Sidebilder
PDF
ePub

seven job developers spends full time contacting employers in the city through direct knowledge, referrals, or through leads provided by the newspaper ads. They sell on-the-job training. They are salesmen for on-the-job training.

At the other end are the neighborhood employment offices, storefront offices in the inner-city neighborhoods, staffed by State employment service personnel, CPI professional staffs and neighborhood workers who are indigenous to their neighborhoods. This combined staff does the recruitment, the processing, the counseling, and the job referral. They also provide such supportive services as may prove necessary for the applicant during this training process.

The job developers work closely with both the employers and the neighborhood employment service.

The Bureau of Apprentice Training takes no more than 1 week once the contract is signed-that is once it is negotiated locally-takes no more than 1 week to sign it and return it to our local office. We are then responsible for supervising the training and for providing those services that are necessary to both the employer and the employee.

Now we are extremely fortunate perhaps and other communities, I am told, are not so fortunate in that we have developed an excellent working relationship with the Bureau of Apprenticeship Training, the Department of Labor, the State employment service, the State vocational department, and the local educational departments. If any single one of these is not on the team and not cooperating, the implementation of an on-the-job training program can be an extremely frustrating business. In this respect the New Haven experience has been a very favorable one

I know from my experience with other cities that where they have failed to develop this kind of cooperative relationship, it has not been quite so favorable.

I think that if we can solve this problem, one which is mainly a bureaucratic problem, that is a problem of bureaucracies with conflicting interests, interests which should not be conflicting, but which for one reason or another are, on-the-job training could be much more effectively implemented in all of those cities where we now have community action programs established.

Senator KENNEDY of Massachusetts. How do you approach an employer? What do you ask him? How do you stimulate the kind of interest and encourage these people to go ahead and take advantage of your services?

Mr. SVIRIDOFF. Well, we explain to him, first of all, that we can provide him with the kind of tools which he cannot afford. First of all, we can provide him with an effective recruitment arm, with the kind of counseling services which he could not possibly afford, with training advice and training supervision, and, finally, we can provide him with the funds necessary to pay for the cost of overhead, scrap, and for training time. In some cases, we can help him satisfy the needs of his conscience, too. Many small employers would like to employ Negroes and feel a strong sense of responsibility to bring Negroes into their industry.

You will notice, too, in this job listing a number of apprentice positions in some of the building trades, and even in the printing trades. where it has been difficult to place Negroes. And so it is by making it

possible for many employers to do what they could not possibly do by themselves that employers are persuaded to try on-the-job training. We have a very good product to sell.

Senator MURPHY. From your experience what incentives would you suggest? Or what is your feeling about the suggestion of tax incentive? In other words, when you speak about expanding this activity, which is the thing that we are searching

Mr. SVIRIDOFF. Frankly, I did not hear about the tax incentive idea until this morning and I listened to the discussion with some interest. My immediate reaction would be one of caution on this. I would be concerned primarily because the kinds of assistance I just described could not be purchased by the smaller employer with a 7-percent tax credit. I mean, where with the 7-percent tax credit is he going to buy the recruitment

Senator MURPHY. I say, in other words, he needs you. As you have explained this, and I think it is important, you are an important person here.

Mr. SVIRIDOFF. The chances are the small employer is not going to have that kind of money to do it unless he pooled it with other small employers. I would worry about the tax credit, because I cannot help. but sense that this would be of use primarily to the large employer who does not need these services to the extent that the small employer needs them. My experience-our experience with on-the-job training to date is that this is an effective tool, but primarily for small- and middle-sized business, at least in terms of the local labor market.

The tax credit, I think, would redound to the advantage of those who need it least-namely, large industry. The small employer would not have the means through which he could pool these credits and purchase these services which now are offered to him. It is not likely that he would take the iniative to pool credits for on-the-job training.

The initiative now is either in a public agency or, as in this case in New Haven, in a quasi-public agency similar to many other community action agencies around the country.

Senator MURPHY. That is very interesting.

