by Robert Bryce
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
This article appears in October 13 • 1995 and October 13 • 1995 (Cover).