MASST Overview, Background, Articles & Success Stories

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Overview & Background:

What We Offer

MASST helps you improve your skills and gain work experience and self confidence so that you can succeed in your job search:

• Asses your job skills and interests
• Help you set job goals
• Develop and Individual Employment Plan for you
• Connect you with training to learn new skills
• Help you update your resume
• Give you tips about job interviews
• Provide you with job clubs and workshops
• Give you leads with employers
• Follow up with you to check your progress.

In addition MASST offers these benefits:

• Worker’s compensation insurance
• Yearly physical exam.

While You're In MASST

MASST is an opportunity to learn while you earn. What MASST will do is take your occupational goals (what you want to do) and find a host agency in the community where you can work upgrading your skills and helping the community. MASST participants normally work 20 hours a week at minimum wage. You’ll meet new people and we are confident you’ll find the work exciting. While working at a host agency Adult Learning Programs of Alaska offers computer training in such courses as Windows XP, Word, Excel, and QuickBooks.

The ultimate goal of the MASST program is for seniors to find unsubsidized employment. Once training is complete Adult Learning Programs of Alaska partners with the Department of Labor Job Center to help search for regular employment. Adult Learning Programs of Alaska’s MASST program has had many employment success stories.

Articles & Success Stories:

Seniors Get A Second Chance At Employment

Community Perspective

By Tom Howard

Darae worked most of her life in physically demanding jobs such as construction and now hopes to get into a new career that is less physical. Dick worked for over 30 years as a bricklayer and now wants a career where he can stay healthy and not be injured. Daisy worked for years on an Air Force base as a commander’s secretary using typewriters and dial telephones. She is now gaining the skills necessary to function in an office with computers, fax machines, copiers, scanners, and high-tech phone systems.

These are typical circumstances of trainees involved in the MASST program. MASST stands for Mature Alaskans Seeking Skills Training. The MASST program, federally known as the Senior Community Service Employment Program, provides training and part-time paid work experience opportunities for low-income individuals age 55 and older. The program helps Alaska retain the valuable resources of older workers while enabling older workers to maintain an independent lifestyle and make meaningful contributions to their communities. The program assists mature Alaskans with skills training, job search and placement into unsubsidized employment.

In Interior Alaska, the MASST program is administered by Adult Learning Programs of Alaska a non-profit community-based organization that has provided adult education services to Fairbanks and Interior Alaska continuously since 1975. Adult Learning Programs of Alaska has been awarded the MASST grant by the Alaska Commission on Aging since 2001.

People over 55 have many highly sought-after skills, and their work ethics are unparalleled. They are dependable, reliable, and enjoy being a productive part of the work force. Mature Alaskans receive their skills training primarily by working in community host agencies. Host agencies are community service assignments in public or non-profit agencies such as hospitals, senior centers, units of local government and Native American and tribal organizations. While placed in host agencies, older workers expand their skills and at the same time earn income. In addition, the MASST program utilizes Adult Learning Programs of Alaska¹s many adult education resources such as computer classes, reading, writing, math, GED preparation and testing, resume writing, and interview workshops. Many older workers find computer classes extremely beneficial to prepare them for work in today’s computer-driven businesses.

Once a person is determined to be eligible for MASST, their employment goals are discussed. It’s good to know what people have done for work in the past and what they would like to do in the future and it also helps to make a good match for the host agency. The trainee is then placed in the host site to work 20 hours a week, and they receive Alaska’s $7.15 minimum wage for those hours. The program is a win-win situation: qualified agencies and corporations get temporary employees while at the same time mature Alaskans receive skills training and eventually go on to unsubsidized employment.

The best way for a person to proceed is to call the MASST specialist located in the Job Center in downtown Fairbanks for an over-the-phone pre-assessment. The numbers are 451-3144 or 452-6434 extension 23. Non-profit agencies or government entities should also call those numbers to find out how to get a MASST trainee into their work site.

Hire an Older Worker
Community Perspective
By Tom Howard

Many of us realize that older workers now comprise a substantial part of our Nation's total population. In fact the Monthly Labor Review 2005 found that the average age of the US population is increasing and will continue to increase until 2020. In 1990, 40 % of the US population was younger than 35 years old; by 2010, only a third will be younger than 35, and in 2010 the majority of the US population will be 45 years and older.

This increase will change the profile of the US labor force. We will see a dramatic surge of older workers coming into the workforce. This will be caused in part by the average age of workers increasing to 45; pension and health benefit worries, the stock market problems of 2001, and delayed retirements. People will work to an older age driven by these financial concerns or just because they want to. There will be a slow but steady shift over the next several years and by 2020, one in five will be an older worker. This represents a 50% increase over the year 2000, in which 13% of the labor force was made up of the older age group.

If you think this is an unsettling reality, you'd be in the majority. Research shows that most managers approach the notion of supervising workers older than themselves with sizeable anxiety. Age is often referred to as the "subtle bias" and older workers run into it at an alarming frequency. And we have all heard the typical stereotypes against hiring an older worker such as; older workers are absent more frequently, older workers are short term employees, and older workers are less productive than younger workers. But in fact there is no substance to these clichés.

As the program manager for the Mature Alaskans Seeking Skills Training (MASST), I have seen first hand the qualities older workers bring into organizations. They are very dependable and their work ethics won't tolerate unjustified absenteeism. Older workers have made a decision to come back to work and that's just what they are going to do. Mature workers realize they don't have the luxury of years and years to work until retirement. Their jobs are their livelihood for the "Golden Years" and they stick with a job for the long term. They bring a spark to many organizations through their extensive experience. They have been around the block a few times and often their inputs add a competitive zing to an agency. Almost daily I hear comments from organizations that support the MASST program and they tell me how much they love having a mature worker as an employee.

Can we really afford to ignore all these positive attributes older workers have to offer? There really are no valid arguments that older workers perform less effectively in my opinion. I encourage businesses and employers to consider older workers for positions they have. They are great workers and they want to work. Hire an Older Worker!

For more information on the MASST program call 452-6434 Ext. 23.

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