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Ellen Belcher is the Dayton Daily News opinion pages editor. She writes about state government, education, the environment, higher education and all things Dayton.
Martin Gottlieb is an editorial writer and columnist for the Dayton Daily News opinion pages. He focuses on the political process itself and does such national issues as war, the economy, taxes and Social Security, as well as a hodge-podge of local and state issues.Home > Blogs > A Matter of Opinion > Archives > 2009 > August > 11
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Editorial: AFL-CIO wins, but workers lose
The decision by the Strickland administration to give the AFL-CIO’s United Labor Agency $2 million to help laid-off workers is a farce.
There’s an election around the corner — the governor’s — and the money is a gift to an organization that Gov. Ted Strickland wants revved up on his behalf.
The losers are laid-off workers who could have been helped if this money went instead for direct help — paying, say, for their re-training or college tuition.
The portion of the grant that’s being spent in Montgomery County is especially questionable, given that the area already has a well-oiled (though imperfect) program to get laid-off workers back on their feet.
The AFL-CIO just got a second contract for $1.2 million — up from the $800,000 that had been spent statewide in the previous 18 months — to train and pay union members to encourage laid-off individuals to get help.
The case for the union’s involvement is that laid-off workers are more likely to act on advice from their peers than from, say, company human resources staff or government workers who go to job sites where people have been let go.
But keep in mind that the union representatives aren’t doing anything specialized. They don’t have access to databases about job openings; they’re not teaching people how to write resumes; they can’t tell workers how much, if any, job retraining money they’re eligible for.
Rather, they’re emphasizing the need to visit the local job and family services department for help.
If you were laid off and had a family to feed, you might not want to go to your local welfare department or job center; you might be embarrassed or intimidated at that prospect. But sometimes there just aren’t a lot of choices.
Why AFL-CIO affiliates need to be paid to provide this sort of encouragement is hard to see.
Montgomery County has tried mightily to help workers who’ve lost their jobs. It has the one-stop job center, where there’s help on everything from resume writing to job searches to applying for food stamps and tuition assistance.
Since 2005, officials even have had a separate office in Moraine aimed mostly at auto workers.
Now, using federal Workforce Investment Act dollars that the state is giving to the AFL-CIO — some $140,000 — a third office is being created at the IUE CWA Local 755 at 1675 Woodman Ave.
In a state where unemployment has topped 11 percent, there’s no doubt that laid-off workers need help. The question is how to do that cost-effectively while getting the most return for the money.
This $2 million effort is political back-scratching masquerading as altruism. Federal job re-training efforts have faced heavy criticism. The complaint generally is that the programs cost a lot for a little. This is just the sort of effort that sparks ridicule and complaints.
That, in the end, hurts deserving people who want to help themselves.
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