ARPA Supports the Worcester Jobs Fund with Jeff Turgeon

Part 6/9 from our mini-season: ARPA Funding in Worcester

We are back with another episode of our ARPA Funding in Worcester mini-series of Public Hearing. This week’s guest Jeff Turgeon, Executive Director of Mass Hire, continues the conversation to discuss how ARPA dollars can be used to provide funding for business assistance programs such as the Worcester Job Fund. These resources will be able to help employee’s and employers recover from the COVID-19 pandemic as well as assist folks with the cost of necessary training courses in order for them to obtain jobs or positions that require a little bit more formal training. 

Want to learn more about resources that are available through Mass Hire? Check out the resource page on their website!

Learn more about how Worcester plans to spend ARPA dollars on the City website.

Public Hearing is a podcast from Action! by Design about our home city of Worcester, Massachusetts and the people we should be listening to—residents, artists, activists, community leaders, storytellers, and those most impacted by issues facing our city. Our mission is to cultivate community through equity, inclusion, and design, and that work starts at home.

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Transcript for this episode

Transcript

Joshua Croke (00:01):

Hello Worcester and the world you are listening to Public Hearing on WICN 90.5 FM Worcester's only NPR affiliate station or wherever you get your podcast. I am your host, Joshua Croke, I'm the founder of Action! by Design, where we help organizations and communities engage people with purpose. We're about doing community engagement, right? And that means centering equity, justice and joy. Public Hearing is our show about making public participation and civic engagement more accessible in Worcester and sharing stories from people in our community doing work that resonates with our commitment of engaging people with purpose. This is the Public Hearing podcast. For listeners who have been following Public Hearing, we've been doing this series on the roughly 146 million dollars the city of Worcester is receiving through the American Rescue Plan Act also known as ARPA. This money's been given to communities to aid recovery from the COVID 19 pandemic, and is meant to prioritize people who have been most disproportionately impacted, which is our low income communities and our communities of color.

Joshua Croke (01:04):

One of the areas that we all know in various capacities most likely is the impact the pandemic has had on jobs and our workforce. So today our guest is Jeff Turgeon executive director of the mass higher central region workforce board. Jeff is a Worcester native and graduate of Worcester State University. He began his professional career at the central branch of the YMCA of Greater Worcester, has also served as a program management program manager for the US Department of Labor before becoming Executive Director of Mass Hire in 2008. Jeff, welcome to Public Hearing. And thanks so much for joining us today.

Jeff Turgeon (01:40):

Yes, thank you so much for having me.

Joshua Croke (01:41):

I always like to provide space for guests to share a little bit more about themselves, their experiences, and any part of their social location that might help add context for our listeners about you and your involvement in our community. So welcome, and what would you like to share that we don't know from your bio?

Jeff Turgeon (01:57):

Well, you know as you read, I am a Worcester native grew up over by Tatnuck Square. So I think that right there might tell some people, you know, I kind of grew up in a, what I would kind of call kind of a sheltered kind of environment. Right. But one of the nice things about Worcester is, for a city its size, it does have a lot of social connectivity and as a younger guy, I got a chance to meet a lot of different people. One of the more formative periods of my life, I was a member of the Lincoln Square Boys Club back then and went to Boys Club Camp every summer. So, you know, that gave me a bit more grounding in if you will, the real Worcester at the same time, I'd be, you know, riding my bike up through the woods you know, West Tatnuck in that area.

Jeff Turgeon (02:49):

Right. So kind of a really neat experience growing up. And one of my first jobs, as you'd mentioned, my first professional job was to be at the Central Branch, YMCA. So right there in the heart of Main South I got a chance to really connect with a lot of great people including Brenda Jenkins, shout out to her and all the work she does in the community. And so really got a chance though, to kind of see and meet some great people in Worcester, all social strata, the neat thing about the YMCA traditionally, and certainly the time I was there is, you know, you might have a CEO on the treadmill next to someone who's in recovery at a halfway house, right, everyone kind of in-between all areas.

Jeff Turgeon (03:36):

So it was really neat to see that social kind of melting pot, if you will, of people getting together, common purpose of trying to you know, be mindful of the community and helping themselves and community members. So it was a really neat environment growing up you know, professionally to cut my teeth on and then before moving into workforce development efforts. So my work at the central branch YMCA included the development of teen programs. So Marie Boone had a huge impact on that over at the YMCA at the time Amy Cox as well, Roberto Diaz, we were all, you know, so I'd kind of worked with all these folks to help develop team programming and that included, you know, some kind of forays into second chance youth programs.

