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PHILLIPPE 

You businessmen know what this kind of experience does to operating costs and earnings margins.

Every company with central-city facilities has had similar problems. The attitudes and values that some of these new employees bring to the job are different. They are not ready for our world of work. Many of them have lived all their lives in a community that had demanded a different standard of personal values, and they just are not accustomed to working to quality standards day after day.

The common experience of businessmen in this environment is that traditional communications channels between management and employees tend to break down, leaving a void between new workers and their fellow employees and supervisors, and serious gaps that defer the team effort and cooperation essential to efficient operation of a business. 

What this situation boils down to is that at a time when business sees a wide need for a more effective labor force, the urban labor market will provide us with less than ever in terms of quality and quantity. 

There is nothing to be gained, and perhaps something to be lost, by arguments over whose fault it is that many people are so poorly qualified for productive work. It exists as a fact, and that is where we stand right now.

And since there is very little reason to except a spontaneous adjustment on the part of the applicants, it is up to us to take account of their needs in our requirements. 

And I think businessmen are. Many of us are taking a fresh, hard look at hiring techniques and training practices that we had thought of as traditional. We no longer can predict reliable results from traditional and previously reliable testing and interviewing practices. Established training programs are not adequate or useful in bringing these people to productive job levels.

New programs are being initiated by many companies. The ones I know about firsthand are at General Electric, and I think a listing of some of them would be an indication of the work going on in many enterprises now: High school training for dropouts; foremen development programs to meet new qualifications for supervisors; new kinds of orientation programs, a counsellor approach to absenteeism, pre-employment education, to touch on just a few of the new practices.

There is a growing recognition among businessmen of my acquaintance that under-employment among the disadvantaged city dwellers is just as serious a problem as unemployment. Full participation in our society means the opportunity to move up in a job, as well as get the job in the first place. And if a man has talent in that direction, the full range of progress open to the entrepreneur 

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