Job Training Partnership Act

Labor Secretary Elizabeth Hanford Dole proposed changes in the nation's main jobs program for the poor that she said would direct aid and training to those most at risk of failure in the employment market. "Those without basic skills are on a one-way street to a dead-end future," Dole said in announcing a package of proposed amendments to the Job Training Partnership Act. At the heart of her proposal is a Youth Opportunities Unlimited program, which would offer "challenge grants" to communities with large numbers of economically disadvantaged youths and young adults.

Your May 22 editorial, "Finding Jobs for the Least Ready," missed a very important fact: The Economic Roundtable's recent report indicated that the unemployment rate in L.A. County is double the official count. That means that despite all the hoopla about this great economy, between 500,000 and 600,000 people are still out of work. The report indicated that 10% of all jobs in the county were lost between 1990 and 1994, and those jobs have yet to be replaced. Your focus on reporting the needs of those coming off welfare is well-intentioned, but an investigation into the bigger picture of those who once had good jobs and can't get back into the work force is long overdue by The Times.

The Bush Administration on Thursday proposed rewriting the nation's premier job-training program to target most spending on the unskilled poor and teen-agers and to hinge some federal money on improvements in state training and education efforts. The program was co-authored by Vice President Dan Quayle when he was a member of the Senate. The suggested amendments to the Job Training Partnership Act answer most criticisms of the program and are substantially in line with changes proposed by several congressional Democrats, prompting Republicans and Democrats alike to predict passage of a revised program this year.

Applications are being accepted for a federally funded program that pays qualified applicants while they earn GED credits and learn skills that will help them find jobs, officials at a job training center announced. The Job Training Partnership Act program (JTPA) was designed for economically disadvantaged citizens and places a strong emphasis on enrolling young people between the ages of 16 and 21, said Charlotte Forte-Taylor, case manager at the Pacoima Skills Center.

Regarding the Oct. 18 labor column, "Quayle's Legislative Pride and Joy Nothing to Brag About": The Los Angeles County Private Industry Council's experience with running one of the largest employment and training programs in the nation simply does not jibe with labor columnist Harry Bernstein's view of the Job Training Partnership Act. JTPA participants in Los Angeles County do, in fact, benefit in measurable ways from having been trained and...

The South Bay Service Delivery Area, an eight-city consortium that provides jobs and training for the unemployed, has received a $1 million contract from Northrop Corp., which has agreed to train and hire about 150 people in the area. Most of the jobs will be at Northrop's Hawthorne facilities, and will include such entry-level positions as stock clerks, timekeepers, office clerks, data clerks and structural assembler trainees.

For the third consecutive year, the South Bay Private Industry Council has been awarded an additional $194,791 for exceeding state Job Training Partnership Office standards. The council--made up of El Segundo, Gardena, Hawthorne, Hermosa Beach, Inglewood, Lawndale, Manhattan Beach and Redondo Beach--achieved an 82% placement rate for adults who completed the program.

The Los Angeles City Council on Wednesday approved a $534,000 yearlong pilot program to provide job training for up to 100 gang members. The Watts Labor Community Action Committee will direct the program for gang members in the South-Central Los Angeles area. Steve Porter of the city's Community Development Department said the pilot program aims to get the gang members "into permanent employment, get them back into school or into the military, and for them to renounce their gang affiliation."

The Los Angeles City Council gave initial approval Friday to a job program designed to train 167 people to provide in-home care for AIDS patients. The council voted 10 to 0 to start looking for a contractor to organize the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome In-Home Care Training Project, which could be the first program of its kind in the nation.

Seventeen-year-old Maria Lua is fielding angry phone calls for the mayor, 17-year-old Belen Chavez is typing up to 55 words per minute, and 15-year-old Albert Aguilar is looking forward to his first paycheck. "I kind of listen to (angry phone callers) and try to get them to the right person," said Lua, who works as an administrative assistant in Mayor Tom Daly's office. "Because I am not the right person." The mayor is "nice," she added.

Nearly 3,000 disadvantaged youths in Orange County will be placed in summer jobs this year under federally funded programs administered by three Private Industry Councils--but the $4.8 million in funding is about $100,000 less than was available last year. The funds, administered through the federal Job Training Partnership Act, will be used to pay for minimum-wage summer jobs for low-income high school and college students, officials said.

When Vladimir Shtipelman arrived in California from Moscow in April, 1991, he fully expected life to be a challenge. But he had no idea to what extent. A successful design engineer in Russia, the 56-year-old Muscovite found that his skills were woefully antiquated. That frustrating fact, as well as his limited ability to communicate in English and the lingering U.S. recession kept him out of the job market for more than a year.

This summer was shaping up to be like any other for 15-year-old twins Nancy and Gabby Marmolejo, whose only plans were to stay home and hang out with friends. But a call last month from Councilwoman Maria Moreno to the girls' father changed their summer agenda. Moreno was recruiting participants for a work-study program she was starting and asked if any of Marmolejo's eight children would be interested. "My father said we would do it," Nancy Marmolejo said.

Georgia Doty left an alcoholic husband in Minnesota, took her four kids and headed by train for Los Angeles. She found a job as a respiratory therapist and, on the side, created a makeshift medical trade school to train unskilled poor people. Within four years Doty was dead. She left a teetering nonprofit school and a deathbed demand to her children to keep it alive. Fourteen years later, Technical Health Careers School in South Los Angeles is alive and still teetering.

The Bush Administration today proposed rewriting the nation's major job training program, which was co-authored by Vice President Dan Quayle, to direct most spending to the poor and teen-agers. It also warned states that their programs will have to be improved to receive federal support. "For years, the government has been distributing money to youth programs in a fragmented and piecemeal fashion, and sometimes without clear expectations of what these youths should achieve," Labor Secretary Elizabeth Hanford Dole told the Senate subcommittee on employment and productivity.

Harry Bernstein's recent labor column titled "The Missing Element in Job Training: Jobs" (Oct. 1) is somewhat flawed. I would like to take exception to his comments concerning the Job Training Partnership Act. As a work experience coordinator in the Tustin Unified School District, I have first-hand knowledge of the effectiveness of several of the JTPA programs designed for youth. One such program called PEST (Pre-employment Skills Training) requires that at least 30% of the student participants be placed in unsubsidized employment at the completion of training.

The Bush Administration and Congress have been intensively studying workplace issues ranging from job training for the disadvantaged to the invisible "glass ceiling" barrier of discrimination that keeps minorities and women from moving up America's corporate ranks. The trouble is, almost nothing is being done about the disturbing findings, and just defining problems isn't good enough.

Out of work and fresh out of jail, Sean Kingaard in April learned a bitter lesson in household economics: Nobody wants to hire a convicted felon. "I kept trying (to get work), but I couldn't get anything," said Kingaard,who along with his newlywed wife, Jessica, lived in a car while he searched for employment. "It was pretty bad there for a while."