National Educational Television and Radio Center Klugherz, Dan

Description

Episode Number: 2341 hour program, produced in 1969. This documentary focuses on Richard Ross, project director at the Westinghouse Electric Corporation plant in East Pittsburgh, PA. It relates his efforts to recruit, train, and counsel some 23 men each month from the area's hard core unemployed. And it gives a human account of the men, who must not only overcome the personal stigma of unemployment, but who must accept their status in the plant's stratified, and for the Negroes predominantly white, world. The Westinghouse experiment is allied with a JOBS program initiated in early 1968 by the National Alliance of Businessmen. It stipulates that he federal government will pay for the training of men who have been recruited for work in industry. After their four-week introduction, the men will then be integrated into the operation of the plant at entry level jobs. After the program's first year in operation on a national basis, some six out of 10 men recruited from the hard-core are still on the job. The average at the Westinghouse plant is nine out of ten - testament to Ross' effectiveness as project director. The documentary begins with Ross on the streets of the snow-pocked ghetto, seeking potential employees. His approach is disarmingly simple. He seeks to engender trust, explaining off-camera: "These men don't have any goals, don't have any one they can believe in. I say, "I'm secure, follow me."" The program then moves through the first days on the job, with Ross stressing an attitude...

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Library of Congress

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Digital Commonwealth