Jeff Turgeon (04:29):

We ran a program called Spartacus that helped kind of bring together kids that were court involved take 'em away on weekends to, you know, hike the woods and to do rock climbing and to do, you know, kayaking and give them some experiences they probably normally wouldn't have. And so from that work, that kinda led me into more team development. And that led me to the Job Corps Program and working with Job Corps, which is a federally funded job training program. There's a center in Grafton as well as one up in the Old Fort Devens at it's named the Shriver Job Corps Center. That's actually where I had next worked at and got involved with government policy work at that point. And that's really kind of my entry into workforce development policy work and how it relates to program development.

Jeff Turgeon (05:22):

And then from there went to the US DOL working in Boston for a few years before the opportunity to kind of come back home into my roots, if you will, and implement policy, help develop policy locally. So you know, when I first joined, it was the Central Mass Regional Employment Board. Then we became the Central Mass Workforce Investment Board with the passage of a new legislation. And now you know, the state had basically said, well, all the different areas, there are 16 workforce areas across Massachusetts, and they each had different names, you know, so, you know, up in Leominster, I think it was like Career Works and up in Meramac Valley, it was like Valley Works or something. So we all kind had different names, different identities, and it made it tough for people, job seekers or employers to kinda see what's going on. And so they said, well, let's change the name, you know, let's come up with a new name for everybody, the name after, you know, studying it became Mass Hire. And so we're now the Mass Hire Central Region Workforce Board and you know, serving, helping look at policies and programs for workforce development and Worcester and 37 surrounding communities in Southern Worcester counties. So boy, that was a really long answer.,

Joshua Croke (06:42):

I appreciate it. No, and it tees up my next question. Well, okay, which is for listeners who might be unfamiliar with Mass Hire, I want them to get to know what Mass Hire does a little bit more, but I wanna ask that specifically in the context of maybe what I'll call vignettes specifically as we're looking at ARPA money and these conversations that we're having which is really rooted in supporting pandemic recovery and coming back from COVID 19 pandemic with the asterisk that we're not out of it yet, right? Yeah. We're still dealing with the impacts of that and still dealing with the pandemic itself. But maybe the vignettes that I'm looking for is what were some of the things that Mass Hire was experiencing before and during the pandemic, as well as in this awkward, almost post, but not really time that we're in now.

Jeff Turgeon (07:33):

So, you know, the workforce, the Mass Hire Workforce Boards, we serve as kind of a common table to bring together employers, education providers, training providers, the other state agencies that have client services that, you know, with needs for workforce. So, you know, the Department of Transitional Assistance, right. Department of Unemployment Assistance, certainly Mass Rehab Veteran Services. So we kind of serve as that commentator to bring people together, to look at, Hey, we're coordinating the use, hopefully thoughtful use and effective use of public funding, mainly from the feds, but also from the state level. And even now with the Worcester Jobs Fund, local funds, where's the big needs there to help keep a strong economy, you know, whether it's for, so we work with, you know, identifying where's the in-demand jobs and looking at how do we make sure people are prepared, especially as it relates to those jobs, that in order to get a living wage, you know, require a bit more formal education or training.

Jeff Turgeon (08:40):

And so how do we help kind of spur that? So, you know, before, and we do that through a number of ways. One is for adult, you know, job seekers and employers, we have career centers. So Mass High Career Centers, there's 30 of 'em across the Commonwealth, two in our region, one in Worcester, the flagship one in Worcester. And then we also have a satellite location in Southbridge. And then we also run summer jobs programs and with our partnership, it's state funded and we coordinate that locally in Worcester, through our partnership with the Worcester Community Action Council. So summer jobs, we also work with schools, including the Worcester public schools to help create not only college readiness but also career readiness. And then the other things we do is we oversee, develop and oversee job training programs for specific industries that might serve, you know, particular population groups.

