Post-Riot Job Training
* “Ready, Willing, Unable” (Nov. 2) depicts Toyota as one of several companies which has played a less than satisfactory role of providing job training for inner-city residents.
The Los Angeles Urban League Automotive Training Center is a partnership between the L.A. Urban League and Toyota Motor Sales. It opened in April with Toyota’s commitment of $3 million to a cooperative education program to provide entry-level job-training and job-placement assistance for inner-city residents in automotive service-related jobs.
At the ATC, students learn automotive skills in addition to good work habits, career exploration, interviewing skills and the importance of customer satisfaction. While the ATC does not guarantee employment upon completion of the training, the program includes extensive job-placement assistance through a developing network of “employer partners.”
In its first six months, the ATC has produced results. So far, 25 students have graduated from the center, 20 are fully employed and the remaining five are actively seeking jobs with new and marketable skills. Bottom line, Toyota joined hands with the Urban League because it wants to make a difference in this community. We’re confident that the ATC and other similar programs will make a difference.
DOUGLAS M. WEST
Group Vice President
Toyota Motor Sales, Torrance
* Your article on local job-training programs mentioned the Center for Employment Training’s retail grocery clerk training program. The article alleges that our program “ . . . is not all that it was billed to be” because allegedly we “have no hiring arrangement with the 99 Only chain”; i.e., they are not obligated to hire our students.
The article suggests that job-training programs like ours unfairly raise students’ expectations with false hopes of guaranteed employment upon successful conclusion of training because there are insufficient jobs to fulfill those expectations.
The fact is that despite its relatively recent start-up (April 19), CET’s five-month training program (one of several) has yielded placement for 14 of 17 grocery clerk graduates, which translates to an 82% placement rate. We continue to market the three remaining job-ready graduates with local employers. Moreover, last year other CET-operated job-training programs resulted in placement of 2,180 formerly disadvantaged persons into meaningful, permanent employment. Locally, placements have occurred not just at 99 Only Stores but also at Superior Warehouse Grocers, La Quebradita, Shop Wise and Price Club, with support from the Mexican-American Grocers Assn.
Before we consider launching any program, we determine the existence of a sufficient need for trained individuals in the occupation, that reasonable expectations for placement are justified and that potential barriers to placement are identified and addressed.
The article implies that job-training programs in general, and CET’s in particular, perpetrate a colossal ruse on the unemployed by tantalizing them with guaranteed employment. In the real world no legitimate job-training agency can absolutely guarantee its trainees jobs. What we offer--what our 26-year track record bears out--is an opportunity to receive quality instruction which will markedly increase the chances of placement in industries reasonably expected to have job openings for which our trainees can confidently compete.
MANUEL L. CONS
Center for Employment Training
Los Angeles
