Help for the Hard Core

Sylvester Motley, 39, spent eight years in the Missouri State Penitentiary for bank robbery. He has been out 61 years, and until recently the most he was able to earn for his wife and two sons was $83 for a 60-hour work week as a taxicab company supervisor. Today he earns $4.20 an hour as a worker for St. Louis Millstone Construction Inc., averaging $160 a week. David Mapson, 36, spent 15 years in the Ohio Penitentiary for armed robbery, and could not hold a regular job. Now, at Cleveland's Ford foundry, he earns $3.50 an hour, and with overtime, as much as $210 a week.

Motley and Mapson are among the hardest of the "hard core" unemployed --those for whom jobs with any sort of future once seemed impossible. Both are the beneficiaries of one of the nation's brightest new ideas for bringing men and jobs together, a cooperative venture by Government and industry called JOBS.

Surpassing the Quota. JOBS stands for Job Opportunites in the Business Sector, and is the project of the National Alliance of Businessmen. The Alliance was called together by President Johnson early this year for the express purpose of finding 100,000 jobs for the hard-core unemployed by the end of June 1969, and 400,000 more by 1971, as well as summer jobs for youth. Under the titular leadership of Henry Ford II and the hard-driving personal direction of a Ford vice president, Leo

Beebe, the program has earned such enthusiastic response from companies around the country that pledges have already reached 165,000, and jobs are now being filled at the rate of 20,000 a month. Nineteen of the 50 participant cities have surpassed their optimistic quotas. Detroit, stunningly, has quadrupled its quota.

In line with the program's cooperative philosophy, Government agencies help find the jobless, then subsidize industry for some of the special costs in hiring, training and keeping them on the job. Industry's contribution is to put them in useful, productive jobs, and if possible to keep them there. There are now 61,000 at work for 12,000 firms at a total cost of $61 million to the Federal Government and some $120 million to the participating firms.

At $2,900 per man-on-the-job, the cost is relatively low. Job Corps trainees cost the Government an average of more than $7,000 per man, and the dropout rate is higher. One NAB official predicts that the average JOBS trainee in his region will pay the Government's investment back in as few as 20 months through his own taxes and his absence from welfare rolls.

Neither the economic nor the human success of the program is achieved without some hardship. Says Boston's NAB director, Joe Breiteneicher: "You've got to get whites already on the job to work alongside the black, the ex-con, the dropout, and we're often sending them all three in one." The new employees are sometimes met with hostility: a Negro in Boston was run down by a fork lift, another was felled by a dropped pallet.

Patience is essential. Tardiness and absenteeism must be overlooked; illiteracy must be overcome; incentives must be provided. "It's tough when you take on substandard people," concedes Beebe. "Of course, often they don't want to work at first. They don't know how to work." They have other problems as well. In many cities, transportation is one of the biggest headaches. In Detroit and Chicago, several companies charter buses to get their workers from the ghettos to suburban factories. In St. Louis, a Government-subsidized bus line does the same.

Buddy System. Most businesses face the challenges with imagination and perseverance. Pacific Northwest Bell pays its employees daily during the first week so that they have immediate pocket money for lunch and transportation; the credit union stakes them to enough cash for new clothes. Some companies assign "buddies" or "coaches" to help new men master the intricacies of time cards and bus routes--and to see that they get to work.

After the break-in period, companies report that the new men are at least as punctual, effective and motivated as their more privileged co-workers--and often more so. The Associated General Contractors of St. Louis, a group whose member firms accept only JOBS applicants who are ex-convicts with families to support, now has 60 men in permanent positions--including Sylvester Motley. "All I needed," explains Motley, "was a break." National statistics, though still sketchy, suggest that Motley's attitude is widely shared. Close to three out of four of the hard-core poor seem to be staying on the job. That is about the same as the average survival rate for new employees with normal backgrounds.

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