Occupational Training

One man in the classroom earned more than $100,000 framing tract homes during the building heyday. Another installed pools and piloted a backhoe. Behind him sat a young father who made a good living swinging a hammer in southern Utah. But that was before construction jobs vanished like a fast-moving dust storm in this blustery high desert. Hard times have brought them to a classroom in rural Kern County to learn a different trade. Tonight's lesson: how to avoid death and dismemberment.

As usual on Wednesday, dozens of people who are homeless or living in poverty crammed into the lobby at the offices of Chrysalis, a downtown L.A. nonprofit organization. Some hoped to land a spot in hours-long computer and job training courses. Others awaited a course on job-searching for convicted felons. Meanwhile, down the hallway, a coalition of major L.A. firms announced that they had agreed to put up $200,000 over the next two years to enhance the nonprofit's programs. The funds will go toward expanding basic one-day courses into more intensive classes that span several days, in hopes of reducing rampant homelessness and unemployment in the downtown core.

There are about 40 openings for adults and youths in a 10-week job-training program of the Maravilla Foundation, which also runs a youth employment program and free social services. Employers pay for the training and receive half of it back when a trainee completes the program and is hired for permanent work, said Mary Loya, assistant director of the foundation and manager of the jobs programs. Clients receive assistance with bus passes and money for clothing to help them start their jobs.

The people making lunch in this big commercial kitchen are pros; some of them serve thousands of diners a day. But they're not all comfortable using a knife to peel a butternut squash or chop fresh parsley. They work in school cafeterias, "lunch ladies" who are not all women and who would like to be seen more as lunch teachers contributing to the overall education of the children who eat their food. They have been trained in food safety but not always in cooking. Too often, they say, their job has been to heat frozen chicken nuggets or packaged burritos, or to distribute canned fruit, sometimes to the children of people growing and picking fresh produce.

They both have been lifeguards since their teens. Now, Michael Gaughan and Jack Lincke find themselves in need of 60 of those rescue officers of the water. The two Orange County men recently formed a company called U.S. Ocean Safety to provide lifeguards to patrol 15 county-run beaches. "There's never been a call for this many lifeguards at one time before," said Lincke, 44.

Zsuzsa Bakonyi's biggest challenge as a nanny in suburban Indianapolis was trying to keep a straight face. She found it amusing that Americans fretted over foods and fitness, yet loathed getting out of their cars. There were drive-through banks, drive-through restaurants and even movie theaters where you watched from the parking lot.

'It gave us a chance to work with young people--both men and women--who need a second chance in life.' Sophia Ramos glanced at the computer screen with a practiced eye. Her fingers roamed confidently across the keyboard. "I've been here a year and four months, and I've learned a lot," the 18-year-old South Gate resident said, pausing briefly between lessons at the Job Corps training center on South Hill Street in downtown Los Angeles. "They're really concerned about you here," she said.

A leading California foundation plans today to announce a broad campaign to help Los Angeles immigrants become more active citizens with a new $3.75-million, five-year program to help them learn English, improve job skills and increase civic participation. The California Community Foundation in Los Angeles also is set to release a 75-page report that documents the essential and dynamic role immigrants play in the regional economy and suggests ways to help them become even more productive.

Nicole Hamelin was a high school junior and a camp counselor for the Muscular Dystrophy Assn. when she realized what she wanted to do with her life. Now, at age 21, she is where she wants to be, working for people who need her. "For years, I had wished there was more time to do volunteer work" for people with disabilities, she said. "But at that point, classes came first, and every chance I had to work was only part time. Now it is my job and my first priority."

In a sleek new office building, two dozen young Indians are studying the customs of a place none of them has ever seen. One by one, the students present their conclusions about this fabled land. "Americans eat a lot of junk food. Table manners are very casual," says Ritu Khanna. "People are quite self-centered. The average American has 13 credit cards," says Nerissa Dcosta. "Seventy-six percent of the people mistrust the government.

