Iowa Workforce Development to close Washington office

    Washington will lose its Iowa Workforce Development Center. The announcement came Thursday through a press release from Iowa Workforce Development. The agency will shrink from 55 field offices to 16 ?one stop? offices. The downsizing will begin in late 2011 and end by early 2012.

    Iowa Workforce Development (IWD) Communications Director Kerry Koonce said it?s too early to tell when the Washington branch will close. She will have a better idea of individual branch closures at the end of April, after the Legislature has determined her department?s budget for 2011-2012. She said Gov. Terry Branstad supports the agency?s reorganization.

    A total of 107 positions will be eliminated, about 30 of which are vacant. Koonce said once the reorganization is complete, her department will save about $3 million per year from the reforms.

    Washington residents can still access the IWD?s website where they can apply for unemployment benefits and search for jobs. Koonce said that as a way to compensate for the closure of 39 offices, her department will maintain 500 ?locally enhanced access points? where residents can get on the internet and access other IWD materials such as résumé-building software and teaching aides. These access points will be mainly in public libraries and Iowa State University Extension offices where trained staff could assist patrons to navigate the website or use the software.

    One hundred libraries in Iowa are already equipped with these materials, and many more will get them in the coming year. Washington Library Director Patrick Finney said the library in town does not have any of these additional materials and that his staff has not received any training in how to use them. The library has cooperated with IWD in the past by supplying the department with rooms for its workshops.

Koonce said that moving some of these services to libraries allows residents to access IWD materials late in the evening and on weekends, something the current organization does not permit.

    For those who want a face-to-face consultation, the nearest IWD office after the reorganization will be either Cedar Rapids or Burlington because the Iowa City office will close, too. Davenport and Ottumwa will also maintain their full-time offices. 

    When a person enters an IWD office, he is asked why he is there. For instance, if he is there because he was just laid-off, IWD employees will get him signed-up for unemployment benefits. If, on the other hand, he is there because he?d like to change jobs, the staff asks if he has time to go through training. If so, the staff finds job training for him.

    Brenda Dodge is the Iowa Workforce Development manager for the Iowa City and Washington offices. She said many people still prefer in-person assistance because they don?t have computer skills and that the applications are difficult for them to fill out online.

    ?What we offer in our local offices is helping people to identify what they want,? said Dodge. ?We help them identify their skills. We help them prepare for an interview. We see a lot of folks who have worked in a company for 10 to 15 years, and now they have a hard time applying for a job.?

    Résumé-writing is different now from what it was a few decades ago.

For more, see our Feb. 18 print edition.