LAUSD’s Time-Proven Work Program

The first time Thung Luu walked into our office at the Refugee Employment Training Project at West Valley Occupational Center, he was a 55-year-old man less than two weeks into his new life in the United States. He was so shy and uncertain of his English that even a question as simple as, “What’s your name?” produced a long pause, followed by a big smile and then a halting “Thung Luu.”

As a captain in the South Vietnamese army, Thung had spoken English back when he worked with U.S. military personnel in Vietnam. But after 20 years--seven of them spent in a Hanoi re-education camp--what he once knew of the language had been reduced to a few broken phrases.

At the refugee project we see nearly a thousand people like Thung Luu each year. Some are younger. Some arrive with better language skills. But others are older and have never studied English. And some are barely literate. As refugees, they are eligible for temporary public assistance to get them started. The goal of the project is to move them from government dependence to gainful employment as soon as possible.

With welfare reform laws moving rapidly into place, there has been a lot of discussion about shifting people from welfare to work. But the Los Angeles Unified School District’s Refugee Project has been successfully engineering that transition for nearly two decades. We do it with a handful of language and pre-employment training teachers (I’m one) working with five job developers at eight sites throughout Los Angeles County. We do it with a client list that has grown over the last decade and a budget that has decreased every year. And while some social service activists dread the newer, harsher welfare system, many at the project see the glass as half full.

There will be problems, of course. It takes time and effort to get most clients ready for a productive work life. Those truly unable to hold a job will still need a safe place to land, and we need better child care if some refugee mothers are to be convinced to leave their children while they go off to work.

But motivation and attitude have always been the keys to the workplace. There are jobs for people who want to work. Even “hard to serve” cases have skills, life experiences, something they can do. With coaching and training and a good attitude, the vast majority can go from welfare to work. Our more than 500 job placements last year proves that. And time limits on welfare and the cutting back of Supplemental Security Income will make our job easier, by changing the attitudes of those who previously hoped to live off the system and thus had no real interest in work. As one job developer put it: “It’s helping already. It’s making them nervous right now.”

In the case of Thung Luu, our job meant providing 20 hours a week of intensive English classes built around the practical English needed in the workplace. With that we gave him an additional five hours of pre-employment training to teach job interview skills and the intricacies of filling out job applications. Then we searched for a job he could reasonably expect to do well.

Thung didn’t get the first thing he interviewed for, a electronic assembly position. Refugees rarely do succeed the first time out. But his attitude remained good, so we added a few finishing touches and sent him out again.

After the second time, he returned to the office wearing that same, shy smile. “What happened?” I asked.

“I got the job,” he said, “electronic assembly,” in very understandable English. Then he shook my hand. Firmly.

Which was one of those last-minute touches we had added.