KAREN WINNE : A Helping Hand in a New Land : Agency Aids Refugees in Learning English, Finding Jobs

The sign in front of the nondescript commercial building on Harbor Boulevard in central Anaheim identifies it as the site of the Catholic Charities of Orange County Refugee Job Program. Inside, several dozen clients, predominantly Vietnamese men in their early 20s, labor intently in a language class, polishing their English skills so they will stand a better chance of getting hired when they start applying for jobs.

In a small office inside the building, program director Karen Winne holds forth about the mission of the agency--Orange County’s oldest refugee job program--and the challenges that it faces.

Winne, who holds a bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of Maryland and a master’s degree in political science from UC Berkeley, recently was named chairwoman of the Orange County Refugee Forum, a coalition of 30 private organizations and government agencies that deal with refugees and immigrants.

She seems uniquely suited to her role, which is persuading refugees they need to learn English and to accept jobs that they might never have considered in their native countries, and then to persuade businesses to hire her clients.

For training, Winne notes with a laugh, she spent three years in Saudi Arabia, where, to keep her sanity in the restrictive Muslim society, she organized projects for the international consular community, honing tremendous persuasive skills in the process.

Struck by her demonstrated prowess as a persuader, Catholic Charities of Orange County hired Winne in 1986 as a job developer. Last year, she was named director of the program.

The basic task of the program is to help refugees meld into the American culture and to get them out of the welfare system.

As a by-product, Winne and her staff turn out a consistent flow of willing entry-level workers who can help Orange County’s beleaguered employers cope with a two-year run of low unemployment that has created an employee scarcity in some areas.

In a recent interview with Times staff writer John O’Dell, Winne discussed the mission of the refugee job center and her perception of how the county’s business community is receiving the continuing influx of Southeast Asians, Middle Easterners and Eastern Europeans who make up the bulk of her clientele.

Q. First things first. Does one need to be a Roman Catholic to use the center’s services?

A. Oh, goodness no! I’m a Methodist, and two of the other executives are charismatic Protestants. Most of our clients are Vietnamese Buddhists.

Q. So there is no religious outreach connected with the program?

A. None at all. In fact, we are completely self-supporting and get no help from the Diocese of Orange at all. We run on state and county and federal contracts, and we have to make it on our own, or we go under.

Q. How long has Catholic Charities had a job program in Orange County?

A. Since 1976. We were the first refugee job center in the county. The first waves of refugees started coming in 1975, and we opened our doors in 1976.

Q. How do you determine who is a refugee?

A. A refugee is a person who flees his country for political, religious or racial reasons. Under U.S. law today, that covers people from all of Southeast Asia, all of Eastern Europe, all of the Middle East (except Saudi Arabia and Jordan), and Ethiopia and the Sudan. And that is really about it.

Q. Nobody else?

A. Nobody else. According to our laws, South Americans and Central Americans come here as immigrants, not refugees. And immigrants come for economic reasons, so they get only an extremely limited amount of help from government. Basically, they get emergency medical care.

Q. What is the scope of the job programs offered by Catholic Charities?

A. I actually run two refugee job programs under state contracts that are administered by the county. One is the TAP, or targeted assistance program, which deals more with long-term welfare cases, the more difficult clientele. Then there is the Refugee Employment and Social Services Program. It deals with a lot of younger, single Vietnamese. We do job placement, counseling and vocational English as a second language, or ESL, classes. We also have two regular ESL classes under the TAP program and we have a program that teaches English to Hispanics trying to qualify for immigration amnesty. The vocational ESL classes are run because when clients are referred for job placement, they must take six hours a day of vocational English. And this is after having finished three months of regular ESL. The vocational classes are really job-geared. The students are taught to use time clocks, to fill out job application forms and go on job interviews. We work with them on a one-to-one basis to try to overcome some of the cultural differences and really let them know what the American workplace is like.

Q. And are there any other job programs?

A. We have one in Santa Ana, at the Carpenter’s Union Hall. That’s more of an informal program that is open to almost anyone in need. They place about 50 people in jobs each month, and about 80% of the clientele is Hispanic.

Q. Orange County is a very affluent community with a very low unemployment rate. Employers in some areas complain that they cannot find entry-level workers because people won’t work for the wages the employers can pay. How does that affect your success in placing refugees in jobs?

