Career train

Job Corps helps young men and women get their start

by Monica McKenna

Staff members are going over the basics with a new group in the Grafton Job Corps center dining room. They talk about why they are here, what they will get out of training (besides a job), and what trades interest them -- not what their families expect from them.

But one table of young men is more interested in something else. It's a proposed toast. Lifting their lemonade glasses, the men toast the creator of today's dessert, a peach cobbler.

Someone on the culinary-arts staff runs to the kitchen to get the baker, and James Bowens, 20, of Oakland, California comes out to take a bow. His talents are splattered on a huge white apron he wears with his uniform white smock, checked pants, hairnet, and steel-toed boots. He steps forward to proudly accept praise from his peers.

The highest compliment comes from a newcomer: "That cobbler was just like Mom's!"

The audience is still captive; the group is eating dessert now. And Mona Anthony, deputy director of education and training, starts asking the tough questions.

"How many people here have held a job before?"

Sure enough, a few hands go up. It's a small crowd -- about 20 people from across New England who have been enrolled in Job Corps for just a few days.

"Now, how many people have been fired from those jobs," Anthony persists.

Sure enough, hands go up.

"How come? You don't have to answer, but we are curious."

Being late and fooling around are two answers.

"And now, what are some reasons for getting promoted?"

The Job Corps credo gets worked in, even over peach cobbler.

"THESE FIRST 30 days are so crucial," says Jobs Corps director Joseph C. Oatis, a former private-school teacher, after lunch. "It's crucial for them to understand why they're here."

Since 1981 when the Job Corps center, funded by the federal Department of Labor, opened in Grafton, trainees have certified in different trades, started college, or landed a job.

Some 60,000 young people are currently taking advantage of the 119 Job Corps centers nationwide. There are two centers in Massachusetts, in Grafton and Chicopee. And next year, 22 acres at the former Fort Devens Army base, in Ayer, will be converted into a $20 million facility to train people in high-skill jobs. In return, Job Corps offers trainees medical coverage, a stipend, room and board, and paid vocational training for as long as two years. The centers also offer job placement for graduates up to six months after they complete the program. Eighty percent of the Jobs Corps trainees are employed when they graduate.

The skills-teaching program, started in 1964 by R. Sargent Shriver as part of President Lyndon B. Johnson's War on Poverty, targets youth who have lower-than-average reading and math skills. "We don't take troubled youth," says Dick Martin, Job Corps New England deputy directory, "just poor youth" -- those who missed vocational training in high school or dropped out of school.

The Department of Labor contracts with either a for-profit or nonprofit private organization to run a center once it's set up. In Grafton, Career Systems Development Corp., based in Rochester, New York, works as the general contractor to provide dorm living, education and life-skills courses. At Devens, 12 corporations are vying to run the center that will offer union job training, computer training, and training for jobs at Amtrak. Academic skills are emphasized along with help with social skills and job applications.

"We've been doing this for 30 years," Martin says of the high-tech emphasis planned at Fort Devens. "We really scramble to compete. . . . We recognize the technological age, and we have to keep pace with the job market."

There will also be an emphasis on state-of-the-art training and vocations that need updating. "We know we've got a problem attracting females," Martin admits. "Plus, we have to compete with high-school and vocational school grads. We have to do a better job."

People between the ages of 16 and 24 can expect to be called Miss or Mister, once on a Job Corps campus, but there are curfews to get used to and regulations that govern dorm life. A year-old dorm at Grafton houses women upstairs and men downstairs with either two or four to a room. Each room has built-in desks, bureaus, and a private bath. Plenty of personal pictures and items decorate each room, but there is no clutter. There's a separate study room for trainees who attend Quinsigamond Community College. For the truly ambitious, there are exercise bikes.

From the first day, Job Corps introduces the young people -- called trainees not students -- to a variety of careers and options. Trainees take the TABE -- Test of Adult Basic Education -- upon entering and then again when they leave. Some trainees will learn a skill in two years or less, become apprentices, and move on to a trade, often with union wages. Others pick up a few skills and then seek more training and additional education. They can stay under the Job Corps umbrella while getting advanced certification or while attending college.

So far, that's the road Carolyn Lindsay, 21, of Middleborough, has chosen. Armed with her high-school diploma, Lindsay sees the culinary-arts program as a steppingstone to Treasure Island, a Job Corps center outside San Francisco that offers advanced training for the chef's job she wants to land.

Her best friend, Jessica Pierce, 16, on the other hand, sees Job Corps as an alternative to the traditional high-school scene. She's away from home now, away from the teachers in New Bedford that, she says, gave her a hard time. At Job Corps, she's working on a GED and taking the culinary-arts course until she turns 17 and is old enough to train in her true love, electrical wiring.

Rebecca Nurmi, 20, of Billerica, is going to take the determination that made her crew chief in the building and apartment maintenance course after 13 months with Job Corps with her when she attends Quinsigamond in September. She'll use the Grafton Job Corps Center as her dorm during college years.

Joining her on the shuttle to Quinsigamond will be Daniel Chagnon, 19, of Fairhaven, another Home Building Institute trainee who's moving on to college after six-and-a-half months at Job Corps.

At 24, Shirley Raye boasts of being the oldest at the center now, but she won't be there for long. Later this month, she will start at University Commons, a rehabilitation facility in Worcester, and is looking for an apartment. Raye is ready for work after being certified as a nursing assistant.

The trainees are not locked into deadlines. They work at their own pace in the classroom and on the job. Their stipend increases, though, with every step or certification achieved. Low income may have qualified them for Job Corps help, but there are no limits where Job Corps can take trainees. The staff is still relishing a recent phone call from one cement mason who reported she earned $28 an hour on a recent job.

Instructor Joseph Fells says he is determined to rid minority trainees of the math anxiety that plagues many of them. Fractions and percentages become part of a trainee's daily life with his help.

Instructor Phil Iannazzo is teaching four trainees how to figure out the amount of cement needed for a bus-stop pad. This is no workbook problem; they do the math on one of the boards leftover after they built the form for the pad. Under the hot sun, Iannazzo waits while trainees convert cubic inches to cubic feet to cubic yards. Iannazzo works for Home Building Institute, the educational, not-for-profit arm of the National Association of Homebuilders. HBI contracts with the Department of Labor to provide training in Grafton.

The trainees agree on an answer, and the work progresses. Iannazzo is pleased. His group is working near a long stretch of sidewalk that changes every 15 feet or so. Different colors and textures were applied by earlier cement and masonry trainees who most likely belong to the Operative Plasterers and Cement Masons Union now. The current trainees pour those sidewalks, under Instructor Scott Ruane's supervision, at cost for nearby towns, jobs that keep them busy while they earn the necessary experience.

Director Joe Oatis did not have to, but he was pretty compulsive about it: he picked up papers and trash that were blowing across the campus, greeting people by name and all the while talking about the backgrounds of the 300 or so trainees at Grafton. "It's so diverse -- it's not like any community. . . . But here, they do learn the importance of getting along with different people to get a job done," he says.

"This is Job Corps," says Reynolds Alcena, head of Job Corps Group Life (head of dorms), as a van drove off with trainees for an off-campus job. "And we're often accused of being too tough," he adds proudly.