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With costs per participant that range from $600 to $4,000, the training programs have been widely criticized as boondoggles, although the Congressional Budget Office concluded this year that graduates boost their annual incomes by 5% to 15%. Most of the programs are administered without close federal supervision by 446 local governments, and Washington knows little about their effectiveness. Says Sar Levitan, director of George Washington University's Center for Social Policy Studies: "You end up throwing money away without anyone really knowing what is going to happen." At their best, the federal programs have room for only a fraction of the underclass, and most are designed for fairly experienced workers or the motivated poor.
The programs would work better if private business had a bigger voice in designing and managing them. Perhaps businessmen, who as a class are effective at solving problems and getting things done, could bid on projects to raze and rebuild sections of the underclass ghettos, providing shops, industries and services on a model—and ultimately profitmaking—basis. Business could also take over much of the job training now carried out in government centers under federal programs and probably do it better and cheaper and even profitably. Tax incentives, for example, could be designed to reward employers who hire the long-term unemployed and show results in upgrading their skills. Certainly, government-supported jobs of any kind are only a first, temporary step in lifting the underclass; the real solution is for members to get and hold private jobs.
To help prepare them for such jobs, government and private money have already come together in some encouraging projects. One of them, financed in part by the Ford Foundation and in part by the welfare payments of participants themselves, is Supported Work, which is aimed at longtime welfare mothers, ex-drug addicts and ex-convicts in 13 cities. Started in New York City in 1972, the program caught on in such cities as Atlanta and Oakland, Calif., and now enrolls 3,000 workers nationwide. It provides employment at about the minimum wage under rigid job discipline. After a year or so, managers help participants find private jobs.
A most successful Supported Work project is the $4.3 million Maverick Corp., which runs a tire-recapping operation in Hartford, Conn. Maverick employs 350 ghetto dwellers, including 100 people age 17 to 20. Typically, a worker is offered $2.50 an hour, and told that whoever shows up punctually will get $2.67 instead. Anyone who is so much as one minute late loses the bonus for the entire week.'" Morale is high, and last year 85 workers moved on to private jobs. Says Maverick President Dan MacKinnon: "Of that group, 25% have lost their jobs. That doesn't make me feel very good, but one thing I'm