Jeff Turgeon (09:35):

So in other words, we have a reentry grant right now. So if you're returning citizen, we have a training to help get you. If you qualify, you have a driver's license, and you're interested in becoming commercial driver and we have a training program for that, right. So we run programs around that. And then we also run programming for older youth that are out of school and out of work. So these disconnected youth out there like, Hey, you know, without going to college, you know, you might, you're outlook, may be fairly bleak, right or maybe, you're working, but very marginally kinda attached to the job market, not making a living wage with no real prospect to move, you know, forward. So that's where our second chance youth programs come in and we partner with like U Inc, the fields own school, Worcester Action Council to run those programs, to recruit and manage those programs for us to give young people direction.

Jeff Turgeon (10:33):

And then also some of those basic skills. And for some they'll go on to college, others they'll go right into the workforce and, hopefully, embark on their career. So, you know, before COVID hit we were struggling in terms of funds. We never seemed to have enough funds to kind of do what we know the need was, and the need was more on the supply side. So we, you know, when I say supply side, it's really about the job seeker side, right? Young people without enough resources to get into those trainings, not enough trainings available for returning citizens, people of color in general you know, the economic indicators show they're most marginalized when it comes to the workforce, right? So they have you know, higher unemployment numbers and overall lower you know, career earnings.

Jeff Turgeon (11:27):

So we're trying to, Hey, let’s prioritize, you know, helping those groups, you know, get a foothold into, you know, a living wage economy. Then when COVID hit boy, everything, you know, it was a moment time things froze you know, across the Commonwealth, more than a million people were laid off, temporarily businesses shuttered for months on end and our career services quickly had to turn to helping people access those short term benefits. We also had to pivot to an online environment both at the board level with the work we're doing staffing. But also all the customer services that we do and the career center had had to transition over to remote. And so now we're as you said, we're in that interesting phase where we're moving past it and so some people, their day-to-day experience is almost back to normal.

Jeff Turgeon (12:26):

If you will, others are still very mindful of the of the dangers COVID poses to them and their family. And so, you know, we're operating in for a large extent, we're still continuing with a lot of the remote service delivery while back to in-person, which for those, a lot of folks that we serve, that that's really kind of a necessary thing. So on the bright side, there has been a lot of investment into the technology to undergird remote delivery of services and support. And then B there's been an influx of funding for workforce development and getting people, which is, so we have, I guess you would say an opportunity here to maybe reset a bit, to think thoughtfully about what the bigger picture needs could be, how can we drive our system forward? And I think we have a chance to maybe do some things creatively, thoughtfully that we hadn't had in the past, we have more resources. So let's, you know, let's take a breath and think about how we want to use them, you know you know, effectively

Joshua Croke (13:37):

There is a 1.2 million allocation in the ARPA money that's coming into the city for the Worcester Jobs Fund. So could you talk a little bit maybe about what some of the plans are there for the growth of the Jobs Fund and some of the work that you hope you'll be able to expand or continue with that money?

Jeff Turgeon (13:57):

So even though the Mass Hire Central Region Workforce Board is a regional entity we serve the entire region. We are administered under the city of Worcester. So I'm a city of Worcester employee as are the most of the many of the career center staff, yet some of the other staff are stationed state staff that are stationed there, but we're firmly rooted in the city structure in terms of administration. And so when they wanted to create this and, you know, all credit to the city council, Mayor Petty, City Manager Ed Augustus, who really, you know, listened to the community who said, Hey, we've got a real need here. We have a fair amount of infrastructure work being done, but a lot of the folks that are doing the work are from out of town, out of state, how do we get local people to take advantage of the, you know, building the ballpark and building these other, you know, building Worcester State’s new buildings and UMass how do we get, you know, more local residents into these, these jobs?

Jeff Turgeon (15:08):

And so, you know, like I said, the City Manager and the City Council, they put their heads together and came up with this idea of having a Worcester Jobs Fund and utilizing local funds that could be very flexible. A lot of funding we receive federally and state there's a lot of strings attached to it and has to be used for specific purposes. And so having, creating the Jobs Fund was something that is you know, still fairly unique across the country to have such a fund developed. The other thing that I thought, you know, folks did that was a really thoughtful approach was so there's a committee that advises the use of those funds. That committee is by design led by the community members, representatives of the Community Labor Coalition, so these are grassroots organizations that are out there that play a role in the community.

