Jobs program for people trapped in unemployment

They were introduced to how much has changed since the last time they got a job.

[Instructor: When they're considering hiring you for a job they're going to go to the Internet and see what comes up. If you have nothing that shows up, you're not relevant.]

They practiced job interviews.

[Mock interviewer: I'm noticing a gap Frank, it's looking really good up until about 2008 so could you give me a little explanation about what happened there.]

And they learned to navigate the new bias, the unspoken reason they've been turned down again and again.

Pelley: Did you ever have the sense that you and others were being discriminated against because of how long you'd been unemployed?

O'Neill: There's no doubt. I mean, I've seen it in print, whether it's some newspaper ads or online during those types of advertisements, I've actually seen, "If you are unemployed, you need not apply."

Just look at the web. You see the phrase everywhere: "Must be currently employed." Businesses can't legally discriminate by age, race or sex, but there's a new minority group now, the long term unemployed.

Pelley: Everybody knows we're in a terrible state in this country. Why would a stigma attach to being unemployed for a year or two or three?

Carbone: There's a sense that if a person's out of work for a year or longer, they might be lazy. They might very well be people that would prefer to be home. Or they've lost too much already to be useful to me. It's unfair, and it's wrong.

Platform to Employment was a little like boot camp.

[Instructor: There's hundreds of social media sites, but LinkedIn, it's the number one for anything professional.]

And, over time, we saw something new, confidence.

Downes: What the program has done for me, it brought Vernon back. I know who I am. I know this is the Vernon that I know. That other person, for the past post-2009, I didn't know who that was. So I'm back. I'm back in the game.

O'Neill: I was so prideful and so stubborn that I would not apply for part-time positions, I wasn't going to go work at the grocery store nearby, I wasn't going to go flip burgers. I have a college education. I've been successful at work. I've been working for 30 years. I'm not doing this. So when this opportunity for Platform to Employment came along, I joined it and it changed my mindset.

After the classes, Platform to Employment opens the door on its biggest innovation - it's an internship with a business that's looking to hire.

Pelley: Tell me what the first day was like walking through the door.

O'Neill: It was nice to be a part of the workforce, having to go to work in the morning. Rather than get up in the morning and go look for work.

Here, the office intern isn't a college student, he's 50-something, educated and experienced. For eight weeks, Frank O'Neill would work at Cain Management which owns fast food restaurants. Platform to Employment pays O'Neill's salary.

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[ns1958]

This appears to be a wonderful program. Unfortunately there are not enough of these programs around and those that operate usually have limited financial backing. I reside in Connecticut and have inquired about this program. There is a screening process for candidates. I am told their office is now flooded with applicants. I only wish this was a bigger program.

[lastgasp]

As someone who in his wildest dreams never thought he would be in this position I find many of your comments so comforting. I am 59 years old and am experiencing what so many others have articulated. Having a father and mother who had 6th and 8th grade educations respectively, I was determined to create a better life for my family (and succeeded) by getting my college degree. My family unit ended due to divorce and I now have nothing. Even after my father committed suicide, while I was home on Christmas vacation from college, I returned to college after a brief break and over the course of approximately 10 years obtained my four year college degree taking classes at night while married with children and working full-time. Used to be "work ethic" meant something but it seems to have lost its significance. As recently as 2008 I worked 6 and 7 days a week voluntarily and received no extra pay since I was a salaried employee. We are expressing a great deal of concern over our plight and justifiably so. My concern is not only for myself but what do my children and grandchildren have awaiting them.

We know what role the financial industry played in decimating our economy in 2008 and they who are responsible should hang their heads in shame. I read the book "Too Big To Fail" and what an eye opener into the greed of that industry. Still hard to believe no one has been indicted.

CEO's want to tell us how they are doing what they do to increase shareholder value. Aren't many of us shareholders? What good is it if we can't purchase goods or we have to sell our shares just to subsist?

There is "Maslow's hierarchy of needs". From observing the news, I dare say people are doing things to survive they never thought they would do.

[wendy1847]

I was a big believer in the many different agencies that say they will get an older worker a job. Sure they will. Here in Idaho they will get you a job....3 hours a day....5 days a week.....$7.25 per hour. That will pay rent!

