Clinton Spotlights Cessna Welfare Hirings

WICHITA, Kan. —  Last May, President Clinton invited a coterie of corporate executives to the White House, where they pledged to draft 1,000 firms to hire welfare recipients.

On Monday, Clinton traveled here to visit one of those companies, Cessna Aircraft, and announced that 2,500 corporations have joined the effort, which the White House has said is a key to successfully reforming the welfare system.

“These companies have over 5 million employees,” Clinton said. “Some of them are big, like Cessna. . . . But 75% of them are small businesses. We need all of these companies.”

Clinton’s latest announcement came as the federal government released several hundred pages of regulations governing the states’ use of about $14 billion in federal welfare funds. Those regulations outline strict financial penalties for states that fail to get substantial percentages of their welfare caseloads to work.

To help states meet those targets, Clinton has exhorted business leaders to hire welfare recipients. And he has gained congressional approval to offer employers who hire welfare recipients substantial tax breaks.

On Monday, Clinton praised an effort by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to involve local chambers throughout the country in the effort to hire welfare beneficiaries.

But the president’s appeals have met with some resistance from the business community. Presidential pleas and financial inducements, many business leaders have warned, are no substitute for educated workers with good work habits, reliable child care and transportation. If state governments and community agencies fail to provide those supports, the business leaders warned, employers cannot be expected to pick up the slack.

The occasion for Clinton’s latest plea to employers was the dedication of an expanded training center at Cessna, a public-private effort that began seven years ago in an abandoned grocery store and will continue in a two-building site that includes jet-engine assembly.

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About 200 former welfare recipients got job training at Cessna and now work there, earning, on average, $12 an hour. The company brought out a couple of success stories to introduce to the president.

“I tell them [trainees] it’s tough now, but it only gets better,” said Jodee Bradley, a mother of four who struggled on and off welfare before joining the program. Today she is a materials clerk.

“I’ve never been afraid of hard work,” said Tonya Oden, a single mother of three who is now an inspector. The problem, she said, was getting work without skills.

“Every company in America ought to take notice of what Cessna is doing,” Clinton said. “It’s a model for the nation.”

Indeed, the scale of Cessna’s effort to train and hire welfare recipients is large, compared to most firms. For high-technology employers, especially, finding slots for workers with relatively low skill levels has been a slow process.

But a booming economy, along with tight labor markets, has driven employers to look further afield for prospective employees.

Eli J. Segal, president of the Welfare to Work Partnership that is helping with the corporate effort, declared: “Cessna has proven that welfare recipients can be valuable employees that can help companies meet their hiring needs.”

Said Cessna Chairman Russ Meyer: “The only effective long-term solution is for those of us in the private sector to accept this issue as our responsibility--and I mean really accept it.”

Clinton was nearing the end of a four-day cross-country trip, designed largely around Democratic Party fund-raising events. Monday night he went to St. Louis for a reception and dinner.

Times staff writer Melissa Healy in Washington contributed to this story.