County to OK Job Training Program for Unemployed

County supervisors are expected today to approve a program to move dozens of people off the unemployment rolls by training them to become machinists and customer service representatives.

Additionally, those in low-income jobs and some of the county’s nearly 7,000 CalWORKS recipients will be recruited for the job-training courses, to be offered at Ventura College beginning next month.

County residents making minimum wage and those who have been laid off or fired because of plant closings will be eligible to apply for the 110 training positions. Graduates will be placed in jobs paying from $7.25 to $7.50 an hour.

There will be no student enrollment fees, and books and supplies will be provided, said Tom Nikirk, manager of the county’s Workforce Development Division.

Each course will take place six hours a day, Mondays through Fridays. The machinist course is 24 weeks and the customer service class lasts 10 weeks, Nikirk said.

The nearly $220,000 cost of the program will come from federal Job Training Policy Act funds. In all, the county has about $12.5 million in federal funds to identify and develop jobs this fiscal year.

Last year, the county’s 19-member Private Industry Council identified the need for additional machine operators and customer service reps in the area. The council is made up of 10 business owners and nine representatives from CalWORKS--the state’s welfare-to-work program--and nonprofit, employment development and educational groups.

“This is exciting because it shows that the Private Industry Council is really listening to the industries’ needs,” said Marty Robinson, a chief deputy administrative officer for the county who oversees regional development. “And then working with training institutions to develop programs to meet those needs.”

Eric Birns, president of Birns Inc. in Oxnard, which manufactures high-performance lighting fixtures, said he wants to hire some of the program’s graduates. Birns said he has had difficulty finding qualified machinists to fill positions at his 10-employee company.

“You place an ad and either you get people not skilled in the trade or you get no response at all,” said Birns, a member of the council.

The number of skilled machinists nationwide has drastically dwindled since the Southern California aerospace industry began downsizing in the 1980s, Nikirk said.

“It’s not like people grow up and aspire to become machinists anymore, not like they did around World War II when people had to have a four-year apprenticeship in order to become one,” Birns said. “But it’s a very important industry.

“Nothing will take place of an apprenticeship,” he said. “But this is the closest thing to formalized schooling.”

Of the graduates, 30 will be placed in machinist jobs and 80 will be placed in customer service positions in companies throughout the county.