Building New Lives : Job Corps Offers Disadvantaged Youths Training in Construction Trades and Lessons on Living to Help Them Shape Their Futures
With all the confidence of a seasoned professional, Francine Eager pulls out the wires inside the electrical makeup box and strips the insulation from their ends with a wire-stripper.
Then she carefully twists them together and, with the help of a pair of linesman pliers, adroitly slips on the special nut that will connect the wires and enable electricity to flow through the building.
Although these wires are not carrying electricity, under other circumstances, a mistake by Eager could burn out the structure’s whole electrical system or even send enough electricity through her body to kill her.
“Nothing to it,” Eager says as she finishes up the job, pushes the wires back into the box and screws on the cover. “It’s a piece of cake.”
Not bad, for a high-school dropout and single mother who just a year ago was living in a Compton housing project and occasionally using drugs.
Now the 21 year old says she’s drug-free and spends 35 hours a week learning the ins and outs of the construction business through the downtown Los Angeles branch of the Job Corps, a little-publicized federal program that even some staff members call “America’s best-kept secret.”
Eager is one of about 200 disadvantaged youths who pass through three Southland Job Corps centers each year to learn a variety of building-related trades, from electrical wiring and carpentry to plumbing and plastering.
After six months or a year of free training, Corps graduates can easily earn $6 or $7 an hour on their first job. After a few years, they can make upward of $20 an hour working in their chosen field.
Students who attend the 106 Job Corps centers across the nation can pursue a variety of careers. At the Los Angeles center, about 750 youths are enrolled in courses ranging from nursing and business administration to cooking and printing.
The Job Corps is administered through the U.S. Department of Labor, which contracts with nonprofit groups and private companies to offer vocational programs on the local level.
The Los Angeles branch, which includes an educational facility and dormitory downtown and a satellite school and dorm in Hollywood, is operated by the YWCA.
In turn, the YWCA has contracted with the Home Builders Institute--the nonprofit educational arm of the National Assn. of Home Builders--to teach the center’s construction program.
“I’ve had people get us mixed up with the Peace Corps, the Conservation Corps, even the Marine Corps,” said Leadie Clark, who runs the Los Angeles Corps out of a nondescript building which is near the corner of Hill Street and Olympic Boulevard in downtown.
“I don’t mind the confusion, though. We’re helping more than 700 poor kids learn a trade here, and that’s all that matters.”
The Job Corps is one of the few remaining success stories that sprang from the War on Poverty, which President Lyndon B. Johnson launched in the mid-1960s.
More than 1.5 million of the nation’s poor between the ages of 16 and 22 have gone through the program over the past 27 years. About 61,000 of those youths have been from California.
Nearly 70% of the students who have graduated from the Corps have landed nonsubsidized jobs in the private sector. Most of the rest have either gone into the armed forces or moved on to college.
And in an era when the government has slashed most social programs because they’re too costly, Job Corps officials boast that every dollar invested in their program returns $1.46 to the economy through lower welfare payments, taxes paid by Corps graduates, a reduced crime rate and other savings.
“Making 46 cents for every dollar you invest is a pretty good business proposition,” says Tommy Thompson, a developer and vice president of the National Assn. of Home Builders.
The Job Corps doesn’t just provide its students with vocational training. Staff members also help each graduate line up a job with the help of private companies, unions and other groups.
The NAHB has been a longtime supporter of the Job Corps, in part because the program has provided the industry with more than 200,000 skilled construction workers.
Building giants Kaufman & Broad Home Corp., Watt Industries and Lewis Homes of California are just a few of the companies that employ Job Corps graduates. Thousands more work for smaller builders, maintenance companies and the like.
Job Corps students pay no tuition. Many of them are high-school dropouts, and virtually all live below the poverty line: The typical member comes from a family that earns less than $6,000 a year.
Most students in the construction program spend between six months and a year in the Corps. They get room, board and a monthly stipend of about $75.
Construction-related skills are taught at three Southland Job Corps centers.
Students at the San Diego facility learn how to install and maintain solar-powered heating and cooling systems.
Carpentry, building maintenance, tile setting and other trades are taught at a complex in San Bernardino.
The Los Angeles center is one of the largest in the West. About 45 students are enrolled in its construction and building-maintenance course, spending about 35 hours a week in classrooms and hands-on workshops.
The 700 other students at the center are studying health-care, business, transportation or printing.
About half of the students who attend the downtown and Hollywood schools simply drive their car or take a bus to class in the morning and go back home at night.
Many of these “nonresident” students are single parents who must look after their children in the evening, or need to work at night to support their families.
The other half of the students live in one of two buildings that the YWCA has converted into dormitories: The old Case Hotel at the corner of 11th and Broadway downtown, or the Studio Club building near the intersection of Santa Monica Boulevard and Gower Street in Hollywood.
Life in the dorms is part trade school and part boot camp (“I’d prefer that you liken it to a nice ‘private school,’ ” Clark asks a reporter).
Up to four students live in each modest-sized room. The door to each room has a small, uncovered window so Corps staffers can make their nightly bed checks and make sure the students stay out of trouble.
The typical day starts at 6 a.m. The students dress and grab a quick breakfast at the center’s commissary, the first of three free meals they’ll have for the day.
The construction students then board an RTD bus bound for their training site near the intersection of East Olympic Boulevard and Calzona Street, in an industrial strip on the East Side of Los Angeles.
