Thursday, January 28, 2010
Metro columnist Dan Casey: Overworked jobs center tries to be efficient
Dan Casey is The Roanoke Times' metro columnist.
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@roanoke.com
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Dan Casey
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A "one-stop shop" is a rarity in the world of government bureaucrats.
I'm pleased to tell you that one actually exists.
But I sure hope you never wind up there. The people who visit it often are unhappy.
The place is the Roanoke Valley Workforce Center, which since July has been housed in 12,000 square feet at Crossroads Mall in Northwest Roanoke.
I spent some time there Tuesday, talking to the people who work at the center and the clients they serve.
Step into it and you can feel the frustration.
The economy is rotten and jobs are scarce. The Roanoke area's unemployment rate was 7 percent in October, up from 4.1 percent in October 2008.
So it's a busy place these days.
Precisely 4,304 people visited the center in December, and 3,853 showed up in November, says Kim Moore, the center's manager.
Within it or next door are offices for the Virginia Employment Commission, the Department of Rehabilitative Services, the Senior Community Services Employment Program, the Department for the Blind and Visually Impaired and the state Department of Social Services.
Also there are a host of other public and private agencies, such as Goodwill Industries, which manages the center, Virginia Western Community College, and adult education workers who represent school systems in Roanoke, Salem and Botetourt County.
These agencies are integrated to help just about anyone who is job hunting, seeking training, or recently laid off.
You can sign up for unemployment benefits there, or food stamps on one of the center's computers. And if your job has moved overseas, or you have become disabled, you can get more specialized counseling, education and retraining benefits.
It works kind of like an emergency room, where a nurse assesses the walk-ins and figures out what kind of medical treatment they need.
Just like an ER, there's a waiting room. Step into it and you can feel the frustration.
"The whole system has reversed," says Doloris Vest, president of the Western Virginia Workforce Development Board. "When I got here in 2004, the case was, employers could not find the people they needed."
Clients there Tuesday were road builders and parks department grounds people and stonecutters and administrative and clerical workers.
Some have been laid off recently. Others have been looking for work for 18 months.
Give them a little credit. The fact that they were there is evidence that they're job hunting.
In the waiting room were stories about private and public employers who will hire only temps, then let them go after 90 days or so rather than bring them on as full-time workers.
"It's so they don't have to pay the benefits or insurance," said Warren Brown, 54, a stonecutter and a landscaper.
Temp jobs are not the only employers seeking workers through the center, Moore noted.
One of the job hunters was Sheryl Tyree of Roanoke. She was laid off from her retail auditing job shortly after Christmas.
"Do you need an assistant columnist?" she asked me.
Well that would be real nice, for me, I told her. But I kind of doubt my employer would feel the same way.
I didn't mention it, but these days a career in typewriter repair seems about as promising.
