JOBS : Program Trains Unemployed to Be Auto Mechanics

After David Ramirez lost his job two years ago as a U.S. Customs traffic clerk, he began searching for “something that would always be there for me.”

At 26, he hopes that something is auto repair work. “As long as there are cars,” he said, “there will be people needed to do the maintenance.”

His immediate prospects look good. Ramirez is one of about 60 men and women--mostly recruited from the unemployment line, mostly from Compton or the Crenshaw District--who will be graduating in just over a week from an automotive technician training program spawned by the Los Angeles riots.

The six-week, hands-on program--funded by a $1.5-million grant from the state Employment Training Panel to the California Service Station and Automotive Repair Assn.--guarantees participants a job at its conclusion.

The repair group taught the students, while Southern California Edison donated a Compton site as a training center, under a $35-million regional recovery plan announced after the riots.

“The recent civil unrest was a ‘wake-up’ call for all of us,” said J. Michael Mendez, vice president of human resources at Edison. “This center is part of Edison’s answer to that call.”

Besides jobs in the Los Angeles area, the students get handy 230-piece tool sets--and minimum starting pay of about $6.90 a hour, according to Dennis C. DeCota, executive director of the service-station association. Another class will begin next month.

“This is what we’ve been talking about for years,” state Sen. Diane Watson (D-Los Angeles) said at a press conference Thursday at the training center. “It is just what we needed. If we’re going to start rebuilding our communities, we’re going to have to start rebuilding people’s lives.”

After the Watts Riots of 1965, the solutions offered for inner-city problems were superficial, said Bill Thomas, area manager of Edison’s Compton facility. “I saw several Band-Aid fixes applied during that time, and they were really short-term fixes,” said Thomas, who grew up in South-Central. “I don’t want to see that repeated this time.”

Nor does Vernon Joel, one of the students completing the program. Joel, 35, said he has seen too many people go through government training programs and end up jobless after their efforts.

“Lots of people have had bad experiences with government programs,” he said. This program, he believes, will be different.

Jon P. Goodman, an economic development expert at USC who is director of the school’s entrepreneurship program, said the auto-repair class seems to be “dealing with the most important core concept of job training.”

That means training people for jobs where there is a real need--and for jobs that offer advancement. Statistics show that automotive repair is one such area.

“The potential for well-paying craft work, not low-paying menial jobs, brings economic stability. With some luck, over the years these people will start their own shops and create other jobs,” Goodman said. “This is what job training is supposed to be about--giving people a real skill that has economic value and a lifetime of potential for people to grow.”