Gore Urges Welfare Hiring by Contractors

The federal government, claiming both success and the moral high ground in its bid to hire welfare recipients, turned its powers of persuasion Thursday on a key group of prospective employers: federal contractors and suppliers.

Announcing that the federal government has hired almost 3,700 welfare recipients for entry-level jobs in the last year alone, Vice President Al Gore called on companies that do business with the government to join in offering employment to those making the transition from welfare to work.

He urged business owners and employers to dispense with their “cartoon image” of welfare recipients and actively recruit them. Gore said that welfare dependents “don’t want to be on welfare, they want to have jobs” but “have been locked into a system with all the wrong incentives.”

With that system transformed by the landmark reform law of 1996, Gore told the companies to “really put the pedal to the metal” to hire welfare recipients for new job openings.

But for all the rhetoric directed at the government’s business partners, officials were careful to note that private-sector cooperation with the federal initiative is strictly voluntary. The Clinton administration, wary of concerns raised by labor unions, has been careful to stop short of linking future business with companies on their record of welfare-recipient hiring.

In an economy that is creating jobs at a breathless pace, the call for businesses to hire welfare recipients has met with relative success in spite of initial wariness throughout the private sector. The Welfare-to-Work Partnership, a nonpartisan group organized to help businesses put welfare recipients in jobs, has recruited more than 3,000 companies that have made commitments to hire those on welfare.

While many of the partnership’s members read like a Who’s Who of American corporations, more than 70% of them are small to medium businesses, which are expected to generate the bulk of the entry-level jobs most welfare recipients can command.

And so far, the government’s calls have met with little active resistance from labor unions.

In hiring welfare recipients, the federal government, whose workers are strongly organized, has faced not only union concerns but its own efforts to cut payrolls. The hiring of almost 3,700 welfare recipients comes at a time when the Clinton administration has been seeking to trim the federal bureaucracy by as much as 272,900 jobs.

Last year, officials outlined a goal of hiring 10,638 welfare recipients for federal jobs during Clinton’s second term--virtually all of them entry-level positions that would become available through turnover. With its announcement Thursday, the White House pronounced itself 35% of the way there and well ahead of schedule.

Gore cited the “important and inspiring journeys” that welfare recipients are making as they leave the dole. And he urged businesses either to create support systems and mentoring programs for those making the transition or to form partnerships with religious or community organizations that could provide such help to new workers hired off the rolls.

Seated next to Lilie Bedney, a mother of three who relied on welfare until she was hired by the federal Office of Personnel Management, Gore said: “These are not just numbers. They are . . . American families whose lives have been transformed.”

As Bedney laid out her goals of buying a home and starting her own printing business, Gore quipped: “You’ll be taking over Microsoft before you know it.”