanwhile, the employer is obligated to provide on-the-job training and he is specifically prohibited from contracting out that activity. Once the transition is accomplished, job related education is scheduled. This can be arranged in a variety of ways, and is almost always shaped in large part by the demands of the job. In some cases a fixed period of time during each work day is set aside for job related education and counselling; in others overtime is authorized to the employee called in on a day when production is not scheduled. And this again requires intimate coordination and cooperation between training company and employer, because the purposes of the program are frustrated if production is interrupted or mangled because of training activities, just as the intent of the program is thwarted if the trainee does not receive the services he is supposed to. It is during the combination on-the-job and job related education phase that some of the most significant and inventive counselling activities take place. We have learned in years of manpower experimentation the degree to which supportive counselling must be written into programs dealing with persons without extensive employment history. I recall the experience of one of the first experimental programs under the Manpower Development and Training Act conducted by Hampton University in Virginia. There counselors spent most of their time trying to get shoes for poor workers, meeting them at home at night to deal with personal and financial problems, and performing a host of services that until then had not been considered part of an occupational training program. The situation has not changed; if anything, it is more acute. We are dealing in the New York area with many recent arrivals who speak little or no English. Most of our counselors are bilingual or trilingual, since we have many French-speaking workers as well as a near majority of Spanish-speaking. The easing of these people into an employment system and culture dominated by the English language is no mean task. Remedial education cannot even be undertaken until a program of English as a Second Language is undertaken with these workers. You can also well imagine the input from an on-the-job training experience if the trainor or supervisor cannot speak Spanish or French. Thus the support provided by counselors goes far beyond the counseling room and the work site; it reaches the home in many cases. At random I selected a case study of a worker who required help from a counselor. The chronology is noted in a book our counselors keep at the training center; it is sparse and dry, but the story it tells is some thing else. On November 7 on a home visit the counselor found the worker "living in an apartment without heat, electricity; that leaks. Rent $73.25 a month. Found new apartment near job $75". Then began the special kind of action few of us are familiar with. The counselor had to get the welfare case worker to approve the client's moving up in life to the tune of $1.75 a month. "Spoke to case worker...wouldn't allow (let's call her Mary) to move. No reason given. Action:" The counselor began a series of calls to the case worker and his supervisor, to the Welfare Rights Organization, the director of the Welfare office, and finally got approval for the move. On November 10 the counselor went with the worker to the welfare office for the official OK. They spent the entire day waiting there, but by the end of the day the move was approved. On November 11 a new case worker was assigned and he disapproved the move. That started a whole new series of action. On November 12 the counselor reached the case worker's supervisor and found that a two-year lease was required for approval. That night at 8 p.m. the counselor went to the landlord to explain all this because short-term leases and rent increases for renewals are the pattern in New York City. Finally, on November 17, the worker moved into her new apartment. About two weeks later the counselor wrote that quite a change had come over "Mary". She was even more punctual in her attendance and in her interest in job related education classes, and her attitude about employment had changed for the better. She was well on her way to becoming a valuable employee. I would now like to address myself to some of the points raised in the staff study and in the staff report dealing with one of our employers, Merit Enterprises. At the outset let me focus my remarks on the area for which we have responsibility--provision of the supportive services. I share with the staff study the extreme disappointment that I also know the Merit management feels in the economic conditions which forced the layoff of all employees, both trainees and permanent staff. But I shall remark further on this in my recommendations for improvement of the program, The program of supportive services for employees of Merit Enterprises not only met the provisions of the contract but in my estimation met the best expecations of the trainees and the employer. We met with the fullest cooperation from management. At not inconsiderable expense a training center was established in the vicinity of the plant, experienced teachercounselors hired, and a vocational training expert retained to establish pre-vocational training. Merit management arranged for the daily release on a scheduled basis of all trainees, who were transported to and from the training center by bus. Counselors had free access to the plant, and were able to meet with workers, discuss their problems, and often solve them with careful and guided intervention with supervisors and management. At the training center employees needing English as a Second Language worked with teachers skilled in bilingual instruction. Those whose native tongue was English moved into remedial reading and remedial arithmetic. At the