Setting an example for businesses across the country that have balked at hiring welfare recipients, President Clinton pledged Thursday that the federal government would hire 10,000 recipients over the next four years.
“We have all got to take responsibility to see that the jobs are there so that people can leave welfare,” Clinton said at a White House meeting with Cabinet members.
A month ago, Clinton ordered federal agency heads to draw up detailed plans for recruiting clerks, forestry workers, census takers, security guards and other employees from public aid rolls.
More than 100 agencies responded, including the Commerce Department–which plans to employ 4,180 people from public aid rolls, more than any other department–and the Defense Department, which pledged to hire 1,605. The White House plans to hire six recipients this year, Clinton said.
Potential applicants will be able to get information about the openings at the nearest federal employment office.
The 10,000 positions targeted by the administration represented a small fraction of those needed to put recipients to work under the welfare reform law signed by Clinton last August. Over the next several years, administration officials said, some 700,000 adults will leave the welfare rolls in search of jobs.
Clinton said the administration also would encourage government contractors to give jobs to recipients, though administration officials said it would not be a requirement.
Noting that the federal government employs about 1.5 percent of the total workforce, Clinton said the vast majority of recipients’ jobs will have to come from the private sector.
The hiring plan, patterned after several corporate programs, was generally praised by labor and business community officials. But it raised the touchy issue of displacement: If recipients begin getting preference in government hiring decisions, some worry that other applicants for low-wage jobs might get edged out.
White House press secretary Mike McCurry insisted that no “formal” preference would be given to recipients in the way that veterans receive special consideration from the Civil Service. But he said it would be “an added factor that will be considered.”
In the currently vigorous economy, “the goal is to provide employment opportunities for anyone who is seeking employment,” McCurry said. But he added that the administration wouldn’t shrink from helping “the poorest of the poor.”
“We’re talking about welfare-dependent mothers who in most cases have small children. We make no apologies for making federal employment opportunities available for exactly those kinds of people,” McCurry said.
Vice President Al Gore, who is supervising the welfare-to-work project, predicted it would work “extremely well” without impeding continuing efforts to shrink the federal workforce.
Magda Lynn Seymour, spokeswoman for the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents 700,000 federal workers nationwide, said her union agreed that the government should play a role in assisting recipients.
She said the union had been assured by administration officials that the hiring efforts would not take jobs away from union members.
She said labor leaders, however, were concerned that the government’s trend toward downsizing and contracting out jobs to the private sector would make the 10,000-job target difficult to reach.
There also were concerns about whether child care and training would be available to recipients hired by the government.
Jeffrey Joseph, vice president of domestic policy for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Washington, praised Clinton for “trying to help jump-start the process” of hiring recipients.
But he said that small businesses, which employ the bulk of the workforce, won’t be able to consider hiring recipients unless a growing economy allows them to.
