With more individuals entering the workforce from welfare, our neighborhood supermarkets are increasingly training and hiring those who are less skilled and more costly to train. Supermarkets play an important role in creating and maintaining strong neighborhoods. Our members are significant employers in many inner city and rural communities across America. They provide basic products and services essential to life and health. They are places where neighbors gather and interact in productive ways.
Many young people find their first job in a supermarket.
These characteristics provide supermarkets with the unique opportunity to play a leadership role in developing programs to address the social and economic challenges of the neighborhoods and communities they serve. The WOTC program has provided incentives for employers to take a risk they might not normally have taken. For employees, it has taught skills, helped to develop good work habits, established independence, created a positive job profile and helped with employment history. New hires have started as cashiers, baggers, deli, grocery or produce clerks and over time remain with the store, gaining experience and receiving important benefits, such as health care coverage. Since WOTC was first enacted in 1996 on an experimental basis, with WWTC following a year later, hundreds of thousands of welfare recipients have moved into the productive work force.