After U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal easily won election over the concerns of some opponents who viewed him as an anti-business crusader while state attorney general, the freshman senator has spent the summer tackling his first major initiative on behalf of business ”“ a bill that would allow manufacturers to sock away more savings in investment accounts, as officials see a shift back stateside for some manufacturing jobs.
“We are going to see a level of reindustrialization that we could not have possibly imagined five, 10, 15 years ago,” said Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, speaking at a Torrington forum last month. “There”™s going to be winners and there”™s going to be losers in that competition for those jobs ”¦ We”™re never going to be a low-cost state, let”™s be honest … Precision, highly value-added manufacturing is our sweet spot, but that requires a higher level of training that we”™ve got to kick and jumpstart.”
Hopes for such an expansion were tempered in early August, after the Institute for Supply Management reported a sharp slowdown in new orders nationally, with an index gauging factory output dipping to its lowest level in two years.
U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro crafted the foundation of the bill that Blumenthal introduced this summer in the U.S. Senate, even as the White House announced an Advanced Manufacturing Partnership to invest $500 million in the sector to boost competitiveness.
DeLauro”™s and Blumenthal”™s bills would allow manufacturers to invest up to $500,000 annually in reinvestment accounts held at community banks, with the tax status akin to individual retirement accounts.
Over seven years, Blumenthal estimates, the bills would allow companies to sock away an additional $1 million.
Speaking in New Haven at a barge shipyard, Blumenthal made no promises that the bill would result in an exponential increase in employment, but said it would help.
“We”™re going to create jobs one by one ”“ not in the thousands,” Blumenthal said.
That statement sums up industrial employment in Connecticut over the past year, according to a study by the trade publication Manufacturers”™ News Inc., which publishes an annual state industrial directory. Connecticut lost 600 industrial jobs and some 45 manufacturers between June and a year earlier, a vast improvement from the 7,800 manufacturing jobs MNI reported tracked exiting the state the year before.
Manufacturers”™ News counts nearly 5,608 manufacturers employing 213,000 workers in Connecticut.
Those numbers, of course, do not reflect recent events such as the 160 jobs DRS Technologies Inc. is cutting in Bridgeport as it wraps up a military contract or Unilever”™s plans to close a plant in Clinton that has 185 employees.
Stratford, the home of Sikorsky Aircraft Corp., remains the state”™s top city by industrial employment with about 10,900 manufacturing jobs at the time of MNI”™s survey, up 0.5 percent from the year before.
Perhaps surprisingly, Norwalk ranks ahead of East Hartford, Groton and other industrial centers with about 8,000 jobs, a number that is down 1.5 percent in part due to Beiersdorf shuttering a manufacturing plant. Danbury ranked fifth with more than 7,200 factory jobs.
“The recovery is gaining momentum in Connecticut and across the U.S.,” said Tom Dubin, president of the Evanston, Ill.-based MNI. “The state boasts an educated workforce and its investments in innovative technologies continue to pay off.”
GE CEO Jeff Immelt said the Fairfield-based company would add 6,500 manufacturing jobs in the United States this year, without specifying how many more it would create overseas where it is experiencing faster growth. Just last week GE announced it would create a plant in Mississippi to manufacture high-tech aircraft engine components ”“ while also moving the headquarters of its X-ray unit to China.
Immelt chairs the President”™s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, which among a dozen proposals this summer recommended community colleges address the shortfall of skilled trades and technicians by qualifying candidates and employing them in advanced manufacturing jobs in less than one year. Immelt addressed the proposals in a July speech to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
“GE has experimented with U.S. competitiveness by ”˜insourcing”™ work,” Immelt said. “In software centers in Michigan and Montana, we”™re cost effective versus India. Our appliance manufacturing in Kentucky can out-compete Mexico and China. Our engine manufacturing in Ohio, North Carolina, Mississippi and Pennsylvania is the most cost competitive in the world. We”™ve driven down cycle times. Our workforce is competitive and well trained. And we”™ve invested some substantial resources in manufacturing technology.
“In the business world, we have what we call a ”˜say-do”™ ratio,” he said. “That is a match between rhetoric and action. On American jobs, the public and private sector has a low ”˜say-do”™ ratio.”™”
The question becomes whether a promised legislative session on jobs this fall will pay more than lip service to new approaches to help Connecticut better compete with Northeast states that might vie for high-end manufacturing startups that could emerge or existing companies that might be scouting the region in advance of an expansion.
Connecticut remains competitive on the quality of its manufacturing workforce, Malloy said, though it is in danger of losing ground.
“United Technologies ”¦ (will) show you a $3 million piece of equipment that”™s drilling a $300,000 piece of metal, and the reality is that you”™ve got to have a lot of training to do that, and a lot of that should be available in our community colleges,” Malloy said. “The other thing is we”™ve got to do a better job in some of our vocational schools and making sure that we are training people for what”™s available in Connecticut when they get out. We”™ve got to get more people excited about engineering and math skills.”
The Connecticut Business & Industry Association held a manufacturing workforce summit in June at which CBIA vice president and economist Peter Gioia said Connecticut”™s manufacturing workers are swiftly aging, with companies worried about younger workers having the training to do the high-end work required.
“There”™s a lot of things I think that are important when you talk about the economy and the future in Connecticut,” Gioia said. “Those two things ”“ manufacturing and workforce ”“ I think are about as important as anything we need to focus on going forward in this state.”