Roll call is at 8 o’clock sharp. The instructor hollers out the names of the 40-odd students, marking any absences. Anyone who is consistently late or absent without a good reason can be kicked out of the program.
Next, it’s time to go over the day’s assignments. One small group of students might be assigned to spend the bulk of the day doing electrical work on one of the on-site “mock houses.” Another group might be framing or putting up dry wall.
Still others may practice wallpapering, plastering or installing plumbing fixtures.
There is about one instructor for every 15 students in the Los Angeles construction course, compared to an average of about one teacher for every 30 pupils in the Los Angeles Unified School District.
The low teacher-to-student ratio “really lets us spend a lot of time with every student,” said Frank Munger, a former contractor who’s now a lead instructor for the HBI.
“If a student just can’t get the hang of something, we can take the time we need to teach them how to do it right.”
After the morning session, the students clean up their workplace and break for lunch. They board a bus for the 10-minute trip back to the downtown Job Corps center, where they eat a quick lunch at the commissary before returning to the workshop around 1 p.m.
Class usually ends around 3:30. Students who live off-site leave for their respective homes; the rest head back to their dorms.
If they don’t need to read their textbooks or do Corps-required chores around the building, students in the downtown facility can spend the rest of the day swimming in the dorm’s pool, working out in the gym, or playing pool and Ping-Pong in “The Huddle”--their common recreation area.
Newer students have to be in bed and have their lights turned off by 10 p.m. Corps members who have been around several months and kept out of trouble can usually stay up until 11 or 11:30.
Students who miss the bed check without permission or break other rules can be fined a few dollars, have their privileges taken away or face some other disciplinary action.
Conversely, Corps members who donate their time to charity, help to orient new arrivals or perform other types of extra-credit work can become “honor students.”
Honor students enjoy certain privileges that may seem small to an outsider but can make a world of difference to someone who lives within the daily regimentation of the dorm.
They get to stay up a little later, put a shade over their door window, use a personal bedspread instead of a Corps-issued one and the like.
Not surprisingly, many new students have trouble getting used to the Job Corps’ demands.
“We get some kids who just can’t adjust to the rules, so they quit,” Clark said. “We hate to see it, because they’re giving up on a great opportunity. But if they don’t want to be here, we can’t force them to stay.”
One big reason most students stick with the program is that it trains them for relatively high-paying jobs. Union scale for an apprentice electrician, for example, is $8.65 an hour: A journeyman with five years of experience earns about $25 an hour.
“That beats making minimum wage at a hamburger stand,” says instructor Munger. “Most of the students really appreciate what they’re getting here.”
One of those students is Israel Montanez, an 18-year-old high school dropout who joined the Corps about nine months ago.
“I was in a gang, doing a lot of partying and messing up in school,” he said. “Then I heard about the Job Corps and decided to check it out.
“Now I’m out of the gang, studying to get my GED (the equivalent of a high-school diploma) and learning the stuff I need to know so I can get a good job when I graduate. Job Corps helped me turn my life around.”
Added Josephine Garcia, 21: “I couldn’t afford to get this kind of training anywhere else. If I wasn’t in the Job Corps, I don’t know what I’d be doing.”
Still, many Corps members say they learn some of their most important lessons outside the classroom.
David Freeman, a 20-year-old from the tiny Northern California logging town of Klamath, says that being in the Job Corps has helped him learn how to budget for his expenses and stick to a regular work schedule.
“And I’ve learned how to get along with people, no matter what color they are,” Freeman adds. “Back home, everybody is either ‘white’ or ‘Indian.’ Here, we’re all the same.”
Job Corps officials hope that there will be even more success stories in the future.
A coalition of business, labor and volunteer groups is asking Congress to allocate $160 million to launch the “Job Corps 50/50 plan,” an expansion program that would raise the number of centers around the country by 50% over the next 10 years.
The expansion would enable the Corps to train 103,000 poor youths each year, compared to the 60,000 it currently helps.
But 10 years is a long way off, especially for Francine Eager, the young mother from Compton who enrolled in the Job Corps about six months ago. A decade from now, she hopes to have a good job working in the building-maintenance field, or perhaps working as a plumber or electrician.
“It would be a lot easier just to stay home with my baby and wait for that government check to come in the mail,” she said. “But I don’t want to live that way, and I don’t want my baby to grow up that way.
“The Job Corps is giving me a way out of that mess, and I’m not going to blow it.”
Learn More About Corps
To get into the Job Corps, you must be between the ages of 16 and 24 and come from a low-income family.
Getting an application is easy: Just call (800) 733-5627. An operator will ask some basic questions and, if you’re eligible to join, you’ll be referred to a local “screener” who’ll tell you more about the program and how it works.
If you’re in the residential-construction business and would like to hire a Job Corps graduate, simply call the Home Builders Institute at (800) 368-5242, extension 550. Or, you can call the job-placement division of the Job Corps office nearest you.
The local office can also help you find a worker if you’re in the commercial side of the real estate industry. Or, you can find a qualified employee by calling Job Corps Unions, (800) 424-5111.
You can also get more information from one of the 10 regional offices of the U.S. Department of Labor’s Employment and Training Administration. The office serving California, Arizona, Nevada, Hawaii and Guam is at 71 Stevenson St., Box 3768, suite 1015, San Francisco, Calif. 94119-3768.