Jeff Turgeon (16:07):

They're at the table. These are groups that maybe in the past had been shut out or felt shut out, at least felt shut out. The perception was there, if not the reality, right, that they just, their voice was marginalized, was never really heard. So to have them at the table driving the decisions, but also at the table is the chamber of commerce is which public schools is the Mass Hire Career Center director, Janice Ryan Weekes. So we've got people here that are rooted in the community, making decisions about, you know, where those funds should really be prioritized. And then we have a dedicated staff person and an assistant staff person that are implementing those projects. So when you talk about, you know, the use of this influx of federal ARPA funds again, it's a great opportunity for us.

Jeff Turgeon (16:59):

We have the structure in place to make sure that we're getting beyond the committee. I know the city has also really tried to reach out and get many voices at the table in planning for the use of these dollars. And that's where even the allocations across, well, you know, you've got childcare, you've got transportation, you've got other you know, worthy uses of these funds. And so, you know, I'm just happy to see that you know, these funds are being used in a thoughtful way that has a community voice built into it. It's not kind of a side thing. This is built-in right from the ground up that the voice at the table.

Joshua Croke (17:39):

I know we mentioned childcare transportation. We recently did a mini-season on early childhood education and care and the challenges that folks in that space are facing with not really supported by living wages in a lot of those positions in my work in educational equity, in the city from a community context. So looking at the Worcester public schools, as well as our out of school time organizations, and really how we might manifest an equity centered education ecosystem in Worcester that provides learning opportunities and experiences for kids at every level within our community, right in school, out of school, et cetera. We know that one of the major challenges right now is transportation. And I know that the that Mass Hire right now has the school bus driver training and job placement, because there's such a massive shortage of drivers and abilities for kids to get to school. So is that an example of one of the things that has come out of this committee with the Worcester Job Fund?

Jeff Turgeon (18:49):

Yeah. Yeah. That's a great example of the opportunity having a flexible funding stream allows. Right. So we were able, when this call from, you know, we, we're also part of the Worcester Together Group that is an amazing coalition of, I think over like 60 or 70 organizations now that are, you know, are actively talking. It was created, you know, with the onset of COVID, but it kind of goes far beyond it. But one of the things that was happening is, you know, kids with the shortage of school bus drivers, kids actually couldn't even get to after-school programs, cuz they had to cut bus routes. That would go by like the Boys Club and some of the other.

Joshua Croke (19:35):

You know, and that's still a problem that's being faced and addressed and is absolutely a critical need for accessibility. When we talk about equity and who is able to access these programs, right? Yeah. If you rely on public transportation to get to school, to get to these afterschool programs, you don't have someone in your family with a car to bring you to the Boys and Girls Club or these other, you know, programs across the city. It takes away the opportunity for those kids to engage in that learning.

Jeff Turgeon (20:05):

Right, and that misalignment, right. You have resources being put into these programs, doing great work, but if kids can't get there, that's a wasted resource, right? Every seat in that program that's empty is a wasted resource. You know, when you think of it and is also the long term, I know like when you talk to the child development folks, they talk about the triple win of working with like in the workforce side, working with child development, right? You've got teachers themselves, if we can help them earn a living wage in that, in that job, well now they've got gainful employment, the young people that they're working with benefit from it. And then the economy overall long term, they're setting a strong foundation for the next generation, you know, workforce. So it's like this amazing benefit triple win all around if we can work.

Jeff Turgeon (20:58):

And so similarly, right, it's like investing in child development programming and after-school programs is so vital to the long-term success of our economy. And so if you've got some sort of bottleneck, some sort of gap in that chain boy, it seems like you're not maximizing the resources. You have let alone putting more resources in. Right so having this fund though, the Jobs Fund, right? So we heard about the need the superintendent got with their transportation department and they came up with a way to help do an internal training with also in partnership with the Worcester Nightlife Program, which public school runs. And so we were able to kind of then backs stopped with the funding through the Jobs Fund. So the Jobs Fund committee, you know, recognized the need said, yeah, let's invest in this. So we've put through, I think more than 40 people through that training this past year. So that's potentially 40 drivers that are now available to the public schools that they wouldn't have. It’s a bit of a process, not all 40 necessarily are fully licensed at this point, but they're on pace I guess, or on track to get there. Right. And we have another class starting this spring.

