ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, March 9, 1997 TAG: 9703100108
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
SOURCE: THE NEW YORK TIMES
The government should set an example for businesses in helping people get off the dole, Clinton said.
President Clinton ordered Saturday that federal agencies set an example for employers across the country by hiring welfare recipients.
Clinton did not set numerical goals, but he directed every federal agency to do all it could to recruit and hire people receiving welfare. He gave agency heads 30 days to present detailed plans to him. Vice President Al Gore will supervise the effort.
``Government can help to move people from welfare to work, by acting the way we want all employers to act - demanding high performance from workers but also going the extra mile to offer opportunity to those who have been on welfare but want to do something more with their lives,'' Clinton said in his weekly radio broadcast.
Like many initiatives announced in Saturday radio addresses, this one combined political symbolism with substantive policy. Most federal agencies are shrinking, and there are relatively few openings for inexperienced workers with low skill levels.
But Clinton said Saturday that the federal government, the nation's largest employer, ``must do its part and set an example'' for private employers, whom he has repeatedly prodded to hire welfare recipients.
The president encouraged federal agencies to hire welfare recipients as ``worker trainees.'' Such hiring authority exists under current law but has not been widely used. Welfare recipients who do well as trainees could, after three years, ``join the civil service,'' Clinton said, and obtain permanent government jobs.
The worker-trainee program began in 1973, when the government had difficulty filling clerical jobs. A summary of the president's plan issued Saturday by the White House says, ``This program offers a quick and easy way of hiring entry-level people into the federal work force and bypassing complex federal personnel hiring rules and procedures.''
Labor unions said they did not have enough information about the president's plan to analyze it. But the unions said they were concerned that federal agencies might give preference to welfare recipients, permitting them to bypass the normal competition with other applicants for low-wage jobs in civil service.
The new welfare law, which ended the 61-year-old federal guarantee of cash assistance for the nation's poorest children, requires most adults to work within two years of receiving welfare benefits. Many states have set stricter work requirements.
Clinton said that federal agencies should notify low-income employees of their eligibility for the earned-income tax credit and help them find affordable child care and transportation.
The initiative faces formidable obstacles because the federal government is not hiring many people.
Clinton says he has reduced the number of civilian employees in the executive branch by 13 percent, to 1.9 million, the lowest level in 30 years, and has promised that the federal work force ``will continue shrinking'' as he tries to balance the budget by 2002.
He repeatedly has urged business executives to hire welfare recipients. Companies including Sprint, United Airlines and Burger King have; but until now, aides to Clinton had no answers when asked why the White House and other government offices weren't making similar efforts.
James King, director of the federal Office of Personnel Management, recently gave Clinton a report outlining steps that could be taken to encourage the hiring of welfare recipients by federal agencies.
King said that any federal effort to hire welfare recipients had to come ``from the top down'' - from the president and Cabinet officers.
Every federal department except the Justice Department has shrunk since Clinton took office in 1993. In the last fiscal year, the government hired 200,915 people, but 71 percent of them got temporary jobs.
The federal government lists hundreds of job openings at its Internet site (http://www.usajobs.opm.gov). Job listings are updated daily but include few entry-level positions.
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