Unskilled Workers

U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles) said the city has secured a five-year, $7-million federal grant to help train unskilled workers between the ages of 17 and 30 in South-Central Los Angeles. The Labor Department funding, which will include a first-year allocation of $3 million, will be channeled through Community Build, a coalition that Waters founded in 1992.

Re "The minimum-wage debate," Opinion, March 10 Andy Stern and Carl Camden effectively address the flawed arguments against raising the minimum wage given by Kevin A. Hassett and Michael R. Strain . Specifically, Stern and Camden cite recent studies indicating that raising the minimum wage has a "limited, almost negligible effect, on employment. " In other words, it is not a job killer. As for Hassett's and Strain's claim that expanding the earned income tax credit is a more effective tool in fighting poverty, Stern and Camden argue correctly that the tax credit amounts to a federal subsidy for low-wage employers and, in effect, contributes to a devaluation of work.

Ronald Jackson, known as O. G. Raider when he ran with the Santana Block of the Compton Crips, once had a limited resume. There was just one entry--drug dealer. Then he did 4 1/2 years in state prison. Not much of a recommendation for a job-seeker. But a chance contact led to work on the reconstruction of the Sears store in Hollywood, which was looted, torched in five places and waterlogged after the spring riots.

Re "Who should pay?," Letters, Feb. 2 Many people say illegal immigrants should just go back home and stand in line like anyone else. That sounds reasonable only if you know nothing about how immigration visas are actually granted. In Mexico, demand exceeds the supply of slots available to people who want to emigrate to the U.S. Immediate family members of U.S. citizens (not just legal immigrants) typically must wait more than 10 years. For unskilled workers, it is almost impossible to legally emigrate to the U.S. from Mexico.

Commentators increasingly worry about the decline in middle-class jobs. The U.S. economy has produced 35 million new jobs since 1972, a record that is the envy of other industrialized nations. But many of these jobs pay too little to buy a middle-class lifestyle. After decades of erratic but robust increase, earnings growth has virtually ceased in recent years.

As a community college student, I am glad to read about the honorable governor's 1993-94 budget proposal for higher education. Yes! Let the tuition be raised and make the students who can't afford to go to private institutions suffer in the mire of faultless public education. I'm also hoping to see the glorious future of California, which would be filled with many ignorant and unskilled workers. ERIC SHUI La Mirada

J. Eugene Grigsby's column "Electronics Data Add Up for Affirmative Action" [Times Board of Advisors, Dec. 14] demonstrated that while better educated, better qualified African Americans do find work in the electronics field, they are passed over for entry level jobs which primarily go to immigrants. He feels that this confirms the need for affirmative action in hiring. In fact it confirms the need for stopping the flow of immigrants competing with our own people for entry level jobs.

With typical shortsightedness, United Auto Workers has struck GM brake plants ("3,000 Workers Walk Off Jobs at Two GM Brake Factories," March 6). The issue: outsourcing. What the UAW fails to recognize is that every strike moves the industry closer to more outsourcing, more manufacturing overseas and ultimately more jobs lost. The UAW is shooting itself in the foot as well as endangering the livelihoods of workers in related industries. It is time that these overpaid, selfish, unskilled workers realize how lucky they are and look at the big picture instead of just the next boat payment or big-screen TV purchase.

Joshua Schippe's letter (May 20) in support of the editorial arguing for an increased minimum wage ("A Decent Wage," April 27) is a perfect illustration of the ignorance which persists on the issue of the minimum wage. Schippe writes: "My father offered me a job for this summer paying slightly less than minimum wage. I know I shouldn't complain--it's the best offer I have right now." Schippe fails to recognize that a principal reason why he has only one job offer, and that it is for less than minimum wage, is that the minimum wage inflates the true value of labor and produces lower employment, particularly for those with less quality education, training, and experience.

The chart that accompanied the guardedly optimistic article "Golden State's Luster Not Worn Off Yet" (Jan. 8) presented contrasts between New England and California economics but failed to address some serious underlying problems. Just because California is not overbuilt, as New England is, does not mean real estate prices won't eventually fall as sharply. Thousands of homes here require two incomes to stay out of foreclosure. Many of these are owned by high-tech, defense and finance industry employees.