The ninth floor of the Universal Sheraton in Universal City was in disarray as a film crew raced to ready the setting, with only two minutes until star Dominic Monaghan was scheduled to arrive. As one crew member rushed to tape the sprawling cables to the multicolored carpet, another struggled to light the small hallway as hotel guests floated by unfazed. Just another day in Hollywood. But not for this crew. They were all teenagers. While most adolescents would rather spend spring break lounging at a pool -- the hotel windows gave a perfect glimpse of one below -- these teens spent theirs getting a crash course in filmmaking by spending a week shooting two short films all over Los Angeles.

There's a lot of talk about green jobs being the savior for the country's disturbingly high unemployment and underemployment rates. The city of Los Angeles says it is actively working to create some. In a Feb. 24 ceremony on the third floor of L.A.'s City Hall 23 people were awarded certificates for completing a green gardener training course that is seen as a template for creating jobs that will protect the environment. "Since last spring, we've been working on this program to train gardeners in managing and maintaining the designs of the 21st century garden in Southern California, which is a garden that uses drought-tolerant plants and that retains and reuses rainwater," said Paula Daniels, the L.A. Board of Public Works commissioner who helped pioneer the program.

Job retraining programs traditionally have focused on helping hourly, blue-collar workers switch to careers outside the factory. Now laid-off managers and high-wage workers are getting some attention as well. Unemployed Californians can apply for job-retraining funds to pay for upper-level certificate programs in sectors such as entertainment and healthcare at UCLA Extension, one of the region's largest providers of continuing education. Cathy Sandeen, dean of UCLA Extension, announced the new program Thursday, saying it would address the changing needs of today's workforce.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger today will lay out plans to spend $500 million on worker training in an effort to create 100,000 jobs, along with other measures to stimulate the economy, as a centerpiece of his policy agenda for his final year in office. Schwarzenegger is set to announce the proposal this morning in his last State of the State address to lawmakers, in an attempt to stem the bleeding of jobs in a state that had a November unemployment rate of 12.3%. The new spending to train workers is part of a five-pronged proposal Schwarzenegger is calling the California Jobs Initiative, according to a draft obtained by The Times.

Students are welding the old to the new at Rosie the Riveter High School. The Long Beach charter school was created in 2007 to help prepare teenage girls for careers as welders, plumbers, carpenters, electricians and other trades. Today, its 50-member student body includes girls and boys, but its organizers still attempt to break down barriers for women seeking careers in what largely remains a man's world. "It's about trying to change the way society looks at women," said Lynn Shaw, who helped create Rosie the Riveter High.

A city-sponsored training academy for gang intervention workers will open at least a year later than Los Angeles officials had hoped after a collision of philosophies and egos -- a hitch in the city's effort to modernize its campaign against street violence. Officials said this week that an independent panel has selected the Advancement Project, the legal advocacy, civil rights and public policy group, as the winner of a bidding process to run the academy. But that bid was never supposed to occur.

Marvin Diaz quit a $700-a-week job delivering magazines to learn how to drive a public transit bus. He excelled behind the wheel but flunked out of the training program. The native Nicaraguan speaks English but had trouble reading and comprehending the test questions. "It was a little confusing," said Diaz, 38, of Sun Valley.

With consumers trying out new fireproof roofing materials in response to the recent California wildfires, cities and counties across the state are adopting new training techniques for firefighters and instructors. The training includes learning how to deal with the new roofing materials. One such material is stone-coated steel roofing, which manufacturers say resists collapse even when an underlying roof structure has burned through.

His style is a mix of Socrates and Don Rickles. His goal is to coax, bully, tease, demand and manipulate ex-convicts into getting ready to find a job. One of the first chores is to get them to drop the habits they picked up behind bars: lying, faking, refusing to make eye contact, getting verbally aggressive when disrespected, thinking of the whole world as just another overbearing prison guard. Scott Silverman is relentless. "You're doing that thing again, something between a smirk and what you call a smile," he tells one student.

A state panel that hands out worker training funds to employers delayed voting on a $2-million request from a soon-to-close Bay Area automaker that builds Toyotas. Panel members said Friday that before agreeing to reimburse the factory for training autoworkers, they wanted to know more about when the plant's partners knew they were closing the last automobile factory in California. The factory, New United Motor Manufacturing Inc. in Fremont, is a joint venture between Toyota Motor Corp.