Putting Maine workers first
Recently, the term “workforce development” has been tossed around in relation to Maine’s economic development. It is a new word for an old thing, training people for jobs that are in demand. However, this term has also come to mean more than just training an unemployed person for a new job. Workforce development means looking long term, and creating an entire worker training system that uses all of our assets — our community colleges, our career and technical education programs, our university systems to name just a few — and connects them to our business community in a way that moves our economy forward.
A strong workforce development system will improve Maine’s business climate by designing and implementing strategies that help Mainers enter the workforce as well as advance their careers and grow business capacity through increased skills. The successful and continuous development of our workforce through effective training benefits our businesses and our entire state. The more highly skilled our workforce, the more we attract new businesses and diversify our economy.
Our current workforce development system’s structure has not been advancing our economy. A large part of the system’s structure is financed with federal training dollars through a system setup in 1998 under the Workforce Investment Act (WIA). This system is overly bureaucratic and inflexible. It has not been able to adapt quickly to the rapid changes in our economy. It breaks the state into four regions that do not reflect the economic differences of different parts of the state, and this puts our citizens at a disadvantage when it comes to training program development.
Governor LePage, while conducting Job Creation Workshops across the State during his first year in office, heard one consistent message from employers in all locations — “They have jobs, but cannot find the qualified applicants with the necessary skills.” Upon further investigation, he found that less than 20 percent of Workforce Investment Act funding ($10 million) was being spent on training for in-demand jobs. He demanded that the system make real changes that help Maine’s people get better jobs.
The board in state government tasked with laying out our workforce development strategy is the State Workforce Investment Board (the “SWIB”). Every five years, they propose a plan that must be approved by the U.S. Department of Labor. As Maine’s economic recovery has lagged coming out of the last recession, we have taken a hard look at our workforce development system in an effort to make significant improvements in outcomes — the numbers of workers trained for jobs-in-demand — and to direct the most money possible to that training.
Our goals are to get more people back to work in good jobs and to help businesses find workers who will help grow their business. We have determined that Maine needs to make structural changes in the ways we invest our workforce dollars. Too much money has been spent on overhead and non-job-specific training.
To that end, the plan the SWIB has proposed takes an integrated approach to addressing industry skill gaps. We will align education and economic and workforce development resources and address the employment needs of varied populations. We want to create advantageous employment opportunities for all Mainers, including individuals with disabilities, young people, veterans and laid-off workers.
We also need to increase in the number of individuals earning post-secondary credentials—not necessarily a college degree, but technical education, apprenticeships, industry-specific community college coursework, and certifications to address the skills gap in our labor force.
Workers need to be able to see career ladders within industry sectors, so that they know that they have future opportunity for promotions.
The plan will increase the number of individuals who will receive training, expand business and community input to the system, increase consistency of statewide services to ensure that every citizen has equal access to programs and training, and increase coordination with local economic development agencies and trade associations to ensure that the training system is responsive to economic conditions and industry changes.
This new plan is available for public comment. If you are a worker who would like to train for a better job, or a business that needs to hire skilled people, or “merely” a taxpayer interested in seeing a better return on your investment, we ask you to review the plan and provide public comment. The plan is available at www.maine.gov/swib/wia_plan.html. We’ve also posted a short video that describes the changes we need to make at www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjl1sFdK8No. We value your feedback.
Jeanne Shorey-Paquette is Maine’s Commissioner of Labor. She brings with her more than 20 years’ experience in human resources and workforce development. She served for the past year as deputy commissioner of the Department of Labor.