New Haven Independent

That dilemma faced Dee Smith and other neighbors in the Dwight/Kensington area when Jeffery Morrow (pictured) came to town promising a lucrative new job.

Wearing a white Barack Obama T-shirt with the word “Yes” sprawled across the front, Morrow hit the pavement on Chapel Street near Kensington Monday afternoon.

He’d come from Ohio, he said, on behalf of a D.C. “job-training” outfit called Unified Stars. He handed out leaflets entitled “WE ARE NOW HIRING! NO EXPERIENCE NECESSARY… UNLIMITED EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITIES.”

In conversations with neighbors along the economically hard-hit stretch, Morrow provided details. His outfit sends workers to different cities, puts them up in hotels, teaches them how to sell magazines door to door. He spoke of how they can earn as much as $4,000 a week. He said he was offering “an opportunity to leave the state.”

“We show you how to get good at it and make top dollar,” Morrow told Dee Smith. “I can get you on a bus today.”

Smith was intrigued. “Really?” she said.

Click on the play arrow to watch Morrow at work.

Morrow was asked if his “job-training” organization is a business.

Yes, he said. A private business. “We’re set up to teach young adults to teach themselves. We offer them job opportunities.”

How much can people expect to make?

“New individuals make anywhere for two to four hundred a week,” he said. “Our top guy last week made $4,680.”

Any salary? No — it’s all commissions, he said, adding, “We stay in the nicest hotels. Budget, Ramada Inn, Holiday Inn.”

Does the company run into problems with minimum wage laws?

Morrow shook his head.

“We give them allowances every day. So they’re taken care of in terms of their food” and shelter, he replied.

(Click here for a New York Times expose on the traveling magazine industry, saying it preys on young adults.)

After Morrow walked away Monday, Dee Smith (pictured) said his pitch “sounded kind of fishy.”

“He was like, you want to sell magazines anyway. So a guy sold $4,000.”

Yet Smith said she was considering calling the number on the flyer.

“I’m going to try it,” she said. “We do need jobs.”

Smith, who said she’s 25 and lives on Chapel, has been out of work. She previously had a job at McDonald’s, she said, then at the Board of Ed working with handicapped children. “No more hours,” she said.

A Different Offer — With Salary

If Nichole Jefferson had been on Chapel Street Monday, Smith might have heard of a more promising offer — right here in town.

Jefferson oversees the city’s Construction Workforce Initiative. It helps unemployed people from the city find jobs. Especially women.

“I know people are hard-pressed for employment nowadays. But the idea of plopping you away and promising you commissions” doesn’t sound like the best “opportunity” around, Jefferson said when told of Morrow’s pitch to Dee Smith.

Jefferson said she has immediate job openings on government-financed construction projects, like the $1.5 billion school rebuilding programs. By law, 6.9 percent of the jobs are supposed to go to women. But there haven’t been enough women to fill them.

Jefferson said women without experience can sign up for her training program. It lasts 10 weeks, and offers a $150 a week stipend. “At the end of the training, you’re almost guaranteed a position,” she said, especially if you’re female. Anyone can apply by coming to Room 401 at 200 Orange St. during the workday.

A young magazine-peddler came to Jefferson’s door recently. “I did feel compelled to buy,” she said. “I was a little leery. But it was a minority person…”