Before Gov. Gray Davis was recalled from office, he did a good
deed for San Benito County by awarding a $200,000 grant to help
dislocated workers obtain new employment.
The grant will provide people who have been recently laid off
with the opportunity to receive training in areas in high demand in
the employment market place, said Kathryn Flores, executive
director for the community services and workforce development
program.
Before Gov. Gray Davis was recalled from office, he did a good deed for San Benito County by awarding a $200,000 grant to help dislocated workers obtain new employment.
The grant will provide people who have been recently laid off with the opportunity to receive training in areas in high demand in the employment market place, said Kathryn Flores, executive director for the community services and workforce development program.
The development program is working with the One Stop Career Center of San Benito County to provide the necessary training for 40 eligible participants, Flores said.
Flores applied for a $275,000 grant from the state in May, when unemployment in the county was extremely high – more than 10 percent – and found out Oct. 3 the program would be receiving $200,000, she said.
“We were turning away so many people and our waiting list was not decreasing,” she said. ” (The grant) is not geared to any specific industry, because most of our people who were laid off come from a variety of companies and industries.”
The federal government allocates money that is given to the state and workforce development funds, which is then earmarked for competitive grants for special needs – this grant being part of it, Flores said.
The county’s workforce development program had taken a series of cuts in past years and this money was a necessity, she said.
“We made our case that we really needed the funds over here,” Flores said. “Other wise, our local community members who recently lost their jobs were going to have a very difficult time getting back into the workforce without that additional training.”
The recipients of the training program provided by the grant money are selected on a first-come, first-serve basis. They must meet the requirement for a dislocated worker, which is simply providing documentation that they were laid off from their job within the past 26 weeks.
They then have to go through the career center and exhaust their employment resources, and decide that to find a new job they need to be retrained with new transferable skills.
“Basically, they need to select an occupation that shows there is a need for,” Flores said.
Some areas are manufacturing, basic support services such as clerical, truck driving, and especially health care, Flores said.
“Health care is an area we have been pushing people to consider,” she said, “but it’s the customer’s choice so we can’t force someone into something they believe is not their fit.”
The grant allows for each person to receive up to $5,000 to include training costs and support services, such as child care and transportation. This doesn’t mean that each person will receive that full amount, Flores said.
“People don’t realize that there are limitations to the training,” she said.
Basically, the grant allows the workforce development program to use up to $5,000 to do whatever they can to help these people find new jobs in high-demand areas.
While the official paperwork has not come through from the state, the 40 participants have already been chosen and notified that the money is available. Flores hopes to have people begin training sometime in November, she said.
While 40 people may not sound like a lot, if the program successfully helps the participants to retain and keep new jobs, it gives the workforce development program a chance to go to the state and request more funds, Flores said.
“My hope is that we will obligate this money really quickly and I can go back to the state and say, we’ve performed well, we have a need, I need more money down here,” she said. “40 is still not enough, but I’ll take the money – better $200,000 than zero.”
People from an assortment of careers and backgrounds utilize the training program, many of whom possess college degrees and just can’t find work in their field anymore.
For example, people in the high-tech sector who were at one time bringing home six-figure paychecks all of a sudden need to be trained with a new set of skills because their positions no longer exist.
“It’s a very unusual time and this is a very unusual phase that we’re in as far as unemployment,” she said. “Many dislocated workers are used to making a substantial amount and now they’re not – that’s a drastic change. All of a sudden they’re without a job and looking for assistance.”
This assistance may not allow some of the participants the same lifestyle they were used to in previous jobs, but it will allow for many to continue living in the community instead of having to move to a less-expensive area or state, Flores said.
It will also allow people who had low skill levels in the first place to increase their self-sufficiency from an income perspective.
“You’re going to have some community members that are better trained and able to go back to work,” she said. “That’s going to make for a better community overall.”
