GA weighs unpaid job training

President Barack Obama couldn’t get a national version of Georgia’s popular on-the-job-training program for the unemployed through Congress, but local companies and other supporters of the idea hope a similar program will be created in Rhode Island this year.
Three bills pending in the General Assembly would allow employers to take on Rhode Islanders collecting unemployment who would be allowed to continue collecting while they develop job skills for six to eight weeks. At the end of the training period, the company would have the option to either hire the trainee full time or let them return to the unemployment rolls.
“It gives employers and employees an opportunity to try someone new without much risk,” said Rep. Joseph M. McNamara, D-Warwick, the sponsor of one of the bills. “I believe some workers with a long period of unemployment have become gun-shy about trying something new because they had such a hard time getting on unemployment. They worry that, if they try something new, they will have to do it all over again if it doesn’t work.”
For employers, the program allows them to try out and train a worker at no cost and no risk.
“I can’t believe this has not been done here already – it makes so much sense to me as a small-business owner,” said Bill Ostendorf, president of Creative Circle Media in East Providence. “I want to hire people, but the return on investment is six months down the road after I have to train them, get them oriented and get them started. If I could do those things while they were still on unemployment, it would be a win-win.”
The Georgia Works program was launched in that state in 2003 and quickly became popular with other states, including New Hampshire, which designed their own versions of the idea.
Obama included it in his ill-fated national jobs package last fall.
In addition to receiving their weekly unemployment checks, workers participating in Georgia Works get a $240 stipend, paid by the state, for 24 hours of work/training per week. The program lasts eight weeks before companies either have to hire the workers or let them go. New Hampshire’s program, called Return to Work, lasts six weeks, also at 24 hours per week, but does not include a stipend or any compensation.
The three current Rhode Island bills – sponsored by McNamara, Sen. Erin P. Lynch, D-Warwick, and Rep, Joy Hearn, D-Barrington – would all create a program similar to what is in place in New Hampshire, with trainees working a 24-hour week for six weeks. The state would also provide worker’s compensation coverage for the trainees.
The major difference between the bills is whether they pay a trainee stipend.
Lynch and Hearn’s bills would pay “a reasonable stipend in an amount determined by the [director of the R.I. Department of Labor and Training] to cover any additional costs associated with their participation in the program, including, but not limited to, transportation and child care costs.”
Since the state would be responsible for administering the program, and paying any stipend, costs are a central concern.
All three bills have been held in committee for study and Greg Pare, spokesman for Senate President M. Teresa Paiva Weed, said they are being considered as part of fiscal 2013 state budget discussions.
The program has conceptual support from both Gov. Lincoln D. Chafee and state labor-department officials, although they have not endorsed any of the existing bills.
“The [Chafee] administration supports the intent of the bills, because all of them strive to help unemployed Rhode Islanders who are receiving benefits get job training and work experience,” said DLT spokeswoman Laura Hart. “But we need to see the final versions.”
Hart said from the perspective of DLT, the only concern was that the agency has the resources to successfully manage the program.
House Speaker Gordon D. Fox has not yet taken a position on any of the current bills, spokesman Larry Berman said.
McNamara, who proposed a similar bill last year, said this year there appears to be more support for creating a new on-the-job training program as the state’s double-digit unemployment rate has shown no sign of dropping. In Georgia, the training program, initially only for workers eligible for unemployment benefits, was in 2009 opened up to all residents. This resulted in a flood of applicants that swamped the resources of the state labor department and caused costs to skyrocket. In 2011, the program was scaled back again to include unemployment-eligible workers.
Although the Georgia Works concept has received bipartisan support, not all groups have embraced it and there are differing interpretations of its track record.
Critics of the program have described it as state-sponsored unpaid, or low-paid, labor that can potentially undercut permanent, full-time hiring.
One quarter of the 32,000 workers who had participated in Georgia Works last fall were hired full time by the companies they trained with, according to the Atlanta Journal Constitution. Sixty percent of those who were trained found full-time work somewhere within three months of the completing the program, the Pew Center on the States said.
Rhode Island Manufacturer’s Association Executive Director Bill McCourt supports an on-the-job training initiative for the jobless, but said his members do not see such a program as a replacement for paid workers, or a revolving door of interns.
“Certainly taking someone who is unemployed and getting them working is a good thing,” McCourt said. “We don’t want a free workforce and we don’t want people turning over all the time.”
At Creative Circle Media, Ostendorf said if he could create a job-training program, he would have employers share some of the costs with the state and, in exchange, let the training last three or four months instead of six weeks.
Still, Ostendorf said six weeks is better than nothing.
“It is awfully late to be debating something that should have been a hallmark of the state’s plan four years ago,” Ostendorf said. •

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