Even as Congress continued to debate funding for workforce investment boards nationally, an agency covering much of the Fairfield County region is leading a new effort to put people back to work.
Under a pilot program dubbed Platform to Employment, The Workplace Inc. is addressing the plight of so-called 99ers, people who remain unemployed after exhausting the current cap of 99 weeks of federal and state unemployment benefits.
The Bridgeport-based Workplace has raised nearly $500,000 from the private sector, along with commitments to hire 100 people who have otherwise been unable to find work, of about 9,000 in lower Fairfield County and the Naugatuck River Valley who might qualify for the program. While companies committed to guaranteeing only eight weeks of paychecks ”“ after that all bets are off ”“ Workplace CEO Joe Carbone believes many of those workers will stick with their new employers.
He predicts southwest Connecticut”™s population of 99ers could hit 14,000 by the end of this year, among 60,000 or more statewide.
“I think we can see it”™s going to keep on going up,” Carbone said. “What we are watching is perhaps the most profound social change we have seen in our lifetimes. This is structural ”¦ this is not going to change.”
The Connecticut Department of Labor estimated the Fairfield County area may have tallied 800 additional jobs in May, based on preliminary estimates from federal data and local surveys. The possible gain came even as Connecticut as a whole shed 2,600 jobs, according to DOL estimates. The state”™s unemployment rate remains stuck at 9.1 percent, in line with the national jobless rate.
Until 2008, the Workplace was more focused on improving training for some residents to match them with companies that had difficulty finding qualified workers ”“ in part through the Talent for Prosperity initiative that roped in Westchester and Putnam counties in New York to address the problem.
Following the economic collapse of 2008, that focus quickly shifted to retraining workers laid off from their jobs, who had the skills to pursue those careers but who fell victim to corporate panic as revenue dropped and credit tightened.
In 2009, New York and Connecticut again teamed up to secure a National Emergency Grant aimed at helping tristate area financial workers get trained for new jobs, in the wake of the Wall Street collapse. Connecticut ended up winning a contract extension on that grant to train workers from Shelton-based Health Net of Connecticut, after new parent United Healthcare laid off hundreds of workers.
Later, the Workplace pioneered the Mortgage Crisis Job Training Program as a way to steer rapid training and job placement assistance to area residents in danger of losing their homes due to a lost job or otherwise inadequate earnings to make their payments. In the first year the program helped nearly 170 homeowners avoid foreclosure, with the majority working out loan modifications or new payment plans, a dozen accepted into the Connecticut Housing Finance Authority”™s emergency mortgage assistance program and about a dozen more selling their homes.
At the Workplace”™s annual meeting this month in Bridgeport, Carbone put a face on his latest crusade to help 99ers by screening videos in which multiple mid-tier managers described their experiences since receiving pink slips. Glenn Marshall, Connecticut”™s new commissioner of labor under Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, said he supported the program”™s goals but did not say whether he would push for financial backing from the state or seek to encourage the program”™s adoption in other parts of Connecticut.
For his part, Carbone is more worried about what he is hearing from Washington, D.C. ”“ or more accurately, not hearing.
“There is a frightening silence in Washington about people who have exhausted their benefits,” Carbone said. “The Department of Labor has never been shy about issuing orders. ”¦ I have not received one order from Washington to do one thing different. We are doing things different because we are ahead of the curve on this one.”
Well that’s great 100 people out of millions but lets not help them with money to survive but traning program for 100 people thats great but thats a drop in a huge bucket of people who have nothing but thats ok with the Government wait until they try to run for there position again including the President and see if they end up back there again!!!!!!!!