In the News
June 16, 1998, Tuesday
Metropolitan Desk
Some Private Efforts See Success In Job Hunt for Those on Welfare
By ALAN FINDER In a corner of a bright, spacious industrial kitchen, Linda Williams chops artichoke hearts for garlicky crostini. Nearby, other workers mince ginger for a chicken sate marinade or blend catfish with eggs and flour for tiny fish cakes.
The assemblage of high-end hors d'oeuvres is commonplace in a city with sophisticated culinary tastes, but two facts make the bustling scene noteworthy: the kitchen is in the middle of the South Bronx, and Miss Williams and most of her fellow workers are on welfare.
They are members of a new four-month training program intended to give them enough skills and experience to qualify for entry-level jobs in restaurant and hotel kitchens. The class is among dozens of new, innovative efforts in New York City and around the country by private groups -- most but not all of them nonprofit -- to move people from welfare to work.
In many ways, these small-scale programs represent a sharp counterpoint to New York City's mammoth workfare program, in which more than 32,000 welfare recipients sweep streets and answer phones in city agencies in return for public assistance. Proponents say the private approaches offer more promise because they teach people specific skills and provide many routes out of welfare -- instead of just handing recipients a broom or ordering them to file papers, as New York's program typically does.
In a series of articles published in April about workfare, The New York Times found little evidence that the program had provided many participants in New York City with marketable skills or that it had helped significant numbers of people leave welfare for full-time jobs.
Many of the new programs have shown intriguing results, however, often because they identify growing sectors of the local economy and then provide short-term training for jobs in those industries. A nonprofit group, working with a major brokerage house, has moved 52 mothers on welfare into jobs as administrative assistants and service representatives over the last three years. Another nonprofit group, linked with a hotel chain, has helped 24 single adults on welfare get full-time hotel jobs in the last year.
Even proponents of these programs acknowledge that these numbers are small, but they do suggest that combining specific, short-term training with work experience can lead people to full-time jobs. Independent experts who study welfare around the country say small-scale models sometimes cannot be adapted to the large-scale needs of cities and states, which have to move hundreds of thousands of welfare recipients into the labor force under the overhaul of welfare approved by Congress in 1996.
But proponents say some of the new welfare-to-work programs could readily be expanded to help more people.
A much admired small, private program in Chicago called Project Match has been reconfigured for use on a broader scale in a conventional welfare center there as well as in Iowa, Ohio, Tennessee and Maryland.
Since research shows that workfare has not moved many people into full-time jobs in cities and towns around the country over the last 20 years, many experts say local and state governments have incentive to try some newer approaches.
That may apply particularly in places with high unemployment, like New York, where the basic strategy used in most states -- simply sending out welfare recipients to search for jobs -- has had only mixed success.
''There are a lot of different things that can work, and the most important thing that a city or state can do is not to impose a narrow idea of what welfare reform can be,'' said Julie Strawn, a senior policy analyst at the Center for Law and Social Policy, a Washington-based research and advocacy group.
Even New York City, with by far the nation's largest workfare program, has shown interest in combining work with training. About 12 percent of workfare participants also take classes for a high school equivalency degree or in basic English.
In rare cases, welfare recipients are given workfare credit for participating in an experimental program.
Miss Williams for example, is technically in workfare, even though she spends her days learning how to cook. A cheerful 45-year-old mother of five who has been on public assistance longer than she cares to say, Miss Williams knows first-hand the limitations of conventional workfare. ''I was working in the Bronx criminal courts, cleaning up toilets,'' she said. ''It was awful. There was no future in it.''
Since March, she has come every weekday to the industrial kitchen on the ground floor of a former hospital that was renovated by a nonprofit group, the Women's Housing and Economic Development Corporation, on East 168th Street in the Morrisania section of the Bronx.
The 10-story building has 132 apartments and vast space to accommodate a health clinic, the kitchen complex and a day-care training center, among other things.
Miss Williams, one of nine students in the culinary program's first class, has learned basic cooking skills, food handling and sanitation as well as job-search techniques in the all-day program. ''I'm learning so much here and I love it,'' she said.
When Miss Williams and her classmates complete the course next month, they should be ready to work as prep-cooks in professional kitchens.
An essential part of their training has been preparing hors d'oeuvres and other foods for the organization's new food service, which has catered events for the Legal Aid Society, the Ms. Foundation and other nonprofit organizations.
''Getting people off of welfare and creating jobs go hand in hand,'' said Nancy Biberman, president of the Women's Housing and Economic Development Corporation. ''You've got to do both.''
The Programs: Offering Flexibility On the Path to a Job
The new welfare-to-work programs share some important characteristics. Most emphasize flexibility, offering participants an array of paths to work. Many train people for specific jobs by linking with corporations. And many are strikingly entrepreneurial.
The nonprofit sponsors still depend heavily on government financing. They supplement these revenues with money from their own businesses and with fees that corporations sometimes pay while welfare participants are in training.
Besides the catering service, the women's development corporation trains welfare mothers to become licensed home day-care providers. The corporation also teamed up with a for-profit company, America Works, to teach welfare recipients job-readiness skills and interviewing techniques before sending them out to find a job. America Works gets paid only when someone is hired.
''There are a lot of options for people here,'' Ms. Biberman said. ''This is not a one-size-fits-all approach.''
The same could be said for another nonprofit group that got its start in building housing for the poor, the Common Ground Community. The group rebuilt the Times Square Hotel, a 652-room S.R.O. on West 43d Street and Eighth Avenue, four years ago, filling it with a combination of the working poor and people who were once homeless. Common Ground offers an array of welfare-to-work programs, many of which involve experience in its own businesses, including an ice cream shop and a catering center.
At any time, about 70 welfare recipients work part time in these enterprises while also taking classes in stress management, conflict resolution and job-search techniques. Within six to nine months, most are ready to look for a private-sector job. About 110 participants have found full-time jobs in the last two years, said Justine Zinkin, the group's director of work force development.
Common Ground also works in New York with the Marriott Hotels Corporation, which offers a six-week job training program for welfare recipients selected by Common Ground. Marriott promises to hire anyone who completes the program for positions in housekeeping and room service, in the hotels' restaurants and as phone operators. In the year since the program began, 26 welfare recipients began the training, 24 completed it and 22 are still working for Marriott.
The Participants:Keeping Trainees From Sliding Back
Sobriety is usually a prerequisite to move from welfare to work. Single adults on welfare often have a history of alcohol or drug abuse, so many programs make abstinence a central requirement.
A nonprofit organization called the Doe Fund is among those that structure welfare-to-work programs to discourage participants from sliding back into drinking or drugs. For the last three years, the fund has supervised dozens of single men who sweep the streets and sidewalks of the Upper East Side in bright blue uniforms that highlight the name of their effort: Ready, Willing and Able. The men, 150 in all, are required to live in two residences run by the Doe Fund.
Nearly all the men were once homeless and on welfare. Now they are off welfare, making at least $5.50 an hour keeping streets clean. In return, they take evening classes in job readiness and computers, and work with case managers and job counselors to move toward independent jobs.
''We're not a drug-treatment program, but all of our participants have a history with drugs,'' said George McDonald, the Doe Fund's president. ''We combined the payment of money with a contract that said, 'This is what we're going to do and this is what you're going to do. And one of those things is that you're going to be subject to drug testing, all the time.' ''
Participants graduate when they obtain a full-time job and their own apartment, which can take 12 to 18 months. Each graduate gets a $1,000 bonus.
When the effort began nearly a decade ago, only 24 percent of participants obtained permanent jobs. The proportion now is 54 percent, Mr. McDonald said, with graduates getting entry-level jobs in maintenance, security, sales and construction.
To critics who say the program's cost -- $24,000 a year for each participant -- is too high, Mr. McDonald notes that it is similar to keeping someone in a city homeless shelter for a year. ''We've kept people who spent their lives in jail and on drugs out of jail and off drugs,'' he said. ''To what extent can you not afford to replicate this?''
James Chisolm, 47, has been sweeping the sidewalks of East 84th Street five days a week since February. He worked for many years as an electrician but had not worked for the last five years because of a drug habit. He says his life has now begun to stabilize.
Mr. Chisolm wears six plastic key rings on a clip attached to his belt, one for each month he has been drug-free. ''So far, so good,'' he said.
The Opportunities: Brokerage Jobs After 32 Weeks
For 25 years, the Wildcat Service Corporation has been training welfare recipients for jobs. But few of the nonprofit group's programs have taken off quite like one it devised three years ago, when it persuaded Salomon Smith Barney, the financial services company, to join an experiment.
Wildcat Services trains welfare mothers for 16 weeks in computer software, business English and math and various life skills, like dealing with an unpleasant supervisor. The trainees then go to Salomon Smith Barney for a 16-week internship, after which the company can hire whomever it chooses.
So far, the corporation has hired 52 interns, or about 75 percent of those who completed the program. Many of those not hired were placed at other brokerage houses. Of those hired by Salomon Smith Barney, at an average starting salary of $24,000 a year, more than 90 percent are still there.
Salomon Smith Barney now wants to hire 65 people a year through the program. It works, many executives involved say, because Wildcat selects women who are motivated and have at least a high school equivalency degree, and trains them for specific jobs, like administrative assistants or telephone service representatives.
''I've never had a government agency or a nonprofit come to me and say, 'Tell me what you need and we'll train people specifically for that,' '' said Barbara A. Silvan, a senior vice president in charge of human resources at Salomon Smith Barney. The company saves money in several ways, including recruiting costs and retention (a larger proportion of people hired through Wildcat stay at the company than do ordinary hires).
Jamie Dimon, the co-chief executive of Salmon Smith Barney, has been talking up the program to other Wall Street executives. ''I've been saying: 'Guys, this works. You get high quality people, high retention. This will save you money,' '' Mr. Dimon said.
''If you want to do it because it's good for the country and our city, I think that's sufficient to try things. I also think that having the business logic is excellent.''