Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA)

A 1973 federal law that revised and regrouped various job training programs scattered throughout the Department of Labor and the Department of Health, Education and Welfare after the dismantling of the OFFICE OF ECONOMIC OPPORTUNITY. Most of the program grew out of the federal government’s “WAR ON POVERTY” and provided government funds to retrain unemployed workers with obsolete or no job skills. As the escalating war in Vietnam absorbed more of the government’s resources, the Office of Economic Opportunity was dismantled, and responsibility for the retraining programs was scattered to what seemed the most appropriate government agencies. The result, however, was an increasing number of conflicts between agencies seeking funds for the same purposes. Passage of CETA sought to resolve those conflicts by placing all the programs under a single controlling agency.