their professional skills, perhaps that would engender the kind of loyalty that will make them stay with us in the system. Furthermore, since they are people with families and have roots in the city, they cannot very easily pick up and move away. So we have begun to convert our resources to the training of our own employees. So, as we bring in people from the streets at the lowest levels, we offer them a career, not just a job. If they are good workers and if they are interested, after 2 years at the lowest level, they can then have the opportunities to move to the next level. If they are interested, then we can move them to the next. Senator NELSON. Do you have any objection from the State medical society? Dr. HAUGHTON. Not at all. In instituting this last step from the practical nurse to RN, we have had some flack from the nursing profession. They feel that we are introducing people of low quality into their profession. We hope to prove otherwise. We feel that these people have the competence. Because they did not have the opportunity when they were youngsters, there is no reason why we should deny them that opportunity now. Fortunately for us, State education department has accepted this approach and is working with us and hoping that we will be successful. In fact, it was their recommendation that we put 2 hours of supervised study into our program. Our plan was to have these workers work 5 hours a day and study 4 hours. The State education department said that their experience was that people of that age and with family responsibilities don't get much studying done when they get home at night. They recommended that we put a 2-hour period in the middle of the day during which these students can have lunch at a place where their instructors will be there with them for 2 hours and where they can study and where there instructors are available to help them during those 2 hours. It turned out to be a 4-hour workday, 2 hours of supervised study. and 3 hours of classwork and clinical work. Senator NELSON. That adds up to nine. Dr. HAUGHTON. Nine hours a day. As I said, the age spread is 25 to 60. So we are not talking about teenagers. We are talking about people with responsibilities. They are doing very well so far. We started with 25, and we have not lost anyone yet. Our second group starts today. Now, we have done the same thing in housekeeping. We have upgraded our housekeeping staff so that they have become supervisors and leaders in that field of work. In fact, some of our people in the dietary program have now gone on to college to get degrees in the food science field. We have now, through an educational fund which was negotiated by our union in the last round of bargaining, established our own educational fund and these funds we are now using to provide general education to people working in our agency. Many of nurses' aides have not finished high school and most of the upgrading that they will require if they are interested will require them at some point to have a high school diploma. So we feel that one service we can provide to our employees is to make general education available to them, again on the job, so that they can qualify to go on to college programs if they choose. Our policy has been one, as I pointed out, of having full opportunity for our workers. No one should be denied the opportunity to move up the ladder as far as he is able or willing to move. We feel that this will make it possible for us to attract a better type of worker even at the lowest level, since they know that they are not stuck at the bottom of the system. I think I have taken enough time. Dr. Riessman will follow. Senator NELSON. I think it is a very necessary and creative program that you are conducting in New York. I commend you for it.. Dr. Riessman. STATEMENT OF DR. FRANK RIESSMAN, DIRECTOR, NEW CAREERS DEVELOPMENT CENTER, NEW YORK UNIVERSITY, NEW YORK, N.Y. Dr. RIESSMAN. I will be very brief, particularly since I have a large amount of testimony to give you for placement in the record. Senator NELSON. Your testimony will be printed in full in the record. (The prepared statement of Dr. Riessman follows:) PREPARED STATEMENT OF FRANK RIESSMAN, DIRECTOR, NEW CAREERS DEVELOPMENT CENTER, AND PROFESSOR, EDUCATIONAL SOCIOLOGY, NEW YORK UNIVERSITY It is a pleasure to appear before you today. My name is Frank Riessman, and I am Director of the New Careers Development Center and Professor of Educational Sociology at New York University. My concern with manpower, and particularly new careers, goes back to the early 1960's and includes authorship with Arthur Pearl of New Careers for the Poor, and subsequently with Hermine Popper of Up From Poverty and as sole author of Strategies Against Poverty. This statement is divided into the following sections: Human Service Needs, Manpower, and the Role of Paraprofessionals-The Work to Be Done; The Manpower Needs; The "New Careers" Program: Evidence and Change; The Work of the Paraprofessionals. Upgrading Present Workers-Some Experience; New Careers vs. Upgrading. Toward a New Bill-The Administration's Public Service Careers Program; S. 2838: Some Suggestions. The single most compelling question, I believe, which faces all of us concerned with manpower issues is whether there will be real jobs and meaningful opportunities for advancement for the unemployed and the underemployed. It is intolerable simply to consider that an additional one million persons will become unemployed as a consequence of the Administration's anti-inflationary policy, according to reports of the Secretary of Labor. And if such general figures are not shocking enough, the effect of these policies upon special sectors of the population, economy and country is even more disturbing. For example, as the chairman of this committee, Senator Nelson, has noted, "I don't think we can stand by and watch the unemployed rate for black teenagers soar to more than 25% . . . ." And, similarly, average unemployment rates mask the special and sharper effect upon certain industries, certain areas of the countryespecially the inner city, and certain population groups, for example, the anticipated doubling of the Black adult male unemployment rate to 7%, to say nothing of sub-employment and under-employment. The words of Walter Heller before the Senate Banking Committee put the issue sharply in focus: "The relatively weak members of society bear most of the cost of lost jobs and incomes in a business downturn, while the relatively strong, the middle class, get most of the benefits of more stable prices. "Measures to help that million and a half whose jobs we eliminate in the fight against inflation deserve the highest priority." I completely share the sentiments of Dr. Heller and would only add that equally high priority must be given to those who never have had a job. Dr. Heller went on in his testimony to point out that: "The missing link in the Nixon (Manpower) program is a Government guarantee of a job, either through Government as an employer of last resort or temporarily subsidized private employment. Job training and income maintenance and unemployment compensation are all well and good, but there must be a job at the end of the line." The only quarrel that I have with Dr. Heller is that rather than at the "end of the line," it is my belief that the job must come at the beginning of the line. Let me explain what I mean. A basic new careers concept is that the individual to be served is best served, and most likely to succeed in the program if he is immediately put to doing useful work and the necessary training and education is built into the job. This concept of "job first, training and education built in" has become to have increasing acceptance in manpower programs. First incorporated in the "New Careers" (Nelson-Scheuer) Amendment to the Economic Opportunity Act (1966), it is now included in the NAB-JOBS program, the $24.3 million new careers in education Career Opportunities Program being launched this spring by the Office of Education, and is proposed for the Public Service Careers Program being developed by the Department of Labor. Basic here is the notion that opportunity produces motivation rather than the traditional practice which seeks to instill motivation before offering opportunity. Indeed, one may be bold enough to say that any program for the so-called disadvantaged which does not begin with a job will suffer severe attrition across the life of the training period. A second central notion in new careers is that there is important work to be done in the society, particularly human service work, work of people working with other people, and that persons from among the poor can make an important contribution to that work. Notions that we were becoming a "leisure society," a society where there will be too little work to do for too many people, failed to see the 20 million people who are poor, and the similarly staggering numbers who lack health services, a decent education, adequate shelter, to say nothing of the work required to clean our air, land, and water. It may be accurate to say that those who foresaw such a leisure society focused upon the "pockets of affluence" and ignored the surrounding sea of need. A recent Fortune magazine article states: "Before long, we keep hearing, work will practically wither away, leaving all of us with an abundance of everything, notably free time. No such luck. Contrary to all the predictions that automation will throw millions out of work, the scarcest of resources will be manpower." (Gilbert Burck, "There'll be Less Leisure Than You Think," March, 1970.) In the human services we are beginning to see a new phenomena at work. one might call it the resurrection of Say's Law, namely that "The supply of services produces new demand for the services." As Dr. Sidney Garfield, director of the Kaiser-Permanente Health Program on the west coast reports, "When we eliminated fee for service . . . the result was a totally uncontrollable flood of well people, near-sick and sick people . . . ." And in testimony before this committee early this year, Mr. Gordon Nesvig, Director of Personnel for Los Angeles County, reported, "Within a few months after a dozen Health Assistants had joined the staff, the East Los Angeles Child and Youth Center was overwhelmed with new patients. Far more patients, by the way, than their statistical data had led (the clinic staff) to believe should have needed their services within the established geographic boundaries." Similar data can be found in studies of community mental programs, public health work, family planning, legal services for the poor, youth programs. Indeed, one may almost say that any human service program which does not face a strong demand pressure upon supply is either offering an irrelevant service or failing to organize the service in the most effective manner. (This question of supply and demand is explored in a paper by Catherine Kohler Riessman, "The SupplyDemand Dilemma and Community Mental Health Centers," and one by Alan Gartner, "Too Much Demand-Turn Off the Spigot or Redesign the System: Using the System's Users as a Resource.") The point that I want to make is that there are unmet needs which our society faces-the meeting of which is crucial to our individual and national well-being, and any notions that there is not enough work to be done is sheer nonsense. A recent study conducted by the New Careers Development Center (“Human Service Employment Opportunities-A Survey of the Data," November, 1969, attached as Appendix 1), highlights the manpower needs in the human services. Drawing upon existing reports and surveys, the study found: In 1968, 15% of the entire labor force were public employees. 3 out of every 10 new jobs since 1945 have been in the public sector. In the past decade, employment in state and local government has increased more rapidly than employment in any other major industry division. The number of people providing services has increased by no less than 70 percent, from 28 million to nearly 48 million. Thus the services have accounted for nearly all the increase in total employment since 1950. In 1948 federal, state and local government employed nearly 5,700,000. The figure more than doubled by 1968 and may exceed 20 million by 1980. In health occupations employment more than doubled between 1950 and 1967, jumping from 1,400,000 to 3,500,000, and by 1980 will probably increase another two-thirds, or to 5,300,000. In 1966, the Commission on Technology, Automation and Economic Progress found that there were 5.3 million potential jobs existing in governmental activities. A survey of 130 cities, in 1968, found 279,415 additional public service job possibilities, an estimated 50.5% of which could be filled by nonprofessionals. 