National Skills Summit
Skills Summit Highlights
Statement from
Lea Soupata, Sr. Vice
President Human Resources, UPS
UPS is attempting to address its skills shortages largely through collaboration and partnerships with local communities. We have had the opportunity to work with the city of Louisville, KY to fill thousands of positions. We have a terrific relationship with the local educational organizations. The universities, the union and the community have helped us as well. Dormitories have been built for our workers at Metropolitan College. A lot of our people work at night so the College changed its hours to complement our workers' schedules.
The collaboration between industry, union, government and organizations such as STRIVE have really helped us to find and train new employees. We have hired more than 20,000 new employees since 1998, including Welfare to Work participants. If we don't work together collaboratively, we are going to miss out on a really good opportunity to hire new workers within our society. We have had mayors involved and made the local connections necessary to find and hire these new workers. Our Earn and Learn program, a component of our tuition assistance program, allows the company to forgive (pay) part of a worker's college loan depending upon how long the employee continues to work for UPS. Needless to say, we have had no problem recruiting for this opportunity.
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