NV Magazine

Arnette Smith is an unlikely figurehead for corporate America. She is a 53-year-old grandmother, mature yet decidedly hip, with three earrings in each ear, a pierced nose, and a black scarf tied around her head. She is sharp: ambitious and hungry for any opportunity to “refurnish the mind” as she puts it, which perhaps makes her a more probable candidate for a corporate icon. But Smith has been out of the job market for eight years and on welfare for the last four and a half, and ironically, it is this that makes her the face of the new American workplace.

This is a marketplace made complex by globalization, rapid technological advancements, and a shortage of skilled labor. Unemployment has fallen from a decade high of 7.5 percent in 1992, to approximately 4 percent in 1999, and an explosion of new jobs has created a shortage of entry level employees. It is a problem shared by companies regardless of size. According to Aida Alvarez, administrator of the U.S. Small Business Administration, “Small businesses often lack the resources and time to invest in searching for quality workers, a challenge that is only compounded by a shrinking labor market which is now the lowest in a generation.”

People like Smith are the solution. She is currently enrolled in an intensive Xerox Business Services training program at the Department of Human Services in East Orange, NJ. In just three weeks, Smith will most likely be hired to work at one of XBS’ 95 New Jersey locations, scooped up by a corporation willing to help and eager to find well-trained, reliable employees. She will thus join the millions of welfare recipients who have filtered into the workforce in the past three years, many of them forced in as a result of welfare reform.

“I think this is a business issue,” says Art Corrales, Xerox’s manager of community outreach. “Yes it’s the right thing to do for our country, but it’s also good for our company. This partnership provides a source of well trained, entry level employees.”

For Smith, XBS is an exit from what she terms “the welfare prison.” With her carefully manicured nails and eloquent speech, she says that she does not fit in with the drug users and the destitute, the stereotypical welfare recipients.

“I was tired of sitting at home,” she says, “and I can’t be around here anymore. I want to move to a better neighborhood. Here, I’m just surrounded by people who have given up hope.”

Smith is a proud woman. As she talks of the others — those in her community unwilling to move beyond the welfare system — she waves her hand around her face as if to swat them away like flies. But while her decision to move ahead after four and a half years on welfare is commendable, it in fact may not have been a decision that was solely her own.

The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act was signed by President Clinton in August 1996, imposing a five-year lifetime limit on welfare benefits and requiring adults to work after two years. In April 2000, Smith would have lost her benefits, and once out of the welfare system would have been forced to find work on her own.

According to the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services Administration for Children and Families, the welfare roll has dropped by 4.9 million people, or 40 percent, since enactment of the welfare law. For fiscal year 1998, almost one in four recipients was employed in a typical month, the highest level ever recorded.

Xerox’s relationship with the city of East Orange was developed under the Welfare to Work Partnership, the business community’s effort to help move welfare recipients into jobs in the private sector. Carolyn Monel, assistant director of the East Orange Department of Human Services, initially contacted XBS in 1998 to learn more about outsourcing document production. When put in touch with Charles Brown, then a Xerox marketing executive, the two realized that there was an opportunity to not only meet the city’s document production needs, but to assist its welfare recipients as well.

“We wanted a program that would provide career building opportunities,” says Brown. “I knew that we needed to come up with something very unique.”

It took Brown and Monel about eight months to develop the program. The city accepted XBS’ proposal in spring 1998, allowing the corporation to install a fully functional print shop in the Department of Human Services’ building. The city council currently leases $100,000 worth of Xerox equipment, including a DocuTech 135 publishing machine.

XBS began training potential employees in April 1999. Monel’s agency screens employable clients who are then referred to a “life skills” workshop — a 12-week program that helps participants to develop the attitude and ethic related to getting and retaining a job.

“They teach you how to fill out applications, to assert yourself, to take criticism,” says Smith. “You have to clean yourself up. This is not the very bottom but you still have to work your way back up.”