3.7 million more workers are needed in state and local governments by 1975. One-fifth more manpower is needed by 1975 in all levels of government activities. 1,142,000 non-teacher instructional personnel is projected in public classrooms by 1977, a nearly tenfold increase over the present. By 1975, twice as many professional nurses are required, four and a half times as many attendants and aides, double the number of medical and dental technicians. The interface between new services and manpower needs is perhaps best expressed by the report of Dr. Ernest Saward, Medical Director of the KaiserPermanente Clinic, Portland, Oregon, that: For each 100,000 persons a program such as ours requires the availability of 180 hospital beds, 90 physicians organized in a full-time group, 800 ancillary personnel ***. New careers programs have three primary foci-initially they were concerned with meeting an anti-poverty need by providing meaningful work for the disadvantaged while at the same time meeting manpower shortages of human service agencies. Increasingly a third focus has come to the fore-that is the providing of quality services. A growing body of data addresses itself to the first two of these issues-the anti-poverty and manpower aspects of new careers. In brief, it has been demonstrated that persons recruited from among the poor can successfully hold paraprofessional positions in human service agencies. Testimony presented before the House Education and Labor Committee (last year) gives the first hard data on a national basis on the Labor Department's New Careers program. It shows: The striking holding power of the program-85% of the trainees remain in the program. The sharp income gain of the participant-Average salaries over $4,200. The non-"creamed" nature of the group-61% had been unemployed when they entered the program, another 28% on welfare. These findings, presented in testimony delivered by Dr. Jacob R. Fishman, University Research Corporation, are contrary to earlier assumptions that new careers programs took a "Creamed" population, gave them a job and the rhetoric of opportunity. Dr. Fishman's presentation, based on samples of 92 projects, found: A profile of the trainees: 61% unemployed prior to enrollment; 28% on welfare; 11% employed at an average annual income of $2,100; average age males, 28, females, 31; 48% with less than a high-school diploma; 46% with a high-school diploma; 6% with some college; 38% married; 62% separated, divorced, widowed, or single; 74% Negro; 20% white; 6% Puerto Rican and other; 80% females; 20% males. 85% of the trainees remained in the programs, while 8% left for other jobs or training; thus, only 7% dropped out. Average annual income of the trainees in Level I jobs (60% of the group) was $4,200, while those in Level II or III jobs (40% of the group) had an average annual income of $4,500. 39% of the trainees were taking college courses for credit, and another 24% were receiving GED instruction. 11% of the trainees received their high-school diploma through the program. Most trainees worked in health or education agencies, 43% and 32% respectively, with 12% in law enforcement, and the remainder in social service, recreation and other human service agencies. It should be noted that the program as implemented by the Department of Labor has not carried out all of the principles of the new careers concept, nor has it well administered the program it has sought to implement-and this has been true under the previous Department leadership as it is of the present. Some of the evaluations of the Department's New Careers program have been less than adequate, as well as assuming the New Careers as implemented by Labor is the whole concept. Unfortunately the National Civil Service League has fallen into both of these traps in its report, "Public Service Jobs for Urban Ghetto Residents." First, it relies heavily upon a study performed by the Avco Corporation, one that was hastily and ill done. For example, the study complains that the directors of the New Careers projects lacked experience with such a program-of course they did in that there had been no such previous program. And, further, they note that after nearly nine months there were few "graduates"-of course there were few in that the program was designed to carry the participants for a full two years. Second, the League's paper states that there are "two strategies or 'models' for the definition of new public service jobs." The first, which they call the "job spinoff" strategy is said to have been "institutionalized in a 1966 Amendment to the Economic Opportunity Act introduced by Rep. James Scheuer . . . ." The author of the League pamphlet gives me credit for the origin and development of the idea. I must demur both from sole credit for the origin of the idea and from what the Labor Department has done. The second strategy which the League calls the "job development" approach, is found by their study to be more desirable. While much has been accomplished in New Jersey which they cite as the basis of the "job development" approach, we think neither strategy goes far enough, nor fully exhausts the potential of the new careers model. Both of the models have done little more than rearrange old work, "old careers for new workers," and have given little attention to a restructuring of the work or the institution or to the quality and character of the work as it affects the consumer of the service. The problems faced by these programs have largely been ones of the institutions and not the individuals. Illustrative of the problems encountered are these reported upon in a study of the largest program to train new child care workers sponsored by the Child Welfare League. The problems included: job freezes, inaccessibility of the agencies, inadequate salaries, racial discrimination, inadequate training allowances, resistance by some professionals, opposition of unions, health problems, lack of day care facilities. Of the 542 participants in five cities, 80% graduated and of these 70% obtained jobs, at an average salary of nearly $4,400. The 176 participants who had been welfare clients had a slightly higher completion rate (82%), a slightly lower employment rate (67%), at a slightly lower average salary (nearly $4,200). |