Senator KENNEDY of Massachusetts. May I ask, in looking through and reviewing the record of the people you have trained, it seems there is a predominance of training of younger workers.

Mr. SVIRIDOFF. That is because this started as a youth project. Senator KENNEDY of Massachusetts. I see. Would you comment on generally what can be done as far as the training of older and displaced workers is concerned?

Mr. SVIRIDOFF. In fact, the manpower director of our project is sitting with me here today, because we have a 2 o'clock meeting with the Office of Manpower, Automation, and Training, to discuss taking these very same techniques which we have used successfully with young people and using them for the older worker, too.

The work crew idea, followed by a detached work crew experience— that is, taking an individual who is working first in a small group and developing skills and the ability to work in a new setting and then spinning him off into a detached setting and then into institutional training or on-the-job training. There is no reason why these same. techniques cannot be used with the older worker. We will be discussing with the Office of Manpower, Automation, and Training this

afternoon the possibilities of doing this for the next year as a demonstration to prove that these very techniques-the techniques which have worked with young workers-can work just as effectively with the old worker.

Senator KENNEDY of Massachusetts. You would feel that there is a critical need for adopting techniques to help and assist training of older workers as well as young people?

Mr. SVIRIDOFF. That is correct. In our anxiety to get at this very critical problem of the unemployed youth, we have probably neglected the older worker and I think we have to correct the balance.

Senator KENNEDY of Massachusetts. Could you, for the record explain how this corporation has been established, where it gets its funds?

Mr. SVIRIDOFF. Community Progress, Inc., is a nonprofit corporation which was established in the spring of 1962 with a Ford Foundation grant, very similar to ABCD in Boston with which I am sure you are acquainted, received its second grant from the President's Committee on Delinquency, then a major grant from OMAT, and then from the Office of Economic Opportunity and various other funding

sources.

The corporation represents all of the important public and private interests in the community.

Senator KENNEDY of Massachusetts. Senator Javits has arrived and has been interested in this subject. We have had a very interesting and full morning, Senator Javits.

Do you have any questions?

Senator JAVITS. I have just been briefed on what-I understand that Senator Clark read my statement into the record. I appreciate it very much. I am very deeply concerned with this problem. I gather that the witness is not especially enthusiastic about the tax credit idea for training.

Mr. SVIRIDOFF. Well, I must explain, Senator Javits, that, as I said earlier, I heard about this idea for the first time this morning. I read one mention of it in the newspapers a few days ago, and my reaction is an almost visceral one and not one that I have given careful thought to. But sometimes visceral reactions are sounder than intellectual ones. Senator MURPHY. May I ask a question now?

When you contact an employer and you have an individual that needs on-the-job training, is there any charge for the service? Mr. SVIRIDOFF. There is no charge.

Senator MURPHY. In the event, for instance, if there is a cost to the employer, do you reimburse him?

Mr. SVIRIDOFF. Well, a contract is made with the employer under which he is paid up to $30 a week for a period of up to 26 weeks to cover the cost of training, of overhead, and of scrap resulting from the training process. He pays a minimum of $1.50 an hour, which means a minimum salary of $60 a week during the training period, but guarantees a job if the individual acquires the necessary skill.

And 93 percent or more have acquired the skill and are fully employed now. So he does receive reimbursement for these costs.

Senator JAVITS. The thing I did want to ask you is this: What are your practical suggestions? Mr. Kurzman tells me you have testified you want an increase in the manpower training program, and you

think that kind of playing the middle of the line is the best way instead of trying any end runs or forward passes, but what would you recommend to improve the program?

For example, would you recommend anything in the way of paying the employer more, making it possible for the employer to pay more in an on-the-job training operation than is now paid, or in any other recommendations that you would have for beefing up the on-the-job training or other aspects of the manpower training program.

Mr. SVIRIDOFF. I would make three recommendations:

First, we need more on-the-job training. We need more funds to do more of what is working and working, I think, very effectively. Second, we have to come to grips with the bureaucratic problems, the bureaucratic complications which are presently interferring with full effectiveness of the program at the local level.

