SEPTEMBER 2005 :: ECONOMICS

The Slow Track
For Undereducated Workers, an Entry-Level Job Often Means a Dead End

By Joel Millman
Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal

Unwed, unemployed and saddled with three young sons, Valerie Beatty hit bottom in 1989 when she was 25 years old.

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Then her life began to turn around, thanks to a cleaner's job she landed in 1992 with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the agency that runs New York City's buses and subways. The job paid only $18,000 a year but put her on a track for training and promotions. Within a decade, she advanced from cleaner to subway motor inspector. Today she makes $50,000 a year and lives in the suburbs.

But the train that Ms. Beatty and many other black New Yorkers rode into the middle class is slowing down. The MTA was once full of jobs like motor inspector or turnstile repairman-jobs that a person with limited education could jump to with some training. But many of those jobs have disappeared, often because technology upgrades mean fewer people are needed. The jobs that do open often require a college degree and computer skills.

"For too many of our people, entry-level no longer means entry-level. It means dead-end," says Rodney Glenn, director of training for Transport Workers Union Local 100, to which 30,000 MTA employees belong.

The MTA's move toward hiring people for middle-income jobs who already have qualifications and training mirrors what has happened across America. Traders on Wall Street once started as floor runners out of high school. Newspapers would hire high-school dropouts to run sheets of paper down to the print shop, and later promote them to be reporters. "Macy's used to fill its executive training corps by recruiting stock boys," says sociologist Phil Kasinitz. Many such jobs no longer exist.

Over the years, employers have outsourced positions such as cafeteria server, security guard and janitor that once offered a chance to move up within a company. Such moves have made many enterprises more efficient and profitable. But these trends also raise the risk of trapping workers in low-wage jobs.

Traditionally, labor unions helped unskilled workers attain middle-class lives. But organized labor now represents only 11% of the work force, down from one-third in the 1950s. The fastest-growing unions, in the service industries, represent both low-wage workers and skilled professionals, but it's hard for members to move from one category to the other. On-the-job training may turn a hospital orderly into a nurse's aide, but not into a nurse.

Richard Gorman, assistant vice president for employment services at the MTA's New York City Transit division, says the authority would like to offer more promotions for low-level employees but the need for computer skills and rudimentary math ability sometimes makes it difficult. The union counters that many of those skills can be taught.

Trapped at the Bottom

Ms. Beatty started at the MTA as an $8.56-an-hour subway cleaner. Leaving her kids to be watched by a neighbor, she worked nights, mopping subway-car floors and clearing trash. Besides the grueling shifts, Ms. Beatty spent many unpaid hours attending skill-training sessions offered by the MTA. There, she learned the basics of electrical circuits and the remedial math that she needed to qualify for a promotion. She hoped to enter an MTA training program that would propel her to a position as an inspector, checking and maintaining subway cars.

Ms. Beatty had to wait until 2001 to start her training. For 18 months, the MTA paid her to attend all-day sessions. She loved the technical classes dealing with traction motors, pneumatic brakes and propulsion systems. But she struggled with math, as did many others who hadn't been in a classroom in years.

'Killing Time'

n 2002, the MTA started requiring that new entrants in the subway-car maintenance program either have a recent diploma from a vocational high school or a community-college degree in technology. Ms. Beatty probably wouldn't make the cut today.

Over the past four years, the training center has graduated just 40 apprentices for various skilled jobs, with fewer than a dozen of those graduates coming from the union. Recently, the MTA started a new inspector training course with 13 students, all from the union. Of the 13, six are former cleaners, and all of them have technical degrees.

One cleaner who made the cut for this year's class is Anthony McMikle, 28. He passed the civil-service exam in 1993, but it took five years for a $9.91-an-hour job mopping subway cars to open up. "I was basically unemployed all those years, killing time," he says.

Once employed at the MTA, he waited an additional six years to be eligible for the inspector training course. Fortunately, he had one key credential-a diploma from the East New York High School of Transit Technology. He hit the books, pulling out his high-school notes on electrical circuitry. "Now the chances come along so few at a time, you have to jump on it when it comes," says Mr. McMikle.

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