Industry reps rally in DC, vow to aid welfare reform; NRA president Cain leads 250 operators, execs in presenting pledge to Gingrich - National Restaurant Association President Herman Cain

WASHINGTON - Seeking to upgrade the image of foodservice industry jobs and gain the good graces of the new Republican-led Congress, foodservice industry representatives pledged to help lawmakers achieve welfare reform.

In a letter signed by more than 250 restaurant owners and chief executives and presented to House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., during a press conference, industry members promised to work with local authorities to provide employment, training and, more important, advancement to Americans now receiving public assistance.

"This is no idle promise," said Herman Cain, NRA president and president and chief executive of Omaha, Neb.-based Godfather's Pizza Inc. "By giving Americans on welfare starter jobs in foodservice, we are making a valuable investment in our industry's future."

The pledge, coordinated by the National Restaurant Association, is a strategic maneuver that - on the heels of its no-holds-barred war against employer-mandated healthcare reform - places the industry as a visible Protagonist in one of the 104th Congress' biggest issues.

Included in the Republicans' Contract with America, welfare reform is one of the legislative issues to be tackled in the first 100 day of the new Congress. Republican lawmakers aim to establish limits on both who is eligible for welfare and the amount of time it is available.

Among the reform's provisions are proposals denying welfare to unmarried teen-aged mothers and forcing recipients into educational and abuse treatment programs when necessary.

Gingrich also has ignited controversy with proposals targeting legal aliens and advocating more funding for orphanages.

Without taking a political stand on the specific best ways to achieve welfare reform, the industry instead stressed that jobs are the best means of providing for a person's long-term welfare.

"Welfare reform presented us with the opportunity to say some positive things about the industry and our employees, and their ability to move up," said Lee Culpepper, an NRA legislative representative.

"The foodservice industry offers a disproportionate number of entry-level positions compared to other industries," said William D. Lecos, executive vice president of the Restaurant Association of Metropolitan Washington.

"Without debating the mechanical aspects of welfare reform, there is the fundamental idea that a job is essential to anybody's improving their position in life," he said. "As a major employer with the capacity for growth, we can be instrumental in providing those jobs."

Furthermore, by inserting itself into the welfare debate now, the industry is positioned to fight other issues that might arise, like a federal minimum-wage increase or the loss of the targeted-jobs tax credit.

The Clinton administration in recent weeks has alluded to raising the federal minimum wage by as much as $1 above its current level of $4,25 per hour.

"To the extent that we can raise the understanding of our employment on Capitol Hill, we can also raise the understanding of how increased labor costs affect us," Culpepper said.

As head of an association in an urban area with massive fiscal problems and a high-profile restaurant scene, Lecos was on hand to discuss some of the community-based training programs supported by his group that already help the disadvantaged.

For instance, during the past three years the local association has found jobs for about 60 graduates of the D.C. Culinary Arts Program. The nine-month plan offers culinary classes and internships to people without jobs.

Many of those graduates since have gone on to bigger positions at such local establishments. as the Metropolitan Club and the Grand Hyatt, and one even is starting a catering business, Lecos said.

In promising to support welfare reform by offering jobs with a future, the NRA hopes to eradicate the current misconception that the industry consists only of dead-end jobs, as the Clinton administration has suggested.

"Many in the media and even certain policy makers would have you believe that our 9 million-plus employees are just a bunch of hamburger-flippers and pizza-slingers," Cain said.

Yes, our industry does provide a number of entry-level jobs, but these jobs are not a dead end. For many they are a beginning."

According to the NRA, one-third of all American adults less than 35 years old acquired basic job skills in foodservice industry jobs, and more than 60 percent of today's restaurant owners and managers started out in entry-level positions.

"In no other business in this country have so many at the top of their professions worked their way up from the very bottom," Cain noted.

The pledge to hire people on public assistance also will help the industry fill its swelling ranks.

The U.S. Department of Labor projects a 30-percent increase in the number of foodservice employees by the year 2005. And many of those positions are expected to be at the management level.

"We have been providing indispensable entry-level jobs for years, but we want to do even more," Cain said. "We want to actively go out and find the people who need those jobs."

To that end, the NRA offered itself up as a clearing-house for matching organizations trying to place welfare recipients in jobs with industry members willing to hire them.

"We will be finding out about state programs because most programs are administered at the state level, and cataloging what different states are doing to make that available to our members," Culpepper explained.

Copies of the pledge letter were sent to Senate Majority Leader Robert Dole, R-Kan., and President Bill Clinton.

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