Kazuo Okawa's luckless career as a "nuclear gypsy" began one night at a poker game. The year was 1992, and jobs were scarce in this farming town in the shadow of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. An unemployed Okawa gambled and drank a lot. He was dealing cards when a stranger made him an offer: manage a crew of unskilled workers at the nearby plant. "Just gather a team of young guys and show up at the front gate; I'll tell you what to do," instructed the man, who Okawa later learned was a recruiter for a local job subcontracting firm.

Shortly after dawn, the day laborers began gathering beneath a San Diego Freeway overpass in West Los Angeles. A house painter pulled up in a pickup, looking for an assistant. He offered $12 an hour. A worker jumped in. Next to arrive was a white-haired woman driving a Honda. Her garden needed a makeover. She'd pay $11 an hour. She departed with a second worker. On the freeway above, commuters were heading to offices in Century City and El Segundo. Down here, at the West L.A.

According to columnist Michael Hiltzik ("Border Policy Is Pinching Farmers," Golden State, Sept. 22), the only option America has regarding illegal immigration is to change our immigration policies again to favor those who violate them by legalizing millions of those who have blatantly broken our laws and those who profit from their labor. In 1986, "we the people" were promised better enforcement, only to find millions of illiterate, unskilled workers flooding our cities, destroying our public education and social service systems.

"We're Partners in This Crime," the headline on Andres Martinez's May 18 Commentary column, is absolutely correct. As for solutions, they begin by acknowledging that President Bush's "willing workers" concept is little more than a national job fair for businesses and private residents that don't want to pay living wages. A "willing worker" is generally a desperately poor, unskilled individual from the Third World seeking almost any kind of work. A "willing employer" is generally a mercenary and conniving firm or individual offering employment to willing workers at non-living wages and with terrible working conditions.

There is something about the illegal alien problem that reminds me of that parental game we play on kids at Christmas. "Santa's coming, Santa's coming. Tell Santa what you want." Then when the kids are nearly delirious after a month of anticipation, we scold, "Stop it. Wait your turn." It must be hard on a man to know of all the work that's right over the border but be told to wait his turn. To be hungry, or see your children hungry, gives a man few choices. Outside my window is a group of Mexican men eating their lunches, day laborers hired to repair my landlord's roof.

One of the unheralded benefits of Southern California becoming the trade crossroads of the world is that it offers hundreds of local unskilled workers a chance at really good job training. More than $3.6 billion worth of rail construction projects are now being built in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties, with good jobs for construction workers, economic benefits for the region--and an innovation. The innovation is training.

There is something about the illegal alien problem that reminds me of that parental game we play on kids at Christmas. "Santa's coming, Santa's coming. Tell Santa what you want." Then when the kids are nearly delirious after a month of anticipation, we scold, "Stop it. Wait your turn." It must be hard on a man to know of all the work that's right over the border but be told to wait his turn. To be hungry, or see your children hungry, gives a man few choices. Outside my window is a group of Mexican men eating their lunches, day laborers hired to repair my landlord's roof.

According to columnist Michael Hiltzik ("Border Policy Is Pinching Farmers," Golden State, Sept. 22), the only option America has regarding illegal immigration is to change our immigration policies again to favor those who violate them by legalizing millions of those who have blatantly broken our laws and those who profit from their labor. In 1986, "we the people" were promised better enforcement, only to find millions of illiterate, unskilled workers flooding our cities, destroying our public education and social service systems.

J. Eugene Grigsby's column "Electronics Data Add Up for Affirmative Action" [Times Board of Advisors, Dec. 14] demonstrated that while better educated, better qualified African Americans do find work in the electronics field, they are passed over for entry level jobs which primarily go to immigrants. He feels that this confirms the need for affirmative action in hiring. In fact it confirms the need for stopping the flow of immigrants competing with our own people for entry level jobs.

With typical shortsightedness, United Auto Workers has struck GM brake plants ("3,000 Workers Walk Off Jobs at Two GM Brake Factories," March 6). The issue: outsourcing. What the UAW fails to recognize is that every strike moves the industry closer to more outsourcing, more manufacturing overseas and ultimately more jobs lost. The UAW is shooting itself in the foot as well as endangering the livelihoods of workers in related industries. It is time that these overpaid, selfish, unskilled workers realize how lucky they are and look at the big picture instead of just the next boat payment or big-screen TV purchase.