“We consider ourselves a holistic service agency,” says Monel. “This is all about taking personal responsibility.”

Maria Johnson, East Orange’s DocuTech liaison, selects four to six students to proceed to each DocuTech training class. She monitors their progress, demanding that they show up for the daily 9.00 a.m. to 2.30 p.m. session, and using tough love to ensure that they succeed.

“I ride them hard,” Johnson says. “They hate it but I don’t care. If the goal is accomplished, what is there to care about?”

Johnson pulled 33-year-old Shrunde Hurd out of a training class after she had missed three sessions. “She just wasn’t hungry enough,” Johnson explains. “There were other more eager people who could have filled her place.”

Hurd was sent back to the life skills workshop, but after a month, begged for a second opportunity to take the DocuTech class. She too was nearing her five-year benefit limit, and with five children to care for could not afford to be without income.

“You have to search yourself,” says Hurd, who has since graduated and started a job at an XBS Newark location in September. “If you have a job and you don’t like what you’re doing, you just won’t go. But I have goals. And this is a pretty good program for someone like me who’s interested in moving up.”

The Doc is a mammoth machine, measuring about 15’ long, with a thick silver tube that funnels the heat generated from production to the outside air. Smith demonstrates the machine’s versatility, pointing out the five parts of the system and finally pressing a key on the Doc’s monitor so that it whirs into action. It lays the printed sheets neatly in a tray and responds with an on screen “thank you” after it is done.

Smith is learning how to manipulate documents — scanning, copying, printing and binding, so that at the end of her training she will be able to simply photocopy or produce a professionally bound book. According to Monel, the city of East Orange spends $2500 training each individual and saves an estimated $10,000 to $15,000 per person in annual public assistance. Monel says that this is the only welfare agency in the state that has embarked on this initiative, and so far, the program has placed 28 people both at Xerox and at other businesses throughout the area.

Participation in the XBS program grants students an interview with Xerox, though it does not necessarily guarantee them a job. The uncertainty acts as an incentive.

“I’m training people who don’t know what their future is,” says Nelson Gonzalez, the DocuTech instructor. “It makes them more eager to learn. They have the drive in them — I just have to push a little.”

Graduates prepare for their interviews by selecting clothes from the Department of Human Services’ “Fashions for Success” boutique, and women work with Mary Kay consultants to select make-up in suitable shades.

“We’re teaching them to be corporate citizens,” says Brown. “At the end of the 15 weeks, they’re sharp, they’re ready for any interview.”

Xerox Business Services is the fastest growing division of Xerox Corporation and provides services to more than 4,000 client companies in 36 countries, making it the worldwide leader in document outsourcing. XBS started its welfare to work program in 1997, hiring 105 welfare recipients in 13 different locations. There are currently 39 operations across the country.

According to Corrales, XBS will have hired over 500 people by the end of 1999, and has a retention rate of 76 percent. “Turnover is one of the most expensive items in a business,” he says. “Most of these people are responsible and reliable. Some have high school, college, even technical skills. They just took a wrong turn in life.”

The government provides tax credits as an incentive for companies like Xerox to hire welfare recipients. According to the Welfare to Work Partnership, companies are eligible to receive up to $8500 per employee. Several states also offer wage subsidies of up to 50 percent of a former welfare recipient’s salary to encourage not only hiring, but job retention.

Xerox’s emphasis is on retention and advancement though additional training programs.

“We can’t afford to have someone come in and stand still,” says Brown. “Every year Xerox comes out with new technology. You’re in school from the time you start to the time you leave.”

Most people hired through Xerox’s welfare to work program begin as account executives, earning $8 to $10 an hour. It is a vast improvement from the $140 that adults on public assistance in East Orange receive each month.

Hurd, a former stay-at-home mom who had been out of the workforce for 10 years, makes $8 an hour. “I had odds and ends jobs,” she explains, “but I wanted to be a mother. I think my last real job was at the post office or something. I can’t even recall.” In 18 months she will also be eligible for health and other benefits available to Xerox employees, including tuition reimbursement and enrollment in the company’s credit union.