Joshua Croke (22:19):

That's great to great to hear there. This is all so interconnected, right? Yeah. The issues of, you know, when you mentioned the opportunity that comes with childcare and what that opens up for our own economic growth you know, you mentioned teachers support the young people that we're teaching to become the next generation workforce also those kids whose parents and families, if having access to quality childcare is available and accessible, they are able to reenter the workforce.

Jeff Turgeon (22:51):

That's another win.

Joshua Croke (22:52):

Right. Right, exactly. So there's another win there. So outside of a lot of the like direct service, like getting individuals, trained, getting people, you know, in jobs, what do you see as like the root causes for either unemployment job scarcity or a disconnect between the folks who are getting ready to work, going through your training programs, connecting to employers and how do we address, you know, more structurally the root causes that you see as challenges?

Jeff Turgeon (23:24):

You know, the angriest side of society, right. Might say, oh, you know, pull yourself up by your bootstraps, get to work and then you'll, you know, move up the ladder, you know, that's how it works. Right. And that's good in theory. And, you know, certainly depending on where people go, that can happen, what we're and I used to kind of be, I hate to say it, I used to be kind of a work first, job first, any job, and then work your way through it. So, you know, I would say my approach used to be like, Hey, get off public assistance as fast as you can get back into any job you can, and then you are gonna develop the good habits of working. You're gonna just getting at, you know, your mindset will be more positive.

Jeff Turgeon (24:10):

And then you can get ahead. I've kind of come around to the thinking though that like, you know, you're CNA think about this, you're a CNA, maybe you're a mom. And, and you know, you're trying to take care of your kids. You're working full time a lot, a lot of times they work two jobs. And so you're working maybe 50, 60 hours a week. When do you have time to better yourself and to get the education you would need to get that next step might be an LPN, a licensed practical nurse, right? The level of education you need for LPN is about two years full-time. But if you're going, part-time, let's say four, but that's still a lot of time and energy. And if at the end of a long shift of dealing with people and moving people around, it's physically demanding, it's mentally draining cuz you, you know, people's lives are in your hands, right?

Jeff Turgeon (25:05):

So you come home for maybe a 10-hour shift dead time. Now you gotta get your kids ready for, you know, for the next day at school or dinner or whatever, right. You're supposed to now go to school and do like two hours of school work. Come on. It’s just so I think, unfortunately, one of the mismatches in our society that's the toughest to overcome is this idea of, we have kind of a working poor underclass without any real way of advancement without getting off the wheel, right? Like it's not realistic to say, keep doing what you're doing. One of the things that we're doing as a result and we're working with federal officials too, to kind of change the rules on is to say right, if you're in a training program we're gonna try to get you a stipend.

Jeff Turgeon (25:53):

What if the Jobs Fund gave you a 200, a dollar week stipend so that you can concentrate on, you know, you can kind of get by for the four weeks of the training and have some money in your pocket to spend on what you need while you're taking this, you know, quote-unquote free training, right. Free training's great, but it's also an opportunity time that you're putting in yourself so you could be working. So if it's, you know, we're trying to do things like that. You utilize stipends to help people make that jump from where they're at, to where they could hopefully be. But that's not easy, you know, it's not an easy sell. People have to be exposed to what that other and have to change their mindset about like, oh, I can do that. You know? So we have to kind of educate people about what the opportunities are and help them hopefully see themselves getting into that and then make the commitment, help them to make it easier to make that commitment.

Joshua Croke (26:49):

So, more awareness, more ability to be mobile in growth in jobs. And I wish we could continue talking about this cuz there's a handful of things that I would want to address, but we are at time.

Jeff Turgeon (27:07):

You’re kidding me What we, I thought we were like four minutes in, are you kidding me? And you asked like two questions. That's how much I ramble. Right?

Joshua Croke (27:08):

I flew by. Well we thank you for coming on the show. For listeners, we're talking to Jeff Turgeon Executive Director of Mass Hire. Thank you for listening to Public Hearing our podcast and radio show that airs Wednesdays at 6:00 PM on WICN 90.5 FM Worcester's only NPR affiliate station and can be heard wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm your host, Joshua Croke and our audio producer is Giuilano D’Orazio, who also made our show music thanks to Molly Gammon and Kellee Kosiorek, who also support the production of this show. If you want to listen to other episodes or engage with us, go to Public Hearing.co the work continues Worcester and as always, thanks for listening.