In 1995, James P. Lowery Jr., a single father raising a young son, lost his job in the corporate printing industry. And he couldn't find another one. "Try going from 50K to zero overnight," he said. "Culture shock." For the next 20 months, Lowery received Medicaid, food stamps and a monthly welfare check to make ends meet.
Last July, the 39-year-old dad finally landed a job as an automations clerk at the Labor Department, where he helps maintain his office's filing system. Although his salary of $21,500 pales in comparison to what he used to make, Lowery's happy to have the job. "It brings back the everyday responsibility of being in the workforce again."
Lowery is one face in the Administration's welfare-to-work program. Last year, President Clinton urged executive branch agencies to hire more than 10,000 welfare recipients by the year 2000. The reason: to set an example for private businesses by helping welfare recipients get jobs--a primary goal of the 1996 welfare reform law. And last month, Vice President Al Gore, who's leading the Administration's welfare-to-work effort, asked federal agencies to press their contractors and suppliers to hire welfare recipients.
Statistics released in April show that the government has met 35 per cent of its commitment by hiring nearly 3,700 people previously on welfare. But the numbers also show that some agencies are recruiting more aggressively than others. The Treasury Department, for example, has already brought on 88 more former welfare recipients than it had planned to by 2000. And the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), the Administration's human resources arm that's helping to spearhead the welfare-to-work drive, has reached 148 per cent of its commitment. "We just keep bringing on people as we find them," said OPM's director, Janice Lachance.
On the other hand, eight agencies have filled less than 30 per cent of their designated slots--including the Commerce Department, which has made only 218 of its intended 4,180 welfare hires. Linda Bilmes, the Commerce Department's deputy assistant secretary for administration, said that the bulk of the agency's recruits will work as data collectors for the 2000 census and, therefore, won't sign on until at least 1999. The State Department, which has reached only 15 per cent of its goal, reported that its security clearance process has made it difficult to hire quickly.
Anecdotal evidence suggests that the federal agencies are picking the cream of the welfare crop. The Education Department drew 18 hires from 113 applicants. And during one recruiting effort, OPM brought on 14 employees (11 of whom were welfare recipients) gleaned from some 400 candidates.
The overwhelming majority of the welfare-to-work hires have been recruited as clerks at the government's lowest level, GS-1, at a salary of less than $14,000 a year. (Lowery, because of his prior work and military experience, was hired as a GS-4 and has since been promoted to a GS-5.) Although studies have found that welfare-to-work participants often end up with temporary jobs, the Administration has stressed that it intends most of its hires to be permanent.
The agencies provide their new employees with training and orientation courses. Many also instruct workers on ways to take advantage of the earned-income tax credit. And some offer child care and transportation subsidies.
In addition, the agencies assign a mentor to each welfare-to-work employee. Debra Smith, who, along with her four children, received public assistance for a year and a half before becoming an automations clerk at the Labor Department, calls her mentor an angel. "If I have any type of problem, he'll help me solve it," she said. "He's very positive. He told me I might be his boss someday."
The government's trying. But are private companies willing to invest the money and time it'll take to make the program work? Leslie Hortum, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's senior vice president for federation development, says many companies--faced with a dearth of workers--are offering similar training and mentoring programs to attract welfare-to-work employees.
But not everyone is embracing the Administration's welfare-to-work initiative. Steven Hantzis, the national executive director of the National Federation of Employees, the 152,000-strong federal workers' union, complains that the federal government is actively recruiting former welfare recipients at the same time it's eliminating thousands of other jobs as part of downsizing efforts. But OPM's Lachance denies there's a conflict. She says that even though the federal government's slimming down, it's so big that it still hires, on average, 40,000 full-time employees annually.
Kitty Peddicord, director of the civil rights and women's departments at the American Federation of Government Employees, said her union filed a Freedom of Information Act request to determine if the government sufficiently trains the welfare hires and if it really plans to keep them on board permanently. "If they are setting up those people to fail, we will start screaming," she said.
The government welfare-to-work participants have also voiced concerns similar to those of their counterparts in the private sector. Brenda D. Mitchell, a GS-2 clerk in OPM's Pay and Leave Administration, says that she enjoys earning close to $15,000 a year after 10 years on and off welfare.
But she notes that working has created new financial woes: Her 8-year-old daughter is no longer eligible for the free child care and medical aid she received while she was on welfare. "I find it a little difficult because . . . sometimes it gets a little hard paying for child care. And [I'm] no longer receiving benefits like food stamps and Medicaid," says Mitchell. "It gets kind of hard knowing that I have to pay for this all by myself."
Another complaint: the way co-workers and the press treat welfare-to-work employees. "Stop labeling us," Lowery says. "It's not where we are coming from. It's where we are going."
The biggest question mark may be whether the Administration's welfare-to-work initiative can be matched by private industry. Perhaps the hardest part of welfare reform will be finding work for the welfare recipients least qualified for available jobs. And what happens when the unemployment rate rises and employers have a larger pool of job applicants?
For now, however, the success of the welfare-to-work initiative rests with workers such as Laura Askew, a mail associate in the Executive Office of the President. After losing her job with a North Carolina company, Askew, a single mother with a son who's now 2 years old, moved to the Washington area and spent eight months on welfare before landing her current position last June. One of the best parts of her job, she said, is "running into very important people at the White House--Ms. Clinton, Mr. Clinton, Mr. Gore."
And employees aren't the only ones lauding the welfare-to-work program. Ada L. Posey, the director of administration for the Executive Office of the President and Askew's assigned mentor, said that the former welfare recipients "run circles around their peers and colleagues."
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