Workforce Growth a Priority for Congressman
By Ken St. Onge
WASHINGTON, Oct. 8 – Echoing concerns of regional planners in Northeastern Massachusetts, national lawmakers and industry trade groups at a “High-Tech Summit” here Wednesday said that plans to promote economic growth in the high technology sector must include educating the workforce in math and science and reducing healthcare costs.
“It is essential for us if we are going to be competitive,” said House minority leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Cal.) addressing the Capitol Hill summit sponsored by the Information Technology Industry Council, an industry trade group. “It’s about realizing our priorities.”
Rep. Marty Meehan, D-Mass., in an interview Friday, agreed with Pelosi’s statements. “Any strategy to lift wages and create new jobs has to include investing in technology and the skills and long-term potential of our workforce,” he said.
Meehan added that, in the valley, community colleges are a logical place for workforce training to occur. Northern Essex Community College has a history of working with local companies to create technical training programs for employees.
“I think we’re building a structure between the vocational and technical high schools, colleges and universities,” said Michael Pelletier, chairman of the computer technology and engineering department at the college.
Many students, he said, transfer to four-year colleges with engineering programs.
Pelletier said the University of Massachusetts at Lowell and Merrimack College both offer scholarships for promising students from the community college, which is one of the few in New England offering a program in biomedical electronics.
Developing a skilled workforce, as well as reducing health care costs were among the top priorities identified by John Chambers, CEO of Cisco Systems, in a presentation during the summit.
He touted the results of a Cisco-sponsored study that estimated health care costs could be reduced by as much as 25 percent through increased use of information technology, including greater networking of electronic medical records, computerized physician ordering and remotely monitored specialty care.
Chambers outlined a number of the steps his own company has undertaken such as the Cisco Networking Academy Program, a partnership with high schools, technical colleges, universities and community groups that trains students in information technology. Since the program was introduced in 1997 it has trained more than 260,000 students worldwide, he said.
“One of our top priorities is to prepare children and our workforce for high technology jobs and that means promoting science and math in K-12 and higher education,” said Shannon Feaster of the Information Technology Industry Council. “It also means creating and maintaining growth and jobs by enacting a human capital investment tax credit to help displaced workers find better jobs.”
The human capital investment tax credit would offset the cost of hiring and re-training workers. Supporters argue that the tax credit would provide incentives for employers to look first at displaced American workers with outdated skill sets.
Meehan co-sponsored the Jobs and Growth Reconciliation Act, a bill introduced in May 2003 that would have created a similar tax credit. He also said he favors legislation that rewards companies for retraining and creating domestic jobs and penalizes those who outsource abroad.
Partnerships between public and private companies have fared well in the Merrimack Valley. In 2001, a grant from the U.S. Department of Labor allowed Lucent and Northern Essex Community College to work together to train several hundred employees in electronic testing, said Milton Taylor, a Lucent employee who at the time was an executive board member of the union at Lucent and who helped administer the grant.
Following the 2001 layoffs of 4,000 Lucent employees from the North Andover plant, those partnerships with colleges and job training centers allowed former employees the chance to move into other careers such as medical device repair – a potential high growth industry in the region, said Shaw Rosen, executive director of the Merrimack Valley Workforce Investment Board.
The board advises regional planners on which industries would prosper when paired with the area’s workforce. The agency’s last recommendation, in October 2003, identified communications and medical instruments and supplies manufacturing (among others) as emerging industries in the region. Rosen said she doesn’t anticipate the 2004 report – expected by late October – to reach substantially different conclusions.
Workforce training and healthcare costs also were identified as major priorities for the valley by Gov. Mitt Romