New Bedford Nostalgia™: May 2009

City back in same old pattern

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David W. Oliveira/Standard-Times special Kara Santoes has a smile for Buddy Andrade after receiving her certificate during a graduation ceremony for a worker training program at City Hall in New Bedford last week.

By Steve Urbon

surbon@s-t.com

May 03, 2009 6:00 AM

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NEW BEDFORD — Unemployment has hung like a dark cloud over New Bedford almost from the city's beginning, baffling and confounding nearly everyone who has tried to understand it and eliminate it.

More than a century ago, Harvard social worker Robert Hunter's groundbreaking book "Poverty" — in which he invented the phrase "poverty line" — lamented the rampant seasonal unemployment caused by the industrialization of America.

The 1885 Massachusetts census, he wrote, showed that 29 percent of workmen in the state were irregularly employed. But in industrial towns, including New Bedford and Fall River, "from 39 to 62 percent of the workmen were idle during some part of the year," some of them for months at a time.

"In these times of industrial crises," Hunter wrote, "the number of unemployed men, who with their families are in poverty, reaches a point where the whole nation is moved to pity.

"In these times the lodging-houses of our cities are overcrowded with idle men. The vagrant class increases to large proportions, and the despair and wretchedness of the workless people cause the ruin of thousands There is a very large increase in the number imprisoned for vagrancy, petty crimes and drunkenness."

"Poverty" was written in 1904, by which time the whaling industry had died off, and at the start of the long decline of the textile and apparel industries that brought New Bedford to its economic knees by the mid-1950s. That period marked an effort to reindustrialize Greater New Bedford, spurred on in a few more years by the space race and urban renewal.

City leaders vowed, then as now, not to "put all of our economic eggs in one basket," a circumstance that had repeatedly sent the local economy into a skid whenever a key sector of the economy fell on hard times.

But New Bedford and other industrial cities never quite escaped the pattern of having a much harder time of it during downturns than the rest of the state. Unemployment typically would be double the state average even in the best of times such as 2000, where it hovered around 6 percent with the state under 4.

Today it is back above 12 percent, with the state about half that.

"Two decades worth of improvement, shattered in a matter of months."

That is the blunt verdict on SouthCoast's unemployment problem from Clyde W. Barrow, director of the UMass Dartmouth Center for Policy Analysis, as he surveys the wreckage caused by the recession.

"The most discouraging part for me is that we seem to have reverted to the old pattern of being double the state average unemployment rate through the trough of a recession," he said. "Over the last two business cycles we seem to be moving away from closing the unemployment gap."

It is even worse than that, Barrow said. He said that what today's circumstances reveal is that "we have made absolutely no headway on educational attainment issues which we know are crucial to building the new economy."

"The dropout rate is as high or higher than it' ever been," he said. "People are still dropping out of school, and they're not the immigrants. We really just haven't been able to change it."

The dropout problem leads straight back to the unemployment rate. Nationwide, the pattern has been that the higher the academic achievement, the lower the unemployment. The lower the academic achievement, the higher the unemployment.

And in New Bedford, for example, a recent study by the UMass Dartmouth Urban Initiative revealed that 25 percent of the adult population lacks anything beyond a ninth grade education, never mind college.

As a result, Barrow said, "We have found it very difficult to attract any of the new industries south of Boston. We talked about marine sciences and tourism and there have been some gains there, but certainly nothing to offset" the trend in unemployment overall.

After all the years spent grappling with these issues, Barrow admits being discouraged. "Boy, I'll tell you, I look at the wall every time I think about that (education) question."

There is one dramatic change that Barrow says we ought to try but probably won't, Barrow suggested. More about that in a moment.

First, a closer look at what is happening on the unemployment line.

Brenda Francis, director of the Greater New Bedford Career Center, the agency that no longer calls itself the unemployment office, said that "customers" there now represent a much wider swath of the working population than in years past. The current flood of unemployment has topped the levees and is drowning even those in middle management, people who had good jobs because of their advanced skills but lost them due to the downturn.

"The diversity in the industries has broadened greatly," she said. "Traditionally, there would be seasonal layoffs that we always expected — bus drivers at the end of the school year, construction workers in the winter months."

"There were times when the economy wasn't great that the trends would start earlier and last a little longer, and the numbers were higher. There were the declining industries — fishing, the needle trades — that we began to see more and more," she said. "What's different now is that it's pretty much across the board.

"The applicant pool, the job seeker pool, has a wide range of skills, education, work history, that in some ways makes it unique" this time around, Francis said.

"Traditionally, we deal with employers on a more entry level or labor related work," she said. Now, however, applicants who have higher-level skills are showing up at the doorstep, and as a result the Career Center is "actively calling employers" who might have a particular need for a more experienced person, she said.

In other words, the Career Center is helping such people with the "networking" that the unemployed are encouraged to do.

At the other end of the spectrum are the chronically unemployed, or even unemployable.

"Those individuals who have false starts, a lot of entry-level positions in different areas, entry level jobs, who don't have a good work history, who have multiple barriers, that's the individual that we really work with to get into a skills training program," Francis said.

"A lot of people are wanting to go to work, not realizing that they have some work-readiness issues. They don't come to that realization" without help, she said, "So we're looking at a record where they have 30 days at this job and three months at that job."

"We try to understand the pattern and get to the root of the cause, what is creating this, " she said. "Then at that point we look at skills training."

