Fast-food franchisee serves up advice for welfare program

ABILENE, Texas - Welfare reform works at Ron English's Burger King restaurants, though if he had his way it would work better still.

The Abilene fast-food franchisee has become a sometime traveling evangelist for the government initiative known as welfare-to-work. But as a hard-headed businessman, he's quick to point out the flaws he sees.

He's led workshops for fellow Burger King franchisees in other parts of the country, and helped promote local job fairs and town meetings to raise awareness of the program's potential to change lives.

''Yes, it's a long-term process,'' he said. ''We have to break that old mindset'' of existing on public assistance, in some families for generations.

Congress enacted the program in 1997, envisioned as a work-first program, making public assistance a temporary vehicle to help recipients find jobs that put them on the first rung of the ladder in the workaday world.

In recognition that those leaving welfare rolls might need extra training and patience to make a go of their jobs, Congress voted the Work Opportunity Tax Credits act to help businesses offset the extra costs of dealing with these new hires.

Testifying about the program to a congressional subcommittee recently, English noted he's pocketed $12,000 in Work Opportunity Tax Credit reimbursement over three years for hiring and training underskilled and undereducated workers.

But that's hardly gravy because of the extra training involved, and is hardly the draw that makes him an enthusiast for welfare-to-work.

''At the beginning, my primary interest was simply finding employees,'' he told the lawmakers. In the fast-food industry, where the annual turnover rate can top 300 percent, a new source of workers is vital, he said.

So this new stream of workers, mostly young black and Hispanic mothers who had never worked a paid job before, intrigued him.

But he saw a catch: Most of these potential new workers dropped out of high school if not before, and often lack the social and life-coping skills that students working for spending or tuition money usually possess.

So it's not enough, English said, to teach new hires how to take customers' orders, flip meat patties and make change on the run. Many need help in learning to manage their lives away from the workplace so they not only get hired, but can remain employed, he said.

Thus, job-survival training in English's stores includes tips on:

- Finding reliable child care.

- Personal hygiene for the workplace.

- Using public transportation.

- Budgeting from one paycheck to the next.

The extra training - about 50 percent more than for the typical student - adds to the employer's training cost and thus subtracts from the bottom line. That's what the Work Opportunity Tax Credit is designed to offset.

The catch is that an employee must work three weeks before qualifying for WOTC reimbursement. Since only one in five new hires makes it to that milestone, hiring welfare recipients is always a gamble, English points out.

Which brings him to his first reform proposal: Give businesses a bigger break from taking a chance on underskilled and undereducated young people by reducing the 120-hour threshold. That's why many business people have not embraced the program, he says.

The flip side is that an employee who goes through English's job survival training stays about 50 percent longer than the average hire, which ultimately saves on training costs.

''They have a certain amount of loyalty and commitment to that employer,'' English explains.

Chrissy Vidaurri, a 27-year-old shift manager at an Abilene Burger King, agrees.

''I just appreciate that they hired me when I needed a job,'' said the single mother of a 5-year-old. ''I plan to be here many more years, maybe becoming a manager someday.''

Vidaurri was an atypical welfare-to-work hire in that she was a high school graduate with previous work experience, English noted. ''She came to us with a great number of skills, and I think we have helped her enhance them.''

Lashaun Liggins, on the other hand, dropped out of school before reaching high school. But like Vidaurri, she hopes to advance on the job and make a brighter future for her six children.

''I want to save up money to put my kids through college,'' she said. Liggins is married, but her husband is not finding much work these days as a free-lancer in the landscaping business.

Another reform English proposes would seek to draw in the absent fathers of the children whose mothers are most often targeted in welfare-to-work. The program doesn't discriminate against males as a policy, he says, but welfare programs from the beginning have targeted custodial parents, which are overwhelmingly mothers.

English also urged Congress to vote long-term authorization for the program.

(Contact Jerry Daniel Reed of the Reporter-News in Abilene, Texas, at http://www.texnews.com.)