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(Article reproduced by permission of Texas A&M
University/University Relations Office.)
COLLEGE STATION - U.S. Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao said Friday that
it is crucial to link workers, skills and jobs together if the United States is
to have a competitive workforce in the 21st century.
“We’ve got to close the skills gap if we are to thrive and
prosper as a nation,” Chao, the nation’s 24th labor secretary, said
during a Bank of America Program on Volunteerism speech hosted by the George
Bush Presidential Library Foundation at Texas A&M University.
“The high tech revolution has transformed the workplace and
globalized our economy,” Chao added. “More and more, people work away
from the office, connected by nothing more than a laptop or a cell phone. The
average person will change jobs nine times over the course of his or her
career.”
Chao, the first Asian-American woman ever appointed to a presidential
cabinet post, said the Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics
projects there will be more significant job openings in various sectors, such
as nursing, in the next few years. “There will be more than one million
job openings for nurses by the year 2010, but yet health care companies are
having a difficult time finding workers qualified for these jobs today,”
she explained. “That’s why the Labor Department is partnering with
private companies to create scholarships and other opportunities to train new
health care workers.”
Chao said large, complex organizations are slow to change and this has
created a big problem in the workplace over the past decade.
She said it is crucial that dislocated workers be trained with real-life
skills; that performance measurement standards should net real-world results;
and that collaborative programs be developed with local community groups and
colleges to produce qualified workers. “The president of Cisco Systems,
John Chambers, recently noted that 500,000 technology jobs in the U.S. will go
unfilled next year due to a lack of qualified workers,” Chao added.
Responding to a question from the audience about vocational training in high
schools, Chao said such training has probably been sorely neglected.
“Not everyone wants to go to college, and not everyone should go
to college,” Chao said. “We should encourage vocational programs.
There are a number of professions, such as plumbers and auto mechanics, that
pay very nice salaries.”
Regarding the West Coast dock workers work stoppage, Chao said the
contract for more than 10,000 longshoreman expired in May and negotiations for
a new contract fell apart about a month ago. Since then, the stoppage has cost
about $1 billion per day in wages and revenue, and thousands of farmers and
parts suppliers have been affected. “We have federal mediators trying to
work out a solution,” Chao said. “It is interesting to note that
today, only 9 percent of the workforce is unionized.”
Following her speech, a panel discussion of business leaders discussed
volunteerism in the workforce. They included William Lorenz of Bank of America;
Patricia Clapp of the Greater Dallas Chamber of Commerce; Ann Minnis of the
Texas Instruments Foundation; and Justin Yancy of the Governor’s Business
Council. Jane Close Conoley, dean of the College of Education at Texas A&M,
served as moderator.
Lorenz said his company, Bank of America, encourages its associates to
spend two hours a week “at schools to do volunteer work, and we pay for
it. The critical areas of volunteerism are time, talent and money and all of us
need to make sure we are using those areas in the best ways possible.”
Clapp said the successful Texas Scholars Program brings local business
men and women into school classrooms and provides valuable mentor and role
model qualities. “They urge students to stay in school and they show
students how to create real budgets, and then compare those budgets to a
minimum wage,” she said. “It is a real eye opener for students.”
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