Abstract
Concerns about occupational (or work force) literacy, outlined in the Workforce 2000 reports, can be directly confronted and resolved. Over the past twelve years a great deal has been written about this work force dilemma in the private sector, yet there is an absence of published material on the large public sector work force that constitutes the human resource infrastructure of the various governmental levels of the nation. The present research attempts to fill some of this void by utilizing eclectic, multi-method, procedures in order to obtain qualitative and heuristic knowledge which could be used to develop a body of more detailed information on occupational literacy in the local public sector. A case study of the Los Angeles County government work force, within an exploratory and qualitative framework, was used to address four major, and six subsidiary, research questions on occupational literacy in order to assess employee skills and occupational literacy issues and plans. All of the thirty-two county departments were surveyed using a self-administered questionnaire. The response rate was 84%. The survey revealed a lack of uniform county policies, extreme variations of per-employee department training expenditures, a low number of managers who are aware of occupational literacy issues, and an acknowledgment of skill/knowledge area deficiencies that might well be going uncorrected. Given these findings, recommendations were made to: inform managers of the issues; conduct organizational, job-category, and employee assessments; to provide appropriate on-going policy and programs; and upgrade employee skill levels to effectively and efficiently meet service delivery demands and responsibilities. Further research recommendations included continued research on local public-sector occupational literacy in other counties in California.