[unt2prodev]

The most disturbing part of this story was the social caste system that claims Linkedin will make perfectly accredited potential employees *irrelevant* to employers. Gated media is a reflection of the problems in our society, not the solutions. Ask the masked anonymous groups responsible for cyber-crime or the masked nazis marching in the streets of Germany. You're real or you're not. No amount of bogus, social press changes reality.

[unt2prodev]

The most disturbing part of this story was the social caste system that claims Linkedin will make perfectly accredited potential employees *irrelevant* to employers. Gated media is a reflection of the problems in our society, not the solutions. Ask the masked anonymous groups responsible for cyber-crime or the masked nazis marching in the streets of Germany. You're real or you're not. No amount of bogus, social press changes reality.

[DrGeneNelson]

As a 60 year old unemployed American citizen natural science Ph.D., I have been through two "retraining" programs. Each of them yielded about 18 months of employment. A huge scam is perpetrated on American workers, who like myself incurred direct and opportunity costs in earning an advanced degree. In my case, the costs totaled about 1/2 million dollars. I have had to keep a secret that I have a Ph.D. with some employers to obtain employment.

Compare this with the case of a foreign national from the developing world who earns a Ph.D. at an American university - and whose education receives substantial taxpayer subsidies. The foreigner is preferentially hired because they are less expensive as a consequence of the huge loopholes designed into the visa program - and the employer controls the terms of their visa as they are subject to almost immediate deportation if their position is cut. Federal policy makers at the National Science Foundation (NSF) thought pushing out Americans and substituting "fresh young blood" was a good policy idea in the late 1980s. The NSF continues to advocate for maintenance and expansion of the controversial H-1B Visa program.

Viewers of 60 minutes probably aren't aware of government-sanctioned foreign hiring preference programs such as the controversial H-1B Visa, which are the root cause of the unemployment of so many talented and experienced American citizen technical professionals. Employers prefer to hire imported "fresh young blood" rather than hiring Americans because the foreign worker labors under conditions akin to indentured servitude. Colleges and universities began the scam in 1976 with the passage of the obscure "Eilberg Amendment" that allowed them to bypass Americans and hire unlimited numbers of foreign professors and researchers. The private sector cited the Eilberg Amendment as legislative precedent for creating the H-1B Visa in 1990.

"Project Censored" identified the H-1B Visa program as a heavily censored news story twice. (Media elites save gobs of money via the program.)

Search by title for the PDF versions of these 3 reports to learn more: "How Record Immigration Levels Robbed American High-Tech Workers of $10 Trillion," "The Greedy Gates Immigration Gambit" and "Career Destruction Factories."

Expanding "retraining" programs only deals with the symptoms, and as CBS News correctly notes, are no guarantee of re-employment. Americans may use the no-cost tools at organizations such as NumbersUSA dot com, CAPS dot org, and FAIRUS dot org to press our political leaders to end the corruption and put Americans back to work.

[LACarlson]

This story is wonderful and hopeful for the following reasons; Joe Carbone is an exception in the workforce setting. He's compassionate and he's correct. We as a country should be outraged that so many relevant people in THIS country are out of work. The reality is most people with jobs don't care about people who don't have jobs.
As a long-term unemployed woman in my 40s I have years of admin. experience, a degree and I understand how it feels not be considered for jobs that I'm usually over-qualified for and the ones that I can do but am not currently working in I'm not considered for either.
Here in St. Paul, MN I was told funding for the internship program was cut and have been regularly told by my employment counselor I have so many qualifications she doesn't know how to help me and that I can do her job.
If Joe Carbone can raise the funds to get this type of program in place; why aren't States looking at this successful program as a model to REALLY help the unemployed?
This story gave me hope; thank you Joe Carbone for being the exception. It really does matter.

[CaptainSmollett]

Let's be clear: In a global economy, businesses operate anywhere they please. Jobs will move to where they are most efficiently performed. That has nothing to do with patriotism, it is just a fact of life that businesses must be internationally competitive to survive. So, if jobs are leaving the U.S., it is because WE as a nation are driving them away - WE have failed to produce a business environment favorable to retain and attract jobs, and it has gotten much worse under Obama. It is the Federal Government's responsibility, and it has failed. Higher taxes, burdensome regulation, increased cost of social programs, stronger unions, government interference, and uncertainty....all stiffle job retention and growth.

