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U.S. Office of Personnel ManagementWelfare-to-Work |
MEMORANDUM FOR THE HEADS OF EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENTS AND AGENCIES
SUBJECT: Government Employment for Welfare Recipients
Since I signed the historic welfare reform law, I have urged businesses, nonprofit organizations, and
religious groups across the Nation to help make its promise of opportunity real by offering jobs to
welfare recipients. We are making great progress, but there is more to do. And today, I take action
to ensure that the Federal Government, as the Nation's largest employer, contributes to the greatest
extent possible to this national effort.
I therefore direct each of you, as head of an agency or department, to use all available hiring
authorities, consistent with statute and prior executive memoranda, to hire people off the welfare rolls
into available job positions in the Government.
In particular, I direct you to expand the use of the WorkerTrainee Program and other excepted
service hiring authorities. The Worker-Trainee Program allows agencies to quickly and easily hire
entry-level persons for up to 3 years, with the ability to convert the appointment to career status if
the employee has performed satisfactorily. Though recently underutilized, the program allows
agencies to bypass complex Federal personnel hiring rules and procedures to bring people into the
junior grades of the work force.
I further direct you, in recognition of the different characteristics of the various agencies' work forces, to prepare an individualized plan for hiring welfare recipients and to submit that plan to me within 30 days. This plan should have three principal components:
I expect each agency head to report to me about his or her plan at a special cabinet meeting called
for that purpose. Following this meeting, I also expect monthly reports on implementation.
To ensure deep and continuing involvement in this issue by the White House, I ask the Vice President
to oversee this effort. Based on his expertise in Federal workplace issues, he will assist all agencies
in carrying out their commitments.
Finally, I direct appropriate agencies to take three steps that will help bring welfare recipients into the Federal work force while assisting all other low-income Federal employees.
WILLIAM J. CLINTON
Updated 28 April 1997