Sean C. Morgan
The Linn County Board of Commissioners agreed recently to help pay the wages for a summer employee at Cascade Timber Consulting as part of an ongoing program meant to encourage employers to hire and teach work skills to first-time workers.
The program has included 128 businesses and 442 employees since it started in 2006. Under the program, the county pays $2 per hour of a first-time youth worker’s wages.
“You sign up at the start of the summer,” said CTC President Dave Furtwangler. “Usually, we wait till they leave. You get their total hours, and you just submit that to the county.”
So far this year, the program reimbursed businesses for 27 employees. In Sweet Home, A&W used the program to help pay for three employees, and the Coffee Hut used the program to help pay for one employee. With CTC, all three have used the program multiple years. CTC and Coffee Hut began participating in 2008, while A&W started using it in 2007. CTC typically hires one or two employees using this program.
About 20 Sweet Home businesses have participated.
This summer, it hasn’t been used as much, said County Commissioner Roger Nyquist. “The economy’s improving. Past years, it’s been a struggle for high school kids to find work during the summer.”
To tap the program, businesses apply to the Board of Commissioners for reimbursement, said Nyquist. The program is designed to encourage employers to hire youths and to teach them how to work.
“It’s for first-time employees,” Furtwangler said. “Most of these guys come in, and they don’t have a lot of experience.”
While employed at summer jobs with CTC, they’ll do yard work, wash pickups and perform other jobs, he said. “They learn some job skills.”
Youths are often missing important work skills when they try to enter the workforce, Nyquist said. “I see college graduates applying for entry-level jobs that haven’t learned how to work.”
A couple of things have happened that discourage youths from developing their work skills, he said. Minimum wage has gone up, and restrictions on youths working have become more challenging for them and employers.
This program’s goal is to address that deficiency.
“We feel like it’s been a good program,” Nyquist said.
“It kind of helps make the cost a little more reasonable,” Furtwangler said. “And it helps us out. It’s a smart program. It makes it really easy to make the decision it’s worth hiring these guys. Anytime you hire a person, you invest a lot in them.”
The new employee must learn the job, the employer’s expectations and training modules, such as safety, he said. If it’s just a summer job, that weighs into decisions whether to hire.
“Some of them come in with a pretty strong work ethic,” Furtwangler said. Some are self-starters. Others require more direction. Either way, CTC gets a look at potential future employees as well as taking care of seasonable work.
CTC has had a few summer employees become permanent employees, Furtwangler said. They’ll finish high school, earn forestry degrees in college and come back as forest engineers.
“It’s always good to know what you’re getting,” Furtwangler said.
This year’s employee “was one of the stars,” Furtwangler said.