Problem Programs for Job Training

The loss of jobs in Orange County (“Loss of Job in Orange County Often Devastating,” Jan. 15, Page 1) and the problem of employment training and retraining deserves more expansive coverage. What is needed is a joint federal, state and local effort to simplify and rationalize needed job services and employment training. What we have is the following:

The Federal Job Training Partnership Act (JTPA), the Reagan Administration’s answer to training for the disadvantaged, was designed and sponsored by two millionaires: Dan Quayle and Ted Kennedy. In operation it has been seriously hampered by an inability to pay training stipends to disadvantaged participants and by its vagueness concerning the role and powers of the mandated local Private Industry Councils. As a consequence, in most service delivery areas (and particularly in Orange County) available JTPA funds have been the object of jealous contention among the cities and the county, with elaborate planning staffs created to administer often redundant, relatively small-scale, low-profile training.

The county-operated JTPA consortium, consisting of the county government, Anaheim, Garden Grove and a coalition of cities in the northwest county operated by the city of La Habra, rule through a governing board that only reluctantly shares power or policies with the appointed Private Industry Council. The city of Santa Ana recently opted out of the consortium to set up its own JTPA “service delivery area.” This development has further contributed to the complexity and cost of local job services and training.

The state Employment Development Department (EDD) is one of the more bureaucratic and inept organizations and contributes little to an effective local job training process, apparently preferring to keep the individual with obsolete or inadequate skills constantly pounding the pavement seeking often non-existent openings.

These agencies, and now the county Department of Social Services with its own state-funded GAIN (Greater Avenues of Independence) program for providing job training to welfare clients, all contribute to an overlapping, chaotic and irrational local offering of job services that would make Kafka proud but only confounds disadvantaged and laid-off persons confronted with the urgent problem of seeking work or retraining.

JACK B. HARLOE

Placentia

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