A new study demonstrates the potential of long-term training programs on state work forces, even as Gov. Dannel M. Malloy passed on the opportunity to appoint a work-force development expert to lead the Connecticut Department of Labor ”“ at a critical juncture for the state.
In response to its own unemployment crisis spurred by the collapse of the auto industry in the credit crisis, the state of Michigan created an initiative dubbed No Worker Left Behind. The program already boasts some significant achievements, according to a study by the Corporation for a Skilled Workforce and the National Skills Coalition.
Researchers determined that work-force investment boards in Michigan had enrolled nearly three in four program participants in long-term training, compared to just one in four Workforce Investment Act participants enrolled in extended training nationally on average.
What”™s more, 75 percent of those who had completed training had obtained a job or retained their existing position ”“ and of those who found a job, the large majority credited their training to helping them get hired.
For the second year running at a New York City investment conference this month, the chief financial officer of United Technologies Corp. emphasized efforts by Stratford-based Sikorsky Aircraft Corp. to expand in locations outside of Connecticut, due to lower labor costs ”“ a scenario driven in part by dwindling numbers of workers with the needed skills to piece together the company”™s helicopters.
“One of the problems with being an old state is that you are doomed to being an old state, because not too many old people like me have kids,” said Nick Perna, economic adviser for Waterbury-based Webster Financial Corp., speaking last month at a Hartford gathering of the Partnership for Strong Communities. “Whatever growth we get is going to have to be by attracting new people into the state, and we don”™t have a lot of ways of doing it.”
Patrick Flaherty, an economist with the Connecticut Department of Labor, said at the same forum that by delaying the statutory retirement age by one year, Connecticut would in theory add 40,000 people to the work force.
If a short-term fix, convincing older and experienced workers to delay retirement does not address the longer term core problems facing the state.
In appointing Glenn Marshall as the new commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Labor, Malloy chose a man well-versed in apprenticeship training for carpenters ”“ but hardly one with extensive knowledge of building a quality labor force in Connecticut”™s prized industries such as aerospace, finance and life sciences.
Not that Malloy”™s appointment of a labor leader to lead the labor department was an unusual move ”“ for whatever reason, Northeast state governors largely have not appointed work-force development experts to lead their state labor departments.
Last week, Maine”™s governor broke ranks by naming as labor commissioner a university administrator with extensive work-force development experience. But labor commissioners steeped in union experience lead departments in New York, Massachusetts, Vermont and now Connecticut. New Jersey”™s commissioner was a onetime businessman who boasts experience in union negotiations; Rhode Island turned to a former lieutenant governor who ostensibly has extensive knowledge of work-force development, if not the expertise of some who are leading state or federal efforts on that front.
If the Connecticut Department of Labor has not grabbed headlines for innovation in work-force development, there is no shortage of those who have ”“ including Joe Carbone at The Workplace Inc. work-force investment board in Bridgeport, who has pioneered multiple innovative programs to train workers ”“ and has proved an effective fundraiser in securing support from both the federal government and the corporate sector.
The National Skills Coalition has three Connecticut representatives on its leadership council: Steve Bender of the 1199 Training & Upgrading Fund, Alice Pritchard of the Connecticut Women”™s Education and Legal Fund and Gail Coppage of the Connecticut Community College System.
“We have not yet taken full advantage of the population that is here, that has not been trained, that we haven”™t fully invested in,” said Yvette Melendez, vice president of government and community alliances for Hartford Healthcare, speaking at the Partnership for Strong Communities forum.
“There have been some wonderful models that have been put in place in many cities and towns.”
