Work It

The boom bypassed Yvonne Turner. The presence of Motorola, IBM, Advanced Micro Devices, and all the other big players in Austin's booming economy, and their

desperate need for skilled workers, has done nothing for her. A 33-year-old mother of three, Turner made $12,000 last year. In March, after 12 years of driving a school bus for the Austin Independent School District, she decided she wanted a better career and has enrolled in job training at the Arthur B. De Witty Center on Rosewood Avenue in East Austin.

Turner is one of hundreds, or possibly thousands, of Austinites who can't find stable, lucrative work in a town where high-tech companies currently have hundreds of job openings. According to the Texas Employment Commission (TEC), Austin's unemployment rate in August was 3.9%. But in parts of East Austin, unemployment is as high as 15%. Last year, according to the TEC, the neighborhoods of East Austin - the area bounded by Martin Luther King Blvd., Town Lake, I-35, and US 183 - had an overall unemployment rate of 9.4%, or two-and-a-half times the city-wide rate.

Moreover, those numbers don't reflect the travails of the underemployed, also called the working poor, people like Turner who have found that their skills have little value in a job environment that increasingly demands college-level training. And they are getting little help from Austin's job training system, which can only be described as an unmitigated mess.

The reason Austin has such a lousy job training system is simple: Nobody really cares about it. Industry doesn't believe it should have to train workers that it may not need, and government hasn't viewed job training as a priority. But things are changing. Congress, the state, and the city are readying an overhaul of the job training system that could have dramatic benefits for Austin and dozens of other cities throughout Texas. Congress is considering legislation that would give block grants to states for job training. Last year, the Texas Legislature mandated a massive overhaul of the state's job training system, which will give cities the ability to use state and federal job training funds to train workers for jobs that exist in their area. And Austin politicos have begun laying the groundwork for the creation of a workforce development board which will consolidate a range of programs into one entity.

The changes could help Turner and many others like her. For the past few weeks, she has been taking a computer skills class at the DeWitty Center. Turner, who has no computer experience, hopes the class will help her get a better job. The class focuses on computer rudiments, including the definition of RAM and ROM, and the difference between bits and bytes.

"I haven't had any college," says Turner. "High school was it." Turner currently works two jobs, one as a temporary clerk at the Texas Department of Human Resources and another as a limousine driver for Executive Livery. She has a few ideas about what she'd like to do. But she's definitely finished as a bus driver. "I'm tired of that," she said. "I want more."

Turner is taking advantage of the free classes offered by the DeWitty Center, which sees an average of 260 new clients every month. But the city-funded facility offers a very limited range of programs, and operates on a slim $62,216 budget (see sidebar). Meanwhile, the state and federal government offer a multitude of programs, but few people know where to look for guidance. Last year, Texas spent $1.6 billion on workforce training, half of which came from state coffers. But according to John Sharp, the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts, only 5-10% of workers know how to access available training programs. In one case, says Sharp, a Democrat, the Texas Department of Human Services had 1,000 employees assigned to help welfare recipients find job training. Yet only 31 of those recipients actually got training.

In late August, at a meeting ofindustry leaders and government officials at the Four Seasons Hotel, Sharp said the state's job training system is so bad, it should be "blown up." And while Sharp hasn't tossed any grenades yet, over the next few months, his agency will coordinate the consolidation of 30 job training programs into one new agency, the Texas Workforce Commission. The commission will oversee dozens of locally appointed workforce development boards which will include representatives from business, industry, government, and technical schools. The boards will assess training needs in their region and provide funds for programs. The new agency also hopes to bring one-stop shopping to the job training business, so that citizens can get all the information and referrals they need in one place.

While Sharp shakes up the state bureaucracy, Congress is shaking up the federal system. Last year, the General Accounting Office (GAO) found that the federal government spends more than $25 billion per year on 154 workforce assistance or development programs, administered by 14 federal agencies. The GAO determined that the patchwork of programs "hampers the delivery of services and creates confusion for workers, employers, and administrators."

