Without Jobs, a Work Ethic Is Wasted

BAKERSFIELD —  The able-bodied will not get a handout. They will get a job.

--Sign in Kern County welfare office

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The “get a job” notice--both an admonition and a promise--is prominently displayed on the wall behind the receptionist’s counter. To underscore the point, an electronic sign flashes missives in red as welfare applicants walk through the door:

Strive for personal independence. . . . Work pays in so many ways. . . . Cherish your children. . . . Be a role model.

The down and out of Kern County are getting the message. It was being delivered here locally even before President Clinton and Congress shouted it nationally last August by enacting “welfare reform.”

Starting sometime soon--probably Jan. 1--most welfare moms will have to find a job or other “work activity” within two years. One year, if Gov. Pete Wilson has his way, which he won’t. The details will depend on California’s version of welfare reform, which the Democratic Legislature and Republican governor still must create.

“It’s kinda scary,” said Christy Henderson, 40, one of roughly 20 people who on Tuesday afternoon were using the welfare office’s Jobs First Room with its posted “job leads” and phone banks. The message behind the room’s name is: Don’t wait for your check before trying to get a job.

Henderson, however, already has been on welfare for seven years. She’s a single mom with two sons, ages 6 and 7, and no child support. She hasn’t worked since the oldest was born and she’s a high school dropout. But she’s motivated by the coming reality.

On this day, she’s looking over the roughly 100 posted “job leads.” She’s struggling to find something that fits her.

“I need to go to school because I’ve got no training or anything,” she said. “Computers, cooking class, maybe get into the waitress business.”

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Bakersfield intrigued me because I saw a chart prepared by the state Senate Office of Demographics. It listed the number of welfare families by each Senate district and I was surprised to see that by far the most--135,100--live in the district of Democratic Sen. Jim Costa, which stretches from Fresno to Bakersfield.

The South L.A.-Inglewood district of Democratic Sen. Teresa Hughes ranks No. 2, with 119,400 welfare families. But also near the top are four other San Joaquin Valley districts, three represented by Republicans. In fact, I learned, 12% of the Kern County population is on Aid to Families with Dependent Children. In Tulare and Fresno counties it’s 15%; in Merced, nearly 19%. By contrast, only 9% of L.A. County families are on AFDC.

Who would have thought that rural redneck Bakersfield would be a welfare capital? Most people, I suspect, associate welfare with the inner city--with Watts, East L.A. and Oakland.

But the San Joaquin Valley has a severe welfare problem. Farm work and cheap housing lure people, but seasonal crops and a stagnate economy send many to the welfare window. The unemployment rate rarely gets below 10% even at harvest; in winter, it can climb to near 20%.

Teenage pregnancy is a serious problem, especially among Latinos, who are roughly 40% of Kern County’s AFDC recipients. In Fresno and Merced counties, Southeast Asian immigrants are handicapped by a lack of job skills. One-fourth of Fresno’s AFDC caseload is Southeast Asian, mostly Hmong. Indeed, nearly 60% of the Hmong population there is on some public aid.

“There’ll be a lot of unintended consequences” from reform, predicts Kern County Welfare Director Donald E. Dudley. “It’s another great social experiment. We don’t have good data. Is it 10% or 50% [of recipients] who won’t be able to get a job?”

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Kern seems to be going all-out to make welfare reform work. For years, conservative politicians here have been demanding reform. Now they have a stake in its success.

The county is requiring applicants and recipients to take a two-week course in job-hunting. Then there are eight weeks of actual, computer-aided job searching at a “one-stop shop” where a handful of state agencies have relocated. Later, job training is possible.

But the fact is, there aren’t enough available jobs now in Kern or any Valley county. To make this work, taxpayers probably will need to dig deep initially to subsidize employers who hire unskilled workers and also to create temporary public service jobs, as America did during the Depression.

A work ethnic--and Christy Henderson’s motivation--are wasted without work opportunity.

As on many issues, Republicans and Democrats both are right about welfare. They just need to mesh their better ideas.