Many Who Lost Jobs in Freeze Seek New Trades : Employment: Work referral and training programs report big increases in business as farms and canneries assess their damages.

Since Soleda Garcia came to the United States from Mexico 12 years ago, she has worked primarily in the fields around Oxnard picking strawberries.

However, because of the recent cold spell that caused about $100 million in crop damage, Garcia, 30, was told by employers that she may not find work this season.

Instead of giving up on her chances of staying employed, Garcia enrolled in employment training courses to learn how to work on an electronics assembly line.

She is not alone.

Officials at a job placement program and an employment training agency in Ventura County say workers who lost their jobs because of the freeze are not waiting for the agricultural industry to recover--they are looking for other work.

The Center for Employment Training in Oxnard, the only agency in the county that receives federal funds to retrain farm workers, has experienced a 35% increase in applicants since the freeze began three weeks ago.

During this time of year, the program usually serves about 90 people, mostly fieldworkers, said Shirley Ortiz, director of the nonprofit agency.

The center is operating at capacity with 140 participants, and Ortiz estimates that 15% of the people in the program lost their jobs because of the freeze.

She guesses that the number will increase as farmers and cannery operators assess the extent of the damage. “There is going to be an onslaught of unemployment because of this,” she said.

For some workers, the freeze has already taken its toll.

The Fillmore-Piru Citrus Assn. notified 125 packers that they will be laid off for at least a month beginning in March because of damage to navel oranges, association representatives said.

At Limoneira Associates, working hours will be reduced for more than 100 workers at the company’s 3,000-acre citrus and avocado ranch between Santa Paula and Fillmore, a company spokesman said.

At Arbor of Ventura County, a job referral program run by the county’s Job Training Policy Council, the number of people inquiring about job openings has doubled in the past two weeks, and officials attribute part of the increase to layoffs caused by the freeze.

Sylvia Basques, a client representative for Arbor, said the agency in Port Hueneme normally gets about 30 inquiries a day for work. Since the freeze, that number has increased to about 60, she said.

On Monday, she said the program received 22 inquiries before noon.

“We have had a lot of calls,” she said. “People are having a hard time finding work.”

Basques said the program focuses on people with few job skills and refers them to jobs that will provide on-the-job training, such as work in a factory or on an assembly line.

Some of those who lost jobs because of the freeze have also begun to turn up at the Ventura County Rescue Mission in Oxnard.

Spokesman Calvin Phelps said the mission usually has about 15 vacant beds this time of year. But every night since the freeze began last month, he said, all 50 beds have been filled. Phelps said some of those beds are filled by fieldworkers who lost their jobs to the freeze.

“With the citrus dying there are a lot of people losing jobs,” he said.

To minimize the repercussions of the freeze, Ventura County Supervisor Susan K. Lacey arranged for representatives of local job-training programs, state and federal legislators and a Latino advocacy group to meet Wednesday to discuss job-training or English-language programs for laid-off farm workers.

Ortiz said some farm workers in the county have spent 10 to 20 years in the United States and have never worked outside of agriculture. For most fieldworkers, the transition into other types of work is difficult, she said.

“It’s a whole new ballgame,” she said.

A majority of the participants at the Center for Employment Training are Spanish-speaking immigrants who have had little, if any, education, Ortiz said. The center provides an eight-week English course and job skills classes run by bilingual teachers, she said.

The center’s graduates usually find work on electronic assembly lines or as secretaries, computer programmers or machinists, Ortiz said.

Garcia said almost all of the students in her electronics class at the center have worked in the fields, and some have recently lost their jobs to the freeze. She said she hopes she doesn’t have to return to the fields.

“The work is too hard, and it doesn’t pay enough,” she said.

The center is part of a San Jose-based program with 30 offices statewide. In September, the statewide program was hailed by the Rockefeller Foundation as a model for the nation.