Congress wants to give the states block grants and let them administer the workforce training programs. And it is considering two bills that will distribute several billion dollars to the states for those programs. Meanwhile, the Senate has passed a welfare reform bill that requires welfare recipients to start working within two years, and limits benefits to a maximum of five years.

Suddenly job training, a topic that has languished at the bottom of the list of governmental priorities, has taken on new importance for the poor and the working poor. Unless the job training system is dramatically improved, welfare recipients may find themselves not only out of benefits, but also without any hope of getting a decent job.

So how will the shake-up at the state and federal levels affect Austin? While it's too early to predict success, a reorganization of the city's programs can only help. The city and the county currently rely on the Private Industry Council (PIC) for much of the area's job training. A non-profit agency which administers $4 million in federal funds allocated under the Job Training Partnership Act (JTPA), the PIC provides training programs to dislocated workers and low-income adults. But the PIC's programs are highly circumscribed and must conform to a myriad of JTPA rules.

Next July, the PIC will be replaced by a workforce development board, and the money that used to go to the PIC will go to the board. The two dozen members of the workforce development board will consolidate state and federal funds and administer an annual budget of about $20 million. And the new entity should have much greater flexibility than the PIC. Bob McPherson, a research associate at the Center for Human Resources at UT, says the new board has an opportunity "to design a system to meet some of these shortages that employers say they have." Right now, he said, "There is no system here. It's just a bunch of separate programs."

McPherson said the board should create a system where employers can tell board administrators what types of skilled workers they will need over the coming months. The board will then provide funding to institutions that can train workers with those skills. McPherson says Austin has been able to get by without paying much attention to workforce issues. But he says that can't last forever. "There's more and more evidence that what causes a firm to relocate is the quality of the workforce," he said. And he says the pending changes at the state and federal levels give Austin a chance to make citizens like Turner into more productive workers. "The opportunity is there," says McPherson, "if the city and the county want to take advantage of it."

All the boardmembers for the new entity will be appointed by two lame ducks, Travis County Judge Bill Aleshire and Mayor Bruce Todd, both of whom have announced they will not seek re-election. Aleshire places much of the blame for the failings of the current job training system on industry, which he says has done little to train Austin's underskilled workers. And he fears that high-tech employers will continue to import workers rather than use local workers. "I want them [industry] to take some responsibility for people who already live here and have them train people who are underemployed." Aleshire is also concerned about the environmental implications of having more out-of-state people move here to fill positions.

Over the past 12 months, about half of the employees hired by Applied Materials, one of Austin's fastest growing companies, have come from out of town, says Steve Taylor, a company spokesman. "A year ago, we had 1,100 employees," said Taylor. "Our head count in Austin is now around 3,000. You can't find all those people in town."

Taylor said his company, which makes the equipment used in semiconductor manufacturing, prefers to hire locally because it is cheaper. And he said that despite her limited skills, Turner might be able to get an entry-level job at Applied Materials. "Yeah, she has a chance," he said. "We are looking at attitude more than anything else." But he added, "With a high school degree there's only so much you can do when making sophisticated equipment like ours."

Turner and her husband Ronnie would both like to get better jobs. But they currently have five jobs between them and have little time to get the type of training that would allow them to earn more money. Ronnie works seven days a week as a bus driver for three different employers. Turner dreams of setting up her own business, or perhaps getting a job with a high-tech company. But she knows her skills are lacking. She wants to get more education, but she says, "I don't have the time or the finances to do it." She also wouldn't mind taking a full-time job with the Department of Human Resources. "I've seen the qualification requirements for the job that I'm doing and I don't have any of the qualifications," she said. "But through a temporary agency I can do it." The agency pays her $5.17 per hour.

Carlean Johnson, the program director at the DeWitty Center, says there are hundreds of people like Turner who are motivated and self-reliant. "It's not that they don't want to work," she said. "They want to, but they just don't have the skills to get a good job." n