[concernForAll]

I watched this segment with great interest. I was laid off from my job In July of 2007 but was fortunate to have a part time job in the fast food industry at the time. That became my only job and I have been at it ever since. I was 55 years old on the date of my lay off. I am now coming up on my 62nd birthday and have never felt so unsure about the future. Foreclosure and bankruptcy are now a part of our history and, for the last few years, all I hear out of Washington is out-and-out war among our so called leaders. Partisan politics seems to be little more than a school yard brawl where all the punches are thrown at the (once) working people of this country and no one is doing the job of running the country. Lobbyists have bought and paid for legislation and deregulation that allowed the collapse and preferential treatment of various industries. The banking industry has not learned its lesson (e.g., Jamie Dimon, MF Global, the LIBOR manipulation). Even after the implosion of the economy and the bailouts, did the financial community do anything to stimulate the economy by increasing lending to businesses? No, they did not. They just got bigger bonuses because of the extra capital that the bailouts provided. Jamie Dimon has the gall to blame the consumers for the failed economy (because of finger pointing).

At the center of this whole thing, there is a cause that I have yet to hear mentioned; money. Money decides everything. No jobs? There isn't enough money to hire employees. No health care? Ditto. We as a society are so concerned about the health and longevity of business that we have placed it above human life. What is the price for a life? This is not a rhetorical question. This is a valid, as well as answered, question. Ask your insurance company. They will be able to tell you an exact figure.

How did we evolve into this cesspool of inhumanity? How did we ever change from one person one vote to one dollar one vote? How is it that we the people vote "public servants" into office, pay them a salary, and then allow them to accept money of any kind or amount from lobbyists and then expect them to do what is in our best interests? Whether it is Romney, Obama, or Joe the plumber, the outcome will be the same. We are lemmings looking for some fool to lead the rest of us fools over the cliff. Get rid of the money completely and turn life over to the people. Didn't Thomas Jefferson say that government should be rebuilt periodically? If we are going to listen to what the founding fathers say, don't just pick and choose what suits your own personal gain, listen to the whole thing.

We all have a role in this world. We all have basic needs in this world. Air, food, water, shelter, clothing, and a little dignity are all it takes to survive. Notice there is no money in that list. All money does is tell us who is better than us. If you remove money from the equation, the only ones that will miss it are the 1%. It does nothing but feed the greed of the human animal. We need to bring together the brilliant minds of this world and at least look at the possibility of alternatives. This is a problem that will take generations to fix. If we let it fix itself, we won't be very happy with the outcome, I'm afraid.

When I hear people like James W. Paulsen of Wells Capital Management that "it's time to let the economy take care of itself" (Somer, 2012), I have to wonder if that's even possible. The financial CEOs and republicans say to leave it alone but do you honestly think that the CEOs or anyone with a shot at a large pile of money will leave it alone? Ever hear of derivatives? Ever hear of hedging your bets? Ever hear of AIG? How about the money paid into Social Security since its inception? People are greedy and selfish. They will not leave such a huge pile of money untouched. If greed is a cancer, money is the tumor.

Works Cited
Somer, J. (2012, August 4). Two Central Banks and the Sound of Silence. Retrieved August 13, 2012, from The New York Times, Your Money: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/05/your-money/two-central-banks-and-the-sound-of-silence-strategies.html

[Thaigold]

As a retired expatiate American these stories of the unemployed break my heart. My entire working life revolved around social intercourse ... especially in sales; sales training, and the management thereof. It was a life devoted to meeting objectives and assuring those under me made their quotas also. Because of my experience; my choice of careers - I was no stranger to unemployment.

Very early on, I came to the realization that mastering the skill of finding and securing new management and supervisory positions was going to be part and parcel of my "business package."
In short, I became an expert in selling myself in the market place.

In California, a mutual friend was engaged in the motivational business seminar field. Several times I was called upon to talk on the subject of job security and the secrets and art of finding work in hard times. Once I find the proper medium, I really want to share these chips and bits of business psychology with my American friends...especially those over 45-years of age.

Suggestions on how to accomplish these ends are welcomed.