The Career Center offers a work certification program that includes 90 hours of coaching and education in such things as "business writing skills, overall behavior in the workplace, even hygiene," she said. "It's their overall appearance and attitude."

"It makes a world of difference in their confidence. They feel better and represent themselves on the job in a better way," she said.

Some things are difficult to overcome, however. One is the prevalence of the use of illicit drugs in the community, and the other related issue is the number of people in the work force who have criminal records, many times as the result of a drug offense. Decriminalization of marijuana, which voters approved last fall, might have a long-term effect on the prison issue, but many employers still demand drug tests of their applicants.

Francis said the Career Center will inform applicants about the requirement. "We'll tell them, 'Listen, there is a mandatory drug test for this,'" she said. "If you have used drugs within a certain timeline, we would like you to be honest about this."

If they balk, then "maybe it's not the right fit," she said.

As for prison, it was hard enough before the recession to place people who have criminal records. Now, "because we have a larger pool of what we consider to be dislocated workers with good work histories willing to take a job at lower pay, they are pushed even further down," Francis said.

To counteract that, the Career Center, with a two-year state Shannon Grant of $700,000, operates a back-to-work program "behind the wall" for those inmates who want it and will stick to it. Inmates can work toward their GED, or get English classes or adult basic education, along with a 25-hour work readiness training program that ends with a certificate of completion they can present to prospective employers.

Francis said that the next step will be a partnership with Bristol Comunity College to give ex-inmates courses that can help them get better jobs along with college credits, especially in areas such as construction in which they may already have skills, Francis said.

Kim Wilson, coordinator of the UMass Dartmouth Labor Extension Program, said that the state's Criminal Offender Records Information law stands in the way of many people seeking work, even many years after their offense.

"CORI reform needs to be a big part of what needs to change," she said, quickly adding, "not in relation to sex offenders, of course."

Labor Commissioner George Noel recently spoke to the Labor Program about the possibility of CORI changes, she said. Saying that she doesn't want to "sound like a liberal softie," she said, "My personal opinion is that you try to give people a second chance, a timeline."

"People can change," she said, and it ought to help them if time has passed since their offense.

At the Center for Policy Analysis, Barrow's concern is that Massachusetts, unlike other states, "has never developed any kind of urban policy, not just in Boston but in medium-sized cities." He said he thinks of it in the same vein as education reform "but comprehensive, putting resources into these areas."

The "Gateway Cities" project being pursued by the nonpartisan think tank MassINC is "on target," he said, "but it has no funding, no resources."

"One of the problems is that less than half of the people live in urban centers in Massachusetts," Barrow said. "It's a suburban state, and that's who controls the vote. But the people living in the suburbs have to come to the understanding that problems like crime spill over.

"But rather than regionalization, what I would push for is for the cities to have the power of annexation, like they do everywhere else in the country," Barrow said.

With annexation, cities would be given the exclusive power to annex adjacent population centers that have grown beyond a certain size. "They don't get to vote no," he said of those being annexed, but it serves to "bring all those resources into the urban base," and make more people stakeholders in the fate of the cities.

It would be a dramatic shift in political power and a "rewrite of the whole municipal code" in Massachusetts, Barrow said, which is why it is unlikely to happen.

But it would have the curious effect of returning much of SouthCoast to the political arrangements that existed 150 years ago. Fairhaven, Acushnet, New Bedford and Dartmouth were once just Dartmouth. Marion, Mattapoisett and Rochester were once Rochester.

Short of that, he said, solving long-term unemployment means not only tackling the dropout rate but reaching to the adult population with GED and adult basic education on a grand scale.

How grand? "Probably 30 times" what is being spent on it now, he said.

Meantime, for Barrow there will be more looking at the walls.

Steve Urbon is senior correspondent for The Standard-Times.

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NBwins

Member since: 04/10/2009

On May 04, 2009 at 5:53 AM

, NBwins said:

Buddy is only being appeased to get him to sing their praises. Behind his back they scoff and laugh at his efforts. Why can he not see this? Full Message

NBwins

Member since: 04/10/2009

On May 04, 2009 at 5:52 AM

, NBwins said:

When are the people of the city going to realize that New Bedford is the State's dumping ground for all the uneducated people they don't want living in Boston and the surrounding communities? We get crumbs while they dine on steak and prime rib! Buddy Andrade needs a reality check. Why can he not... Full Message

nbhooligan

Member since: 07/01/2008

On May 04, 2009 at 5:13 AM

, nbhooligan said:

Yes New Bedford would seem to be chronically bad, what needs to happen is folks need to recognize the real issues at hand, and tackle them. Focus would allow this city to move out of the dark ages! A Master Plan, a working population, a drive to succeed. Full Message

stuart2560

Member since: 05/03/2009

On May 03, 2009 at 8:47 PM

, stuart2560 said:

StuckInNB said... StuckInNB 3/22/08 Total posts: 119 Stuart, NB has an unemployment problem because it is home to certain kinds of industry that are either fleeting or seasonal or project-based. Also Stuart, maybe you should spend time IN the city. It's a typical urban blight city, but... Full Message

SouthcoastNative

Member since: 05/06/2007

On May 03, 2009 at 8:46 PM

, SouthcoastNative said:

"We try to understand the pattern and get to the root of the cause, what is creating this...". Might I suggest that many decades of anti-business attitudes and rhetoric in New Bedford might have had something to do with it. Full Message

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