Replacing the safety net.

In February, I unexpectedly made headlines when I expressed my views about workfare initiatives from my perspective as a business owner and corporate director representing the interests of America's private sector. The occasion was a discussion, held at my place of worship, Riverside Church in Manhattan, on how churches and other community-based organizations could join with private businesses to create jobs for those who will no longer receive public assistance as a result of welfare reform. The panel included one very special guest--William Jefferson Clinton, the President of the United States.

During Clinton's visit to Riverside, I expressed my serious problems with the welfare reforms--basically Republican legislation--he signed into law, as well as with the short-sighted approach of both parties to the implementation of workfare, programs that require people to work to maintain their eligibility for public assistance. Clinton took exception to my views. Unfortunately, media accounts of our discussion focused so heavily on the "news" that the President and I disagreed that they tended to obscure the substance of my position: that the creation of jobs alone will not be enough to break the cycle of chronic unemployment, which is the most persistent characteristic of welfare as we know it today.

Proponents of welfare reform speak of our society's need for every able-bodied adult to work. The problem with this very reasonable expectation is that most of the new jobs in today's economy don't require able bodies as much as they require educated, disciplined and well-trained minds, Doing jobs, many of which have been shipped overseas and few of which are in inner cities, have been replaced by thinking jobs, which require higher-level skills and the ability to work in concert with others.

American business needs a skilled workforce. An employer's No. 1 priority when making a hire is the reasonable assurance that the candidate is trained and prepared to do the job. In the absence of that assurance, the President's proposal to give business tax credits of up to $5,000 for each welfare recipient they hire is totally inadequate, however well intentioned, as an incentive to hire.

Our objective must not be limited to merely reducing the welfare rolls, but to provide those on welfare with the training necessary to compete for jobs that are truly valued by the businesses that create them. Without a program if intensive job-training, chronically unemployed welfare recipients (however able-bodied) will be unable to hold productive jobs. Because job training costs money, welfare reformists usually gloss over these facts. Yet, without such programs, large-scale efforts to move people from public assistance to gainful employment cannot enjoy lasting success.

Businesses can participate in partnerships to create and fill jobs , but only if there is a transitional support system--in the President's words, a bridge--provided by federal, state and local governments, to prepare workers for those jobs. That bridge of education and job training is the only way for the chronically unemployed, denied the safety net of public assistance, to