same time, a continuing program of individual and group counselling was maintained, both in the training center and on the job. With At the outset of the program new employees had been introduced to their jobs through an orientation program conducted in the training center. Not only were the formalities of employment and the expectations of the employer covered, but the personal adjustments and problems workers could expect to encounter were also discussed and placed in perspective. the careful coordination of Merit Enterprises, a mock assembly line was constructed and pre-vocational instruction conducted in the center. By this rears trainees were introduced to the tools and equiprent they would be working with in order to reduce the element of surprise and unfamiliarity that can discrient a new and inexperienced worker. I would therefore suggest that while the staff report notes doubts about the program, the record will show an honest and thorough effort to reet program design. This is confirmed in the staff report which quoted the Regional Manpower Administrator's comment that in April, 1969 a review indicated that the services contracted for were in fact being supplied. Records on file in the training center indicate every day's attendance in the job related education program; counselling reports cover the activities of counselors in the plant; and an individual file on each trainee records data helpful to the counselor in following up on his progress. It would be ingenuous to leave the matter at that. It is a fact that the economic downturn vitiated the purposes of the program by forcing Merit to close its plant. We kept on our teacher counselors for months afterward attempting to help trainees find other jobs, receive emergency welfare help, and locate other assistance. No one, not even a training company, can feel satisfied about such an end to a program into which we poured so much effort, talent and company funds. What have we learned about the JOBS program from this experience? Sore of what we have learned has been suggested in the staff report before you, and by the witnesses who have preceded me. But to place our own experiences in context I would like to give the committee a series of recommendations even at the risk of an occasional repetition. First, a real question emerges about the efficacy of the JOBS program in a time of increasing unemployment, tight money and consumer slowdown. The staff report accurately outlines the history of the JOBS program. It was conceived at a time when unemployment was low and heading even lower; the remaining manpower reserves were those needing special assistance and support in order to make them useful to the economy; and the formal classroom vocational training just was not doing the job. As a result we "bought" jobs with the JOBS program. Now things are a bit different. Layoffs hit not only at the entry worker but are cutting into the permanent force. Employers are not expanding production, but in too many cases are cutting back once the building of inventory has been accomplished. This leads to a second recommendation. Second, it would appear that increasing attention should be given to the public sector where so much needs to be done and where there are so few resources. The needs in health and education and social services are documented and known; the limits of local and state revenues are also well known. The suggestion is that some increased attention might well be given to more support of jobs and training in the public sector, where the demand is not at all dependent on the state of the economy. Third, for the remaining jobs in the private sector it would seem appropriate to establish limits below which government assistance will not be provided. Wage rates at or slightly above the statutory minimum should preclude granting of a contract. I can testify from painful experience that the resources poured into the futile effort to locate and hold workers on low-paying jobs could more usefully be spent in providing additional services for fewer, but better-paying, jobs. Our Fourth, the emphasis of the program should be away from the training center and into the plant in all but exceptional cases. company has deliberately embarked on a policy of closing training centers and insisting that employers permit counseling and job related education to be conducted on the plant premises. This provides a closer link with the job, eliminates unnecessary transportation complications, and makes it easier for employers to live up to the terms of the contract. We have used lunchrooms, unused corners of factories, and even mobile trailer classrooms to achieve this objective. Fifth, except in the case of small shops, employers should be encouraged or required to establish and maintain in their own operation the capacity to carry on the necessary services needed for the population for which the program is designed. This will be difficult to achieve and may perhaps limit the expansion of the program; but it may also be a necessary price to pay for the social support requested for the program. In summation, the constructive analysis of the staff study sets the tone for our own experience. A relatively new program, conceived in a time of expansion and increasing employment, has run into difficult days, has faced problems in execution, and is now being given a careful look by persons committed to the objective but properly skeptical of the means to that objective. We have had problems, perhaps more than our share; I think not, however. We have had successes and failures; and we have learned from our experience. The contribution this subcommittee is making to the analysis of the program cannot be measured, but we for one welcome your interest and determination to correct that which is wrong and strengthen and improve that which is working. |