Welfare Reform Meets Real Life

Maybe this story began 44 years ago on a windblown Canadian farm when a young man of 20 pondered his future and felt adrift in a sea of bewildering choices.

At that moment, Phil Jakobi began to take note of the fearful pressures and duties of adulthood. He remembered that feeling years later when he read a story about David and Veronica Marquez, urban teenagers a world removed from his bucolic upbringing but compelled by circumstances of poverty and parenthood to be grown-ups too soon.

He thought the young family deserved a chance. So in 1997 he hired David from the ranks of welfare, placed him in the shipping and receiving department of his Long Beach machine shop and laid out a slow course of training and development that he hoped would lead to success.

A year later, it appeared that it had. David was a good worker and a quick study. He had begun to master the precision machinery and had gotten a raise. His bosses wanted the young homeboy who hadn’t gone past the ninth grade to study advanced math and blueprint reading to further his climb at the company.

The couple’s welfare caseworker was exultant. Nineteen-year-old Veronica, shy and soft-spoken, was spurred to keep pace with her husband and entered a nursing program.

Jakobi was pleased that his patience was paying off. Here was the perfect example of welfare reform’s potential: an employer with a sense of responsibility working to help a deprived young couple achieve self-sufficiency.

But life is rarely so simple.

In the midst of everyone’s optimism, David made a serious misjudgment at work and was fired. The sense of triumph turned into one of betrayal for Jakobi and of misunderstanding for David.

The fairy tale became a parable: The progression of human lives is mostly made in fits and starts. It is a lesson that welfare workers on the front lines must deal with day in and day out. Behind the mandate for reform and the numbers are real people whose lives are not so tidily managed.

Cases like the Marquezes’ present a daunting challenge to local officials who must put public aid recipients to work and do it quickly. Under federal law, two-parent families--either individually or in combination--must be engaged in 35 hours of work or job training each week to continue receiving some sort of aid.

The law imposes deadlines on states to place such couples into the work force--75% of them this fiscal year, 90% next year--at the risk of losing welfare funding. In California, only about 22% of these families meet the work requirements. Many other states are in a similar boat, and federal authorities are trying to determine how strictly to enforce the penalties.

Thus, here and around the nation officials are expending an enormous amount of energy providing supportive services to couples like the Marquezes. The government pays for child care, school tuition, books and uniforms for them. A county job counselor, Frank Mora, has been working closely with them, assessing their needs, ferreting out possible jobs or training opportunities.

He suggested that Veronica consider becoming a nursing assistant and found a program for her at Cal State Long Beach. Mora’s investment in David has become almost personal, with monthly meetings that have turned into rap sessions akin to those between a caring uncle and his brash young charge.

The welfare department’s job counselors must also prevail upon, cajole and induce employers to hire large numbers of recipients if goals are to be met.

Offering a Chance

Jakobi needed no persuading. He bought Delco Machine and Gear eight years ago and nurtured its growth from nine workers to 100 employees who produce gears and other components for aircraft, space shuttles and the International Space Station.

Jakobi, 64, with graying hair and round spectacles, hails from just outside Windsor, Canada, and recalls his own rocky transition to adulthood.

“I grew up on a farm and, until I was 20, didn’t know what I wanted to do,” he said, sitting in a small office hung with pictures of swooping jet fighters. “A buddy of mine happened to start as a tool-and-die apprentice and said why don’t I come down and take the test. People have been willing to train me all my life.”

He has tried to give back in kind, advising young students, being mindful of the harmful pressures heaped on urban youths, exhorting fellow business owners to get with the program.

“Rather than sit wringing our hands and saying we can’t find skilled machinists, we better go out and find people and train them,” he said.

After reading a 1997 Times article about the Marquez family, Jakobi hired David.

There had been a few missteps. David was still young and immature. He was not used to criticism and could show sparks of anger. He needed to be reminded that his supervisor was not the enemy. But Jakobi’s son-in-law, also in training, was working closely with David and he seemed to be making progress.

“If we’re going to make that commitment to him staying, we should bend over backwards to make sure it works,” Jakobi had vowed. David was being paid $8 an hour, and Jakobi was sure that within two years he could be earning $12 or $14.

But those hopes crumbled practically overnight. David left work early one afternoon and had a colleague clock him out at normal quitting time so that his pay would not be docked. He was suspended. Jakobi says David then confronted the worker who told on him and that threats were made. David denies this, but in October he was fired.

Jakobi sees it as a clear-cut case of insubordination.

