State falls short on worker education

Jason Stein

Wisconsin's aging work force means looming skilled labor shortages in areas such as health care, construction and manufacturing, said Roberta Gassman, secretary of the state Department of Workforce Development.

To ensure that young workers fill those gaps, parents and students need to know where the shortages are and what jobs would make for a rewarding future.

Businesses, she said, can play a crucial role by working with high school apprenticeship programs that give young people a taste of a given job and industry.

"It's a win-win-win. It helps the economy, it helps the employers and it helps those who will be our future workers," Gassman said.

David J. Ward, president of NorthStar Economics in Madison, a research and consulting firm, also sees a need to guide high school students toward higher education and future jobs.

"I think the pieces are all there. I think everybody's working hard, but I think you need to get a more comprehensive approach," Ward said.

Guidance counselors and teachers should be talking more about what kind of workers are needed in their communities and what those jobs pay, he said.

Business owners should be countering the drumbeat of plant closings and lost blue-collar jobs by inviting students to their companies and explaining that they still need machinery operators, carpenters and electricians, as well as college graduates, he said.

"That's the single biggest challenge facing the private sector. You've got to convince young people that there's a future there" in skilled trades, Ward said.

To help fill the future need for construction workers, labor official Tom Benish said the Northern Wisconsin Regional Council of Carpenters has started work on a $4 million training center in Madison.

The union is stepping up its work in local high schools, developing classes that could be used to train and certify students in job safety, he said.

"Then they've got some knowledge of what they're getting into," said Benish, business representative and organizer for union Local 314.

In February, Gov. Jim Doyle announced $5 million for worker training as part of his proposed two-year budget. The money will cover training costs for businesses that create sizable numbers of jobs, invest in new equipment or provide higher wages.

Marla Gamoran, manager of the Business, Industry and Community Services Department at Madison Area Technical College, said right now there's little state money available to help train workers who already have jobs.

"It is a problem, and a lot of the neighboring states around us provide funding for (existing) worker training and we don't," she said.

A recent two-year, $1.1 million federal training grant to the Workforce Development Board of South Central Wisconsin has been popular, helping to train about 980 employees, mostly through MATC, she said.

"We see that the workplace requires that people be learning all the time," Gamoran said. "It's not what one thinks of as the traditional manufacturing environment where things don't change."

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