FOR SOME UNEMPLOYED, ISABEL OFFERS A WINDFALL
January 6, 2004
By Sewell Chan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Under steadily falling rain, and taking care not to fall into water that had risen to a height of six feet, the crew of four men began to clear a large sewage drain. They removed piles of debris that had clogged the round cast-iron culvert. They pulled away leaves, branches, tires and even a propane tank, freeing the water to flow out to the Anacostia River.
The men had to compete for this hard, wet task. They were among 79 unemployed or underemployed adults, chosen from more than 600 applicants, who began temporary city jobs yesterday cleaning up damage caused by Hurricane Isabel in September. The workers are fixing broken street signs, repairing recreational facilities, planting trees and spreading wood chips, among other tasks, making $10.48 to $13.76 an hour over the next six months.
The adults are trying to pull themselves up in an economy in which people with limited skills have had a tough time finding work. The District's seasonally adjusted unemployment rate is 6.6 percent, compared with the adjusted national rate of 5.9 percent. Regionally, the unadjusted rate is 3.1 percent. With thousands of adults out of work, many are jumping at any opportunity for steady wages, even for short stints.
The temporary jobs were created under a $1.1 million grant from the U.S. Department of Labor, which awarded National Emergency Grants to the District and North Carolina to create temporary jobs after the hurricane. After the District's grant was announced in November, the city's Department of Employment Services received more than 600 applications.
The crew that unclogged the drain yesterday was assigned to the D.C. Water and Sewer Authority, which equipped the men with yellow hard hats, jumpsuits, steel-toed safety boots, shovels and pitchforks and gave them a short safety briefing before sending them out to a narrow waterway that had overflowed near Fairlawn Avenue and M Street SE.
Among them were Jerome Glenn, 40, who has experience in brick masonry and printing but has not found recent work in either field; Valiant D. Steele, 42, a day laborer who is saving for a pickup truck and dreams of starting a hauling firm; and Terrance K. Hampton, 43, a father of three who lost his job at a group home for children about a year ago.
The youngest of the crew was Ira J. Brown, 27, a former delivery- truck driver who has been unemployed for almost a year. Although he grew up in the District, he knew little about the labyrinthine sewage system. "I didn't know it gets this dirty and muddy," he said.
At a second work site, a crew of 15 temporary workers, supervised by the D.C. Department of Public Works, began to spread a four-inch layer of wood chips over a vacant lot in the 4700 block of Sheriff Road NE. The chips, made from trees felled by the hurricane, are intended to retard the growth of weeds -- a common complaint of residents.
Queen E. Montgomery-Jones, 39, had a temporary job at a city-run swimming pool, but she lost it when the pool closed in the autumn. She was on public assistance until 2002.
"It was like being locked in a box that you can't get out of," she said in describing life on welfare. "It just paralyzes you."
The other city agencies using the temporary workers are the Department of Parks and Recreation, the Department of Transportation and the Office of the City Administrator.
The project director, M. Bernadette Tolson, acknowledged that the temporary jobs are helping just a fraction of those who need work and that many of those hired will soon be looking for jobs again. But for the jobless, she said, any experience helps.
"The most important thing is that they know how to follow instructions and adhere to safety rules," Tolson said. "It's about being conscientious. If you're conscientious about your work, you can move up."
Demetra Smith Nightingale, an expert in the low-wage labor market who teaches at the Institute for Policy Studies at Johns Hopkins University, said a temporary job can be a useful step for someone trying to find long-term employment.
"It provides income and important work experience and can, maybe, help people build a resume," she said. "That's the potential. And a salary of $10 to $13 an hour is not bad."
From 1973 to 1981, hundreds of thousands of "public service employment" jobs were created under the federal Comprehensive Employment and Training Act, but the government then eliminated such large-scale subsidized employment in favor of job training. In recent years, many states and cities have used federal grants to create short-term subsidized jobs on a smaller scale, usually targeting groups such as youths, former inmates, older workers and welfare recipients.
