Lancaster:  On Wednesday, May 19, Scott Sheely, Executive Director of the Lancaster County Workforce Investment Board announced that the PA CareerLink of Lancaster County in partnership with the PA Departments of Labor and Industry and Public Welfare will be offering a work experience program for young people ages 18-24 called Way to Work and for adults 18 and over called the Adult Subsidized Employment Program.  See attached for a downloadable summary by clicking here as well as an employer application by clicking here.

Essentially, the program provides very low-cost labor through September 30, 2010

• Government subsidies pay the cost of the wage to the participants;
• Placements are for a minimum 20 hours per week and a maximum of 40 hours per week;
• Wages for the Way to Work program will be the minimum wage of $7.25 while wages for the Adult Subsidized Employment program can vary up to a maximum of $13 per hour;
• A competitively procured staffing service will be the employer of record providing payroll services and worker's compensation coverage;
• However, employers are responsible for the employer share of relevant federal and state taxes which we calculate to be roughly $2 per hour and any wages and associated fringe benefits paid above the $13 hour limit for employee wages;
• Exceptions to the $2 per hour contribution will be made for non-profit organizations;
• Placement sites will have the opportunity to interview the candidates for placement in their businesses or organizations.

Program participants will be people using the welfare system (cash assistance, food stamps, medical assistance), low-income families, and dislocated workers who have exhausted their unemployment benefits who have graduated from the Ready2Work program and, wherever possible, completed at least one training program offered by the PA CareerLink. Many will be people who have a work history but who just have not been able to find employment due to the recession.

For-profit, non-profit, and governmental entities and businesses may participate with these qualifiers...

• Participants in this program may not be used to displace current workers, including workers who have experienced a partial reduction in hours of non-overtime work, wages or benefits;
• They may not be used to replace workers who have been part of a layoff or furlough within the past six months;
• No other individual may be on layoff from the same or any substantially equivalent job;
• Employer may not terminate the employment of any regular, unsubsidized employee or otherwise caused an involuntary reduction in its workforce with the intention of filling the vacancy so created with the participant; or
• The job is created in a promotional line that infringes in any way on the promotional opportunities of currently employed workers.

While the program doesn't require that the participant be hired at the end of the program, it does ask that all of the businesses providing placements strongly consider their participant(s) for employment if appropriate.