“He left an hour early and didn’t tell anyone he was leaving. Some of the guys wanted to terminate him right there, but I said, no, let’s give him another chance. He didn’t want to admit he did anything wrong, and then he threatened people for ratting on him.”

There would be no final encounter. Like anyone else, David was let go by his immediate supervisor. That was part of the lesson to be learned.

“I’m sure if I would have sat down with him, it might have had more impact, but he has to learn to deal with everyone he touches within the organization,” Jakobi said.

Yes, he left early, admits David. But it was only by about 10 minutes, not an hour. He might have gone to his bosses and asked to leave but said he did not want to give up any pay. He couldn’t afford to.

But why would he risk getting caught to shave 10 minutes? He says it was David Jr.’s birthday and he wanted to pick his son up early from the baby sitter for a surprise party. As to the threats, there was a time when he let his fists do the talking. But he has left that life behind, he says.

“I didn’t raise my hand to anyone, but said in a mad but respectful way, ‘Hey man, why’d you do something like that?’ ”

He was both hurt and angry that his boss wouldn’t tell him to his face he was fired.

But ultimately, it was not worth losing his job.

“I feel mad at myself because I was learning something,” he said. “If I could go back and say I’m sorry, I would, but it’s already done.”

Penalty Is Steep

It wouldn’t work with Jakobi, who had already angered some of his workers with his kid glove treatment of David. Guys had begun joking that he had adopted the new kid. Now he feels betrayed.

“What seemed to be going so well, ended up going down the tubes,” he said tersely.

It was never going to be easy for David and Veronica. When they first walked into Mora’s office a year ago, they were both teenagers, struggling to provide for their two children, David Jr., now 4, and Michael, 2, saddled with bills and constricted by their lack of education.

They are not quite back at square one, but for everyone there is the sense that they will have to work doubly hard to rebuild the gains they had made.

During the week that David was dismissed from Delco, the couple completed a move into a new, less cramped apartment. They have a bedroom, where Michael also sleeps in a crib. David Jr. sleeps in the living room, in a fold-down bed.

The move boosted their rent from $400 to $515 monthly at a time when they could least afford it. Although the new place is not far from their old neighborhood, they are closer to relatives and feel safer.

It didn’t help that the couple’s welfare benefits were reduced from $625 to $498 monthly, said David. Their Food Stamp allotment was also lowered, and they applied for and received $370 in emergency funds to tide them over for the month. The family, he said, was directed to a pantry or church for extra food.

Behind David’s usually broad smile and cheerful disposition lies an undercurrent of desperation.

The money never lasts long enough to cover all the bills or the food and milk needed for two growing boys. The children walk into a store and want everything they see, and then David feels ashamed when he can’t afford to buy them the kinds of toys other children get.

“I feel like I have all this responsibility, and it fills up to my head,” he said, pointing to his forehead. “Sometimes I feel like it’s going to come to the end of the world. I get really down.”

David is painfully aware that history may be repeating itself. His own father was a teenage parent and never seemed to overcome the odds, always struggling to hold his life together.

“I know what it’s like . . . and I don’t want it to be that way with me,” he said. “I had them too early, but I can’t take it back now.

Looking Back, and Ahead

Jakobi and the Marquezes have parted ways but not without leaving sharp imprints.

Within a week of David’s departure, Jakobi hired “another young gentleman” sent from the welfare office. Jakobi learned some lessons too. He surmises that a lot of inexperienced young people need more lecturing on how to develop a good work ethic, to work as a team and to respond to criticism.

“If I had it to do over again, I would spend an awful lot of time with David emphasizing what to expect, rather than just going through the motions,” he said. “We’ve changed our ways here a little bit.”

He still feels a stake in what happens to his former recruit.

“Yes, I’m interested in knowing what develops. If he shows he’s able to adapt in the work place . . . give it some time and show me how he’s progressed in the next six months. Maybe there’s another shot.”

And the Marquezes are pondering fresh opportunities.

Veronica is training to become a certified nursing assistant, about which she is clearly excited. At 19, with two children and no high school diploma, she is finally getting a chance to consider alternatives to the clouded future that once seemed ordained.

Job counselor Mora is sure the couple will rebound. He advised David to call him when he gets the urge to do something “crazy.”

Mora has already helped David find a new job doing assembly work at 75 cents an hour less than his old job.

“He has a chance to start again and move up,” Mora said. “I tell him he’s lucky he has skills people like. He’s a good worker, mechanically skilled. He’s in demand.

“He told me the other day he loved his job at Delco. David needs to grow up, and our objective is to see to that. David and Veronica are growing up together, and I can tell you--’cause I’ve been married a long time--that will help. They have to help each other.”