The PG&E Welfare-to-Work Training and Employment Initiative was an employer-sponsored pilot program aimed at moving San Francisco welfare recipients into the labor market. Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) along with its project partners, The Women's Foundation, San Francisco Department of Human Services, and City College of San Francisco, provided an opportunity to forty Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) recipients for job training and eventual placement within the PG&E temporary workforce. Over the course of a year, the selected TANF recipients were trained for clerical positions by City College of San Francisco and then placed at PG&E through an affiliated temporary agency until they completed at least six months of temporary work. There was a mentoring component as well in which trainees job shadow a more experienced worker and continue to have a mentor's support while on the job at PG&E. Upon completion of the program, participants had the option of remaining in the PG&E temporary pool, applying for full-time positions within PG&E, or seeking temporary or regular employment outside of PG&E.

The evaluation had both process and outcomes components. BPA followed the implementation of the initiative from the selection of participants to their placement in the PG&E temporary pool and their subsequent outcomes after the six month trial period in the temporary pool with PG&E. BPA provided interim feedback regarding the initial implementation of the program to refine it for subsequent cohorts of participants in the training program. The outcomes study compared the experiences of PG&E trainees to two comparison groups: other San Francisco TANF recipients not chosen to participate in the pilot program and other PG&E temporary pool workers who are not TANF recipients. By comparing the welfare-to-work trainees to both of these groups, PG&E and its program partners received valuable information about the relative success of its program in assisting TANF recipients, and the feasibility of hiring TANF recipients as temporary or permanent employees in a competitive workforce.

As one of the first employer sponsored welfare-to-work initiatives in the San Francisco Bay Area, the PG&E pilot evaluation provided key information about the viability of public/private ventures regarding the important issue of welfare reform.

Publications:

Evaluation of the PG&E Education and Employment Training Program: A Business Response to Welfare Reform: Final Report (Aug, 1999) (PDF:2632KB)
Final Report on the PG&E Education and Employment Training Program. Includes a summary of the lessons learned from the implementation of the program, as well as an examination of the outcomes for the first cohort of program participants.