Arkansas, next Governor need new model for workforce development

Arkansas has jobs. Arkansas has people who need jobs. Arkansas has too many people who need jobs who can’t do the job.

Those problems were the subject of a daylong Jobs Now workforce summit sponsored by the Arkansas State Chamber of Commerce at the Statehouse Convention Center. According to the chamber, 49% of skilled-trade workers in Arkansas are age 45 and older.

Among the highlights of the event were two panel discussions focused on workforce opinions that included education, government and business leaders. In one discussion, Dr. Glen Fenter, president of Mid-South Community College in West Memphis, said Arkansas’ education bureaucracy has not changed with the evolving global economy.

A partnership must develop between the state’s K-12 public schools and higher education that is based on an economic development strategic plan, he said. Fenter added that the funding processes need to force education providers to prepare students quickly for available jobs. Instead, he said, the model doesn’t reward institutions like his when it does that. In fact, the state has not had an educational plan since 1991, and since 2000 its policies have been a reaction to the Lake View court case.

“If we were starting this over, it wouldn’t look anything like it does today. Because quite frankly when a person can’t get a job coming out of high school, then we need to be changing the high school model,” said Fenter.

Joe Quinn, Walmart’s senior director of public affairs and government relations, said the state’s next governor should make workforce education a signature issue. His employer, the world’s largest retailer, has committed to spend $250 million over 10 years on American-made products and is trying to bring suppliers from China to the United States, he said.

Tori Huggins, lead welding instructor with the Arkansas Pipe Trades Association, offered one example of what that future could look like. A 2007 graduate of Hendrix College, she said she “went the college route, was broke after college, and I fell into welding and absolutely loved it, and it’s changed my life.” Now she instructs students through a state-funded 18-week course that prepares them for a trade where jobs are plentiful.

A common theme in both panel discussions was the need to hold skilled tradesmen like Huggins in higher esteem. A skilled labor path should be presented as a parallel option to college, not a less desirable choice.

“We’re not just a bunch of dumb welders. I know that’s the stereotype,” she said.

Earlier, Bill Hannah, chairman of the board for Nabholz Construction Services; Phil Simon, global technical and product training for the John Deere Company; and Steve Williams, president and CEO of Maverick Transportation, discussed workforce development from an employer perspective.

Like Huggins, they said that skilled trades like construction workers and truck drivers suffer from an image problem. Not enough young people see those jobs as first-choice careers or realize the skills that are involved.

Williams said Maverick is feeling the pinch from the lack of workers willing to enter the industry. Despite salaries that start at $52,000, the firm has 100 trucks parked because of a lack of drivers and could hire 500 if they were available.

Nabholz’s Hannah said the construction industry faces retention problems, particularly as it competes for talent with other states, such as energy-rich Louisiana.

Simon said business and industry must take the lead in working with educational institutions and not wait for leadership from the government.

In the other panel discussion, Chris Massingill, federal co-chairman of the Delta Regional Authority, agreed that business and industry should drive the issue at every level, including K-12.

“We’ve got to ramp up. We don’t have time to continue to have the same conversations about workforce training and development that we’ve been having for 30 years,” he said.