“It’s a win-win situation for everyone,” says Matthew Devine, a Xerox customer account manager. It is such a profitable solution that the vice president of Xerox intends to use the East Orange operation as a model for a national campaign.

But as successful as most welfare to work programs are, there are still those people who do not make a smooth transition from welfare into the world of work. Despite the training, there are some who find it difficult to act responsibly, failing to show up for work or lapsing back into drug or alcohol addiction. Lack of childcare hinders working mothers. And there is also the issue of location.

Leroy Rose wears shades at night. They are to protect his eyes from pebbles and other debris kicked up by cars as they speed down Route 17 in Northern New Jersey. He walks this route each night. It is part of the three-hour commute that he makes each way, every day, to get to his assigned XBS site.

“By the time I get home I’m exhausted,” says Rose. “But I have to do what I have to do because I want to get ahead.”

“Transportation has been a problem,” Monel agrees. “Many of our clients have either lost their license or don’t have one.”

It has been an obstacle for many welfare recipients nationwide. Ninety-four percent of welfare recipients do not have automobiles, and often, inadequate public transportation makes it difficult to get to work. It is a particularly acute problem in New Jersey, and in 1996, Transportation Commissioner Frank Wilson noted that for many, “public transportation is the difference between welfare and work.”

Other problems stem from the fact that families often suffer financially when an adult takes the step from welfare to work. While childless adults on welfare receive a paltry amount, families receive substantially more in terms of benefits, depending on the number of children in the household and the particular situation.

According to the Urban Institute, there are still about 3 million families on welfare. They are concentrated in large cities, where poverty and unemployment rates remain high, especially for young African American and Latino populations. For those who do find jobs, average wages are about $6.16 an hour, which means that even though they may be working, many former recipients are struggling to support their families. “Welfare to What,” an article produced by the Children’s Defense Fund and National Coalition for the Homeless, states that in March 1998, only 8 percent of the previous year’s welfare recipients had jobs paying weekly wages above the three person poverty line. And opportunities for moving up are limited by minimal education, work experience, and job skills.

“This is an all out war against the poor,” says William Mason, Co-chair of Workfare at the National People’s Campaign. “People are not moving from welfare to work, they’re moving from assignment to assignment. It’s like turning back the hands of the clock to the time of slavery.”

Corrales says that corporations need people like Mason to keep them honest. There are currently about 12,000 corporations committed to hiring at least one welfare recipient, including the Partnership’s five founding companies — UPS, United Airlines, UAL Corporation, Monsanto Company, and Sprint. Mason’s goal is to ensure that former recipients do not become just a source of cheap labor for these large businesses.

There are avenues for advancement within XBS, where Brown says salaries can be as high as $45,000 for former welfare recipients. The goal is for XBS’ East Orange office to become completely self sufficient, to move beyond servicing just city agencies such as the Health Department, Mayor’s Office and Police Department, to meeting the duplicating needs of a much larger client base.

“This is business and it’s about empowerment,” says Monel. “It’s about bringing out potential in people who might otherwise give up hope.”

Hurd is currently polishing her computer skills using tapes provided by Xerox. She wants to progress and ultimately open a cleaning business with her husband, also a former welfare recipient.

“H and L Cleaning Service,” she declares proudly. “We know about cleaning up — of course we do, we have five kids!”

“Xerox is committed to making this work,” says Brown. “If we help one person, we help a family, and in turn, an entire community.”

It is a trickle down effect that will hopefully transform the country, putting an end to the welfare system altogether. People like Hurd, whose families have spent generations on the system, have broken the welfare chain in an effort to secure a better future for their children.

In December 1999, President Clinton commended the efforts of all involved in welfare to work programs, from facilitators to participants. “Most of the people who get jobs are keeping them,” he said. “They’re getting raises and paying taxes, and teaching their children to honor the dignity of work.”