THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, July 10, 1995 TAG: 9507080326
SECTION: BUSINESS WEEKLY PAGE: 04 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Ted Evanoff
LENGTH: Medium: 88 lines
Call her Louise. One day last week, when welfare reform was the topic on the front page, she told her story.
She was raised in the Midwest, a corn town where the grain elevators begin giving way to pine forests. Before she completed high school, she moved to Tidewater with a sailor.
Now she needs a job. So she phoned a recruiting firm. For $80, the recruiter would job hunt for her.
The recruiter assured her no special skills were needed, not even a high school diploma, and mentioned some positions open at Norfolk International Airport.
Wondering whether she really could qualify, after all, she had no diploma, Louise called the airport office. She was told no high school degree more than likely meant no job. She sensed if she had paid the $80 fee she would have been out of the cash and the job. She bristled.
``It just discourages me,'' she said. ``It just really hurts me when women really try. It's harder than what people think to find a good job.''
Finding work in Tidewater isn't difficult. Although a record 630,000 civilian jobs are filled on the Peninsula and the southside, help-wanted signs abound, especially with the unemployment rate at 4.7 percent, a level considered almost full employment in the region. But finding a decent wage takes more time.
Nowhere is this more evident than in the Virginia Beach office of Jenny Davis, local manager for Manpower Inc., among the region's 10 largest employers outside government.
Manpower, a respectable Fortune 500 company based in Milwaukee, employs about 4,000 people in Hampton Roads. Its employees work in scores of offices, shops and factories which, for various reasons, rely on temporary help agencies for the payroll, workers' compensation and other costs related to employing workers.
``I used to work in the Richmond market nine years ago,'' Davis said. ``I'm still charging prices here that are the same or slightly higher than what I was charging (for temporary labor) in Richmond nine years ago.''
Providing, say, a Chesapeake factory with a machine operator, Manpower might bill the plant $7 or $8 per hour, a charge close to the $6.50-$7.50 per hour common in 1990.
One reason for the flat wages is the steady flow into Tidewater of Navy spouses like Louise looking for jobs. Another is the temporary help agencies themselves.
Fighting for market share in a competitive industry, they can win business by paying lower wages than their competitors.
Davis counts at least 40 temp firms active in Tidewater. Together they probably employ well in excess of 15,000 people.
The proliferation of temp agencies has driven home the notion that they will become even more popular throughout the nation.
``I believe between now and the year 2000, you're going to see a lot more of this,'' Davis said. ``Eventually, you're going to see a larger percentage of temporaries than permanent workers in the workforce.''
A nation of temps. A state intent on welfare reform to help trim budgets. A city filled with Louises.
She and her sailor moved here in '87. They had two children, divorced, and she married a factory man responsible for his own two kids.
He had a good job in a Norfolk assembly plant until he was hurt. And there she was the other day - four kids, one disability check, no high school diploma. ``We're living beyond our means,'' she said.
You wouldn't call her a career woman. Telemarketing, catalog sales, hotel maid, those are jobs, not careers. ``You have to work your tail end off to make $4, $4.75 an hour,'' she said.
She made a point about hard work. She didn't mind it. After the divorce, she found a job, but day care costs took most of her cash. She quit, relied on public assistance.
Under the Commonwealth's welfare reform, scheduled to begin in non-urban areas, you'd get welfare benefits for only two years, though family health insurance would continue one year after welfare ended.
Those newly enrolled on welfare would have child care and transportation costs covered while they work or train for a job.
Louise, remembering when she relied on public assistance, bristled at the reforms.
``They're taking away so much from people,'' she said. ``It's just hard to live in this state. This place is wild compared to where I grew up. They have a sales tax here. The tax on food is crazy. This place is a tax crazy place.''
KEYWORDS: WELFARE UNEMPLOYMENT
by CNB