| Welfare Recipients Become Managers |
Hiring Welfare Recipients and Making Them Management
The New York Times, Saturday, May 21, 1994, contained an article about a partnership of former welfare recipients that bid on contracts for temporary health care jobs.
The company, Cooperative Home Care Associates has almost 300 members.
"The company has been set up as a for-profit enterpise to enable employee ownership and dividend payments. Cooperative employees split profits of $150,000 a year on $4.5 million in revenues. The dividends amount to a return of 20 percent to 50 percent. Workers must sell their shares for the $1,000 value when they leave the cooperative."
The US Department of Labor has a program to create One-Stop-Centers . These One Stop Centers would be places where people could obtain unemployment services, job training and job placement all in one place. Of particular interest is that these centers would be able to do job placement services and act as central registers of available work, permanent, temporary and contract work. This could create intense competition between the large temporary agencies to obtain THE contract to participate in the One-Stop-Center in a state or nationally, as what ever company is chosen will clearly have a business advantage over their competitors. (i.e. they will have the state and federal governments as business partners).
The Wall Street Journal carried an article on Manpower's alliance with Wisconsin in its one stop program. The Journal reported that Manpower ended up quiting the program at a loss of some $100,000.00.
This One-Stop Program is of interest to us in that (a) getting companies to list (advertise) available temporary and contract work with a government agency can only help those of us who want to have our own companies bid on temporary and contract labor; (b) it may result in non-profit organizations being able to directly engage in job placement services without risking their tax exempt status. If this program becomes widely adopted by all states, it could definitely change the balance of power in the temporary and contract work environment.
An example of an employee owned company biding on temporary and contract labor in the home health care market is Cooperative Home Care Associates.
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