Third, I think we have to put great stress-I would say this is the most important recommendation-we have to find ways of developing effective comprehensive, coherent manpower programs at the local level. We cannot look at on-the-job training alone as an instrument to solve the manpower problem. Neither can institutional training by itself solve the problem. The Neighborhood Youth Corps cannot by itself solve the manpower problem. Nor can the Job Corps, direct placement services, counseling services, or any of these other excellent instruments, by themselves, make much difference.

We have to find a way of taking all of these tools and putting them into one package and under effective, coordinative leadership.

Now, this is a very difficult thing to do. And this means that we have to develop greater competency at the local level while at the national level we find ways of breaking through the "bureaucratic complications." We have to make it possible for local people, as they develop the competency to obtain and use these various tools, to use them as part of a comprehensive program.

You will find that many of these people who have gone through on-the-job training, have first been through a work crew experience or through institutional training or a combination of on-the-job training and institutional training at the same time.

Senator JAVITS. Who would you have administer this at the local level?

Mr. SVIRIDOFF. Well, in New Haven and in many other cities where programs of this type are beginning to show results-Pittsburgh, Detroit, Atlanta, the cities that are getting out in front on this the programs are administered by the community action agency, which in some cases are private, as it is in New Haven, in other cases public.

I do not think it makes a great deal of difference. I think this is a matter that should be determined locally. In some local situations the private nonprofit corporation is the most effective instrument. In other local situations, it would be more appropriate to have it administered by a public body.

Senator JAVITS. So you want to give all the tools into one hand, as it were, and give the communities a choice as to what that hand should be?

Mr. SVIRIDOFF. That is right.

Senator JAVITS. Where do you think the State fits in this matter? There is a lot of talk around here about the States, about the fact they want to veto or they do not want a veto, or they want something to say, or they want to be consulted.

I am giving you all the variables.

Mr. SVIRIDOFF. The State already has the tools. The State will be important or unimportant depending on whether it uses these tools effectively. The same applies to the city. The city is going to have the tools and it will hold the tools if it uses them effectively. Otherwise either the State or the Federal Government will move in and fill the vacuum. But the State now is responsible for the employment service, apprentice training, vocational education, for the handling of educational funds under the new Federal act. And so the State has tremendous authority and responsibility here, but the State cannot do this job without an effective local instrument. Even with an effective local instrument the job cannot be done unless there is a coherent, comprehensive instrument at the State level.

Very often States are complaining because they are losing authority when they have taken no initiative to use effectively the instruments they already have.

Senator JAVITS. So you would in the first instance

Mr. SVIRIDOFF. What I am saying is, I do not think the States need anything new. I think the States have to start using effectively the instruments they already have.

Senator JAVITS. Would you in the first instance consider it prudent to give the States the first opportunity to put this in shape, and then to give the municipality the next opportunity, and then if neither will perform, to have the Federal Government move in itself with a voluntary agency?

Mr. SVIRIDOFF. Senator, I do not think we have the time for that kind of exercise. I am for free enterprise at this point because time is so short. I do not think we have time to wait and watch when cities are on the verge of explosion.

I think we ought to say to the States, you have the tools. We ought to say to the cities, we are beginning to make tools available to you, though many of these tools have to come through the State. Let us get some action now, let us get some competency, let us get some imagination and drive, and if in some places this means the city and not the State, at least the job is going to get done.

In fact, if you look across the country, there are States that are using these tools effectively because they have taken initiative.

I call your attention to the State of North Carolina and the State of New Jersey, where you have very competent State instruments. In the case of North Carolina a private instrument, the North Carolina Fund; in the State of New Jersey, a public instrument set up under the Economic Opportunity Act.

And then in other places you have cities coming to the fore. In New Haven, the city has been out in front, you know, whether it is urban renewal or housing or antipoverty action; in Pittsburgh and other places the city has come to the fore. But in all cases this is in cooperation with the States.

« ForrigeFortsett »