Personal Side of Welfare-to-Work Puts Talk Into Perspective

VALLEY GLEN — One after the other, they took turns at the microphones, 12 business managers, educators and public officials. Focused and well-informed, uniformed in the understated attire of professionals, they assayed the complicated process of getting welfare recipients into paying jobs.

In the audience, less than 10 feet from the podium, Cheryl Coleman sat waiting. She wore a navy blue jersey-and-slacks ensemble, and large silvery earrings. From time to time she fiddled with the index cards that bore her thoughts. She was a little nervous.

The purpose of the Valley Industry and Commerce Assn.’s breakfast forum on “Welfare to Work” at Valley College on Thursday was to encourage VICA’s approximately 300 member-businesses to hire welfare recipients. It was also to inform them of what businesses that do so stand to gain from tax credits and publicly funded training and employee-retention programs, which have sprouted where the old dole-for-life welfare system was uprooted.

Several speakers described to the 130 people in attendance, virtually none of whose businesses had adopted welfare-to-work programs, how their companies had benefited.

For example, Frank McGuire, vice president of finance for Burbank Aeronautical Corp. II, recounted how his company turned to a welfare-training program a year ago when it couldn’t find enough skilled sheet-metal workers in the job market.

Valley College set up a special English proficiency program for the 97 men and women Burbank picked to train. The program emphasized the specialized terminology used on the production floor of the company, which makes noise-abatement equipment for airliners. Other public programs enabled the new employees to acquire the work implements they needed for their jobs.

The new workers received 12 weeks of preparation, including on-the-job training, paid for by the city of Los Angeles. The result, McGuire said, is that 92 of the 97 are still on the payroll, and “the program has been extremely well received in our organization.” By year’s end, the company expects to have 120 additional welfare recipients in jobs that pay $8 a hour and full benefits.

Cheryl Coleman, waiting, applauded politely.

The economic advantages of hiring welfare recipients was a constant theme at the forum, but some of the speakers in the neckties and tailored suits tried to punch through to the core human importance of the country’s massive, uncertain welfare-to-work experiment.

Jess Ruf, owner of Lumber City Corp., urged the audience to think of the long-range dangers of not elevating society’s disadvantaged. “Let’s create human success stories, and celebrate the results,” he exhorted. “If it’s good for humankind, it’s gotta be good for business.”

It was getting late. The forum, which had begun at 8, was already past its scheduled 9:30 terminus. And there remained a final speaker to be heard from.

Forty-two-year-old Cheryl Coleman was introduced, and she ascended the podium.

She sensed the restiveness of the audience, busy people eager to embark on their workdays. It was a pity, in a way, because there was so much she wanted to tell them.

But she kept it short. She told them how, after seven years on welfare, she’d enrolled in child development classes at Valley College last fall, and had completed them as a dean’s list student. She told them how, beginning in September, she would complete the remaining 16 credits she needs for a two-year associate degree.

She told them of her internship at Kids Korner day-care center in Arleta, and showed them a scrapbook the kindergartners there had given her when she’d completed her practicum. She pointed especially to a page done by a 5-year-old, a boy who was usually so uncommunicative that he rarely spoke. In his drawing, he wished her hugs and love.

The audience applauded this, not a few swallowing lumps of emotion.

As a result of her internship, she’d been offered a full-time job by the owner of the center, not as an aide, but, thanks to her child development credits, as a day-care teacher.

“I start my employment next week,” she proclaimed.

This the audience applauded heartily.

There wasn’t time, however, for Coleman to tell them of her father, Louis, a city street maintenance worker, and how he’d always urged her to return to school, and how she’d kept putting it off. Of how Louis had died two years ago, and of how much she wished he could see her now.

There wasn’t time to tell of the three daughters she’d raised as a single mother, and of the 7-month-old grandson who now also lives with her at her home in Van Nuys. Of how, when her children were small, she thought it more important to be home with them, given all the jeopardy to children in the world today, than to work at menial jobs.

Not that she hadn’t worked. Like 70% of welfare recipients, she had a work history, and an extensive one. She’d worked in convalescent homes and as a machine operator in electronics factories and as a child-care aide.

She’d wanted them to know how unfair was the stereotype of the welfare mother, sitting at home watching soap operas and drinking. I HATE SOAP OPERAS, she’d wanted to tell them.

She’d wanted them to understand she was at the beginning of a new phase of her existence, and had a goal, which was to one day open a child-care center of her own. She’d wanted them to know, as she told a visitor the day before, “that I’m very much motivated. I have a lot of energy now. I’m happy. I’m happy.”

But there simply was not time to say all this.

So, Coleman simply thanked the audience, in advance, “for helping all of us.” Because, for all the talk about tax incentives, and variously named training programs and bewilderingly acronymic social-service agencies, what was welfare-to-work really about, if not giving someone a chance?