A. We do pretty well. Most of our people are looking at entry-level work. There has been a decline in electrical assembly jobs lately, and the women, especially, want them because they are clean, quiet and have status. They write home to Vietnam that they are electronic specialists. Jobs like that have a lot of status because of the importance Vietnamese place on education. We had one case where a client was offerred $8.50 an hour to do janitorial work but turned it down and took $3.35 to do electronic assembly instead. The status of a job, and the fact that having it shows some education, at least in their minds, is more important than the wage.

Q. What other jobs do you place clients in?

A. After electronic assembly, the most sought after are machine operators, then regular production line and packaging. We also have a lot of Vietnamese women going into manicuring. It has some status and is easier to get into than cosmetology. The Vietnamese still shy away from any kind of fast-food and home-service jobs. And it is almost impossible to place them in hotels. It is because of the stigma. In Vietnam, a maid is an outcast. So I’ve never been able to interest a Southeast Asian in any kind of home-service work. We also can’t place them in nursing. Part of that is the English, but it is also that they are so tiny they can’t handle the physical aspects of turning and moving these huge Americans.

Q. Is the county’s employer pool fairly open to refugees?

A. I think all the job developers here have much better luck in small companies with 10 to 50 jobs. They seem to be much more willing to go out on a limb a little more. They take the chance and will spend the extra time that is necessary when they hire refugees or immigrants. And it does take extra time because employers do have to work with language and cultural differences. The big companies just aren’t very receptive to that.

Q. Are there areas of the county where the job scene is especially good or bad?

A. It is easier for a refugee to get hired in north Orange County because the transportation system is better. Employers are screaming for people in south Orange County and just can’t get them because the workers can’t get to the jobs. And south Orange County jobs pay a good bit more. An employer down there will pay $6.50 an hour for jobs that go for $4.25 to $4.50 in Anaheim.

Q. You think they’d change their hours to fit the bus schedules if they really are that desperate.

A. I know. But they don’t. So the only people we can really place in the Tustin-Irvine-Newport area are those who live within walking distance of Red Hill Avenue, because there’s a bus line down there. We get cries for help from hotels, like the Newport Marriott and the rest of them, but we can’t get people down there.

Q. I thought you said most of your clients won’t work in hotels anyway.

A. Yes. But the wages they are offering down there are so good, we might be able to talk some into it if there was transportation.

Q. So transportation is that important?

A. Basically, there are three main barriers to employment for refugees and immigrants. First is the language, but that is not as crucial as the others: Cultural orientation and transportation. The biggest problem is transportation. These people cannot afford cars so they must rely on public transportation. And most of the buses don’t start until about 5:45 a.m. But a lot of the factories in the county start at 6:30 or 7. And even going just across Anaheim can take three bus changes, which eats up an hour or more, so people can’t get to work on time. And now, a lot of factories are turning to four-day weeks with 10-hour days and they start as early as 6 a.m. That is just deathly as far as trying to place refugees and immigrants because I can’t get anybody to work before 7.

Q. Just because of transportation, or are there some cultural factors at work?

A. It is mostly because of transportation. When these factories start at 6 or 6:30, I just can’t get anyone there who doesn’t have a car.

Q. You said big companies didn’t seem able or willing to take the extra time to work with refugees. Can you give me an example?

A. Disneyland. I’ve had a good many dealings with the head of personnel there. They are nice people and seem willing to work with us, but Disneyland has this crazy setup where they will only hire part time, not full time, and they put them on night shifts for the first month or two. So I can’t get people there because of the bus schedules. Many of my refugees want to work there. It is a popular employer and has status, but we have never placed a refugee at Disneyland because they won’t relax that rule about putting them on the night shift first.

Q. The inflexibility of bureaucracy.

A. Yes. You know that Disneyland imported about 1,000 workers from other states this summer to fill all the jobs they had? Well, they wouldn’t have had to. We could have filled everything they wanted right from our offices if they had been willing to bend on that hours requirement.

Q. I know we are basically talking about refugees and immigrants, but what if you are a native-born, English-speaking person who needs job help? Are there any similar programs?

A. Well, we can place you out of Carpenter’s Hall. That program is funded from a variety of sources and is not limited. Here, in the refugee program, we are limited to refugees. Orange County also has finally signed up for GAIN. That’s the state’s Greater Avenues for Independence program. It provides up to two years’ vocational training and ESL for anyone on welfare. When GAIN gets rolling in the county in 1990, there will be a lot of vocational training available, and the program actually will fund adequate child care so mothers can participate. There is also the Job Corps, which is a very good program but is limited to people from 18 to 25.

