Engineer Tries to Help Jobless Climb Aboard

By any conventional definition of an inner-city jobs program, what is happening in a dilapidated Compton Avenue gym in South Los Angeles should not stand a chance.

It has no money, no official sanction, no staff. Actually, it does not even have the city’s permission to be using the old building at the Slauson Recreation Center.

What it does have, however, is Charles Daniels, a conscience-bound systems engineer working on the $720-million Los Angeles-to-Long Beach light-rail transit line.

Troubled by what he sees as a small number of community residents getting jobs on the rail line--one of the biggest public works projects ever undertaken in the depressed area--the 30-year-old Daniels has been volunteering his mornings, lunch hours and evenings to train people for entry-level construction jobs.

“I want to start right there,” Daniels said. “To show this can happen. We can do it . . . if we all just give a damn, we can alleviate some things.”

Daniels’ approach is a free-form mix of technical know-how and a no-nonsense life philosophy--the importance of the work ethic and personal accountability.

“They don’t baby you out there,” Daniels was telling his class of about 40 men and women last week. “Success is opportunity meeting preparation. I can’t come back and say we’re ready for you and you’re out there drinking Buds and suds.”

One student, 34-year-old Jerry Moore, said Daniels is showing him things he knew nothing about--manholes, ducts, heavy construction--and stressing a positive attitude: show up on time, do your work, money will come in time.

“He makes it very clear,” he said. “He asks us if we have questions. . . . He wants to know how we feel.”

Seven weeks have passed since Daniels began his informal school for would-be rail line workers. So far, no one has landed a job with the construction project, which is expected to be finished in 1990. It remains to be seen how far Daniels can carry his vision.

Word Spreads

But word of this man and his “program” has spread rapidly through the ghetto grapevine, among uneasy union leaders and into the county’s downtown transit executive offices.

His group of trainees continues to swell.

Some transit officials are beginning to take notice and to cheer on Daniels and his project, which just this week was given a name: People Committed to Excellence.

“It’s wonderful,” said Sharon Robinson, a Los Angeles County Transportation Commission manager. “We certainly want to support that effort.” The commission discussed but never developed a program that would link up more of the project’s 1,200 job opportunities with unemployed residents, she said.

“It’s a very hard situation to deal with,” she said.

Robinson is working with the state labor department to see how Daniels’ trainees might be legally plugged into jobs. And while Daniels has asked for no financial assistance, she said the commission is willing to help where it can.

Long Waiting Lists

Labor leaders support Daniels’ effort to steer people to union trade apprentice programs, although many of those have long waiting lists. But they object to his discussions with one non-union rail contractor to place others in temporary jobs below the state-mandated, $23 prevailing wage rate for a laborer.

“He may have his heart in the right place,” said Ron Kennedy, assistant administrator for the county’s 125,000-member Construction Trades Council. “(But) we can’t allow something like that to happen. . . . We sympathize, but our allegiance is to our membership.”

Daniels, a Washington, native who grew up around politics and hosted a television community affairs program for a few years, is mindful of the political touchiness of his effort:

“All I’m saying is I’ve got some guys here. I can teach them to do the work. Let’s do it.”

This all began in late February. Daniels, who is responsible for inspecting the underground ducts and tubing that will house the 22-mile rail line’s high-tech electronic nervous system, was climbing out of 12-foot-deep vault. An unemployed man, Norman Strawder, walked up and began asking questions, one of which was, “How do get a job like this?”

Daniels offered to show him around and teach him a few things. “He said, ‘I’m not the only one around here who wants to work.’ I said, ‘OK, get a few buddies.’ ”

One thing led to another, word spread on the street. Strawder and his friends got a janitor to let them into the recreation center next to rail line. Daniels soon had 40 people waiting when he would show up for sessions and had to stop off at a quick-print shop to run off copies of study materials he worked up.

Daniels is upbeat about a tip he received from a union official about possibly placing his first graduates in a union surveyor apprentice program.

He reads the classifieds and looks for jobs that match his clients. And his vision of the what can grow from that Compton Avenue gym continues to expand. Daniels is talking to other black professionals about the possibility of forming a community development corporation to take on neighborhood revitalization work.

“Nobody can stop this project now,” he said. “Because we are going to do it ourselves.”