US pushes
retraining to keep people in jobs
NEW YORK - Retraining is the new buzzword in the United States, as
the nation continues to shed jobs in an election year.
The cultivation of marketable skills is a recurrent theme for
President George W. Bush as he works to secure another term in
office.
Congress is reforming myriad federal retraining schemes as local
community colleges - seen as the local workhorses in a national
effort - tie up with businesses to match student skills with market
needs.
The push for training is a sign of the times as companies merge and
announce wholesale layoffs, the Christian Science Monitor
reported.
The migration of jobs, ranging from call centre operations to
computer programming, to lower-cost countries is also a growing
trend.
'The US no longer has a lock on high-tech, white-collar jobs,' said
Mr Craig Barrett, chief executive of Intel, the world's leading
computer chip maker.
Mr James Fusco should know - he worked as a programmer for
AT&T for 13 years before it farmed out much of its data centre
operations to IBM in 1999.
But most of IBM's projects were handed to programmers in India and
Canada and in May 2002, he and his colleagues were laid off, the
New York Times reported.
Last November, Mr Fusco, 50, found a job as a systems administrator
at a small company in New Jersey. With the federal aid and
retraining he is seeking, he said he might switch to another
field.
'A year ago, I would have gone for newer computer skills,' he
explained. 'But I'm not sure that programming is a smart thing to
get back into. It can be done remotely.'
Like Mr Fusco, many Americans
fear that in an information-age economy, all kinds of jobs may be
at risk. About eight million Americans are unemployed, with nearly
two million out of work for six months or
more.
'Increasingly, people are not working for a single industry or in
the same occupation their entire lives,' said Mr Jason Walsh of the
Workforce Alliance, a coalition of groups concerned about training
issues.
'There is a lot of churning, lifelong learning, people losing jobs,
getting new ones, and learning new skills,' the Christian Science
Monitor quoted him as saying.
Mr Bush, in a recent radio address, highlighted Owens Community
College in Toledo, Ohio, which with seven other colleges, has set
up programmes to train students for skilled manufacturing.
'The response has been phenomenal,' said Mr Jim Gilmore, a
coordinator at Owens, of the three- to five-month programmes. He
has 60 students enrolled, with many more showing interest.
The federal money that pays for tuition and books is made use of
differently, depending on local conditions.
Said Mr Gilmore: 'So where manufacturing might be the big thing
where I'm at, in Arizona, health care might be the up-and-coming
thing.'
At the Borough of Manhattan Community College in New York, the
emphasis is on training Americans to replace foreign workers on
H-1B visas, which companies apply for when there are no Americans
qualified for the job.
'We focus on dislocated workers - those who have lost jobs as a
result of 9/11 - and minorities in general,' said Mr Rodney
Alexander, a director at the school.
Straits Time 18 February 2004
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