Q. Getting back to your programs, how many people do you serve?

A. Well, we place 45 to 50 a month from Carpenter’s Hall in Santa Ana, and that represents 100 to 150 contacts each month. Most of those are in production, assembly and packaging jobs, and a lot of the younger Vietnamese and Hispanics get placed in restaurant work. In the refugee program, we get about 35 referrals a month to the office in Anaheim and about 45 a month to the office in Santa Ana. We place about 13 to 15 people a month in jobs from both offices.

Q. What are some of the difficulties you run into?

A. My staff can place almost anyone, except people over 50. We just cannot do it. Nobody wants to hire the older workers.

Q. How bout racial or ethnic discrimination?

A. The only problems I’ve seen have been with Ethiopians and Iranians. The few Ethiopians that come here are well-educated, refined, hard-working and want jobs, but it is very tough. We get teachers, civil engineers, the upper crust of Ethiopian society, but because Orange County employers have a bad image of blacks, they don’t want to hire them. With Iranians, the problem is more political than racial.

Q. Describe a typical client.

A. A single Vietnamese, 20 to 35 years old, with a fair level of English. They can usually read and write quite well, but their spoken English is heavily accented. That’s because they get some ESL training in the refugee camps, but the instructors there have heavy accents.

Q. What kinds of education do they have?

A. That has changed. It used to be that most had at least some college, but now we see mostly high school graduates, or even those who just went through 10th grade. In the last couple of months, the refugees have been coming straight from the camps in Thailand and not going through the two- to five-year holding process, so they are coming in with much lower English skills and culturalization than in the past.

Q. How are they cleared to leave the camps in Thailand and elsewhere and come here?

A. Refugee camp authorities look for younger, physically healthy people with some education. That causes real tragedies with the older Vietnamese, because these people want to stay together as a family group, and they don’t get passed if they are over 50. So they lie about their ages. That clears it so whole family groups can come into this country. But then they come in as much younger than they really are, and when they try to apply for Social Security they find they have to work until their mid-70s because they lied about their age. One man who works here is listed as 59, but he’s really 64. So he’ll be 71 before he can retire.

Q. You said health is also an important point. Does that mean that every refugee who comes here is healthy?

A. No. They get fake medical records. You would too. They are desperate, so they get false records that hide tuberculosis and other serious illnesses. And a lot also are victims of post-traumatic stress disorder and they come here and all sorts of symptoms develop. The culture shock, after all, is tremendous. And the stress takes it out on their bodies. We see lots of cases of chronic backache, insomnia and headaches. That’s one reason we take several months for cultural and vocational training. It doesn’t work well to try to place them in jobs immediately.

Q. We’ve mentioned cultural differences several times. What are the major ones that have to be dealt with?

A. Vietnamese do not speak up in job interviews. They are apt to be very passive, very quiet. So we tell them they have to speak up, to let the employer know what you want. Most of our clients, when they come to us, have never filled out an application, have never had a job interview. In their own country, they are hired through family firms, through a connection. So they don’t know what it means to job-hunt. And they are not geared to time clocks. They don’t realize the American employers really don’t like it if you are late. We have to work on the whole concept of time. A lot of refugees, particularly Middle Easterners, have just no sense of time at all. They come to work at any hour that they think is convenient. We also talk to the ones with higher English about things like income taxes and the fact that it is really a cutthroat world out there and that seniority really doesn’t count anymore. We have to tell them that in America, people are laid off at anytime with no notice and that there is no security here like in their home countries, where they expected to work in one job all their lives. And that upsets them very much, because basically, they want to come and hire on with one company and stay there the rest of their lives.

Q. So what do employers need to expect, and to do, to make use of the refugees you are trying to find jobs for?

A. They have got to be more flexible on hours. And I wish they would not be so set on not hiring two or more from the same family. If a refugee family scrapes up enough to get a car, they need to share it. Their cultural orientation is so family- and extended clan-oriented that for us to place four or five family members in a company would probably make that a permanent placement. It would go on forever because all the family members would be working there. But American employers have no concept of that.

Q. Do the county’s ethnic business communities support your efforts?

A. Yes. They go out of their way to hire members of their own community. But we find that most of it, especially in the Vietnamese community, is family members hiring family members. So most of the Vietnamese that come through here are placed with American companies. Actually, most of our Vietnamese clients tell us they don’t want to work for a Vietnamese because Vietnamese bosses are too tough.