Agency Plans Anti-Gang Program That May Work--Jobs : Employment: Harbor area’s Toberman Settlement House wants to start a packaging firm that would employ 50 to 60 youths at all levels of the business--a learning as well as earning experience.

More than counseling, and understanding, recreation and field trips, gang members in the Harbor area want jobs, they say.

Heeding that message, officials at the Toberman Settlement House, a nonprofit social service agency in San Pedro, have launched a proposal to begin a light manufacturing enterprise called Toberman Industries.

Once up and running, Toberman Industries would ultimately provide 50 to 60 youths with full- or part-time work in a packaging plant. Beyond providing employment, Toberman proposes to teach the youths how to work in--and even to run--a business.

The idea was the brainchild of businessman Samuel Goldberg, who founded Serv Al Industries, a packaging company in Rancho Palos Verdes, 25 years ago. Goldberg has since sold the company and now works as a consultant.

“This was just an idea I came up with after the riots,” Goldberg said. “I asked myself, ‘How can we make these kids productive and give them an opportunity to get ahead?’ Everybody’s blowing smoke and nothing’s going to happen. Nothing’s happened in the last year.”

At the packaging business, job assignments would rotate so each youth would learn every phase of the industrial operation, said Toberman Executive Director Howard Uller. Employees would attend job preparation seminars on issues such as promptness, timeliness, productivity and teamwork.

A sheltered workshop of sorts, Toberman Industries, Uller said, would deal with the myriad obstacles that make gang members difficult to employ. To that end, most of the first months of employment would focus on developing job skills rather than “pressured production runs.”

Also, youths would be required to continue their education. Those without high school degrees would be required to get a general equivalency degree and those with high school degrees would have to take business courses at a local college or vocational school.

“We want them learning everything about business,” Goldberg said. “For the first time, they’re going to understand what it’s all about. And maybe someone will say ‘hey, I have an idea for a business.’ ”

That no jobs or resources have been injected into the Harbor area has been a sore point for residents since the first political and corporate promises of help for inner-city youth were made after last year’s riots.

“There isn’t anything coming into the Harbor right now, not a thing,” said Uller. “In part, I think we’re really being penalized by the statistics. We’re having too much success.”

The success Uller refers to is an enduring cease-fire between gangs mainly from Wilmington, San Pedro and Harbor City. For months, gang members in the area have been meeting, talking and negotiating with one another and pressuring members of their individual sets to abide by common agreements. Violations of the cease-fire occur periodically, but LAPD Harbor Division reports a marked decrease in gang violence.

The greatest strain on the peace now, Uller says, is the inability of many gang members to find work.

“Before, 25 years ago, if you didn’t go to school you could still get a decent job with a good wage with good benefits and insurance for your family,” Uller said. But with defense industry cutbacks and the decline of the fishing industry in the Harbor, many employment avenues available to Harbor residents decades ago have disappeared.

“And it’s no coincidence our proliferation of gangs has jumped as those (sources of employment) have dried up,” Uller said. “People who are employed and people going to school haven’t got the time to get in trouble.”

Toberman Industries is not meant to provide long-term employment for the youths, Uller said. Rather, the hope is that two years’ tenure in the program will give employees the track record needed to obtain other work or even become entrepreneurs themselves.

“You see, they can’t make up the years they’ve lost in education, but a lot of these young people are extremely bright and they have what it takes,” Goldberg said.

Goldberg, Uller and a committee of advisers have worked on the structure and financing of the program for the past year. The next steps are to interest backers in providing $175,000 in seed money, select a site and line up packaging contracts.

The proposal is being considered by the Weingart Foundation, the Irvine Foundation, the Crail-Johnson Foundation in San Pedro and the Parsons Foundation, Uller said.

Goldberg said he hopes that by working in Toberman Enterprises, youths will find the same excitement that makes him love business.

“What makes business exciting is seeing growth,” he said. “If you’re working in an environment where things are happening--sales are coming and manufacturing is operating efficiently, there is an increase in merchandise out the door and there is a real teamwork atmosphere--those are the things that are going to turn these kids on.”