The Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA, ) was a

United States federal law The law of the United States comprises many levels of Codification (law), codified and uncodified forms of law, of which the supreme law is the nation's Constitution of the United States, Constitution, which prescribes the foundation of the ...

enacted by the

Congress A congress is a formal meeting of the representatives of different countries, constituent states, organizations, trade unions, political parties, or other groups. The term originated in Late Middle English to denote an encounter (meeting of ...

, and signed into law by President

Richard Nixon Richard Milhous Nixon (January 9, 1913April 22, 1994) was the 37th president of the United States, serving from 1969 until Resignation of Richard Nixon, his resignation in 1974. A member of the Republican Party (United States), Republican ...

on December 28, 1973 to train workers and provide them with jobs in the public service. The bill was introduced as S. 1559, the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act of 1973, by Democratic Senator Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin. The program offered work to those with low incomes and the long term unemployed as well as summer jobs to low income high school students. Full-time jobs were provided for a period of 12 to 24 months in public agencies or private not for profit organizations. The intent was to impart a marketable skill that would allow participants to move to an unsubsidized job. It was an extension of the

Works Progress Administration The Works Progress Administration (WPA; from 1935 to 1939, then known as the Work Projects Administration from 1939 to 1943) was an American New Deal agency that employed millions of jobseekers (mostly men who were not formally educated) to car ...

(WPA) program from the 1930s. Inspired by the WPA's employment of artists in the service to the community in the 1930s, the San Francisco Arts Commission initiated the CETA/Neighborhood Arts Program in the 1970s, which employed painters, muralists, musicians, performing artists, poets and gardeners to work in schools, community centers, prisons and wherever their skills and services were of value to the community. The idea for CETA/Neighborhood Arts Program came from John Kreidler, then working with the Arts Commission as an intern, with the Arts Commission's Neighborhood Arts Program under the direction of Stephen Goldstine. The program was so successful in San Francisco that it became a model for similar programs, nationally. The CETA Artists Project in New York City was one of the largest. Nine years later, CETA was replaced by the Job Training Partnership Act.

References

1973 in American law 93rd United States Congress United States federal labor legislation United States federal legislation articles needing infoboxes December 1973 in the United States Presidency of Richard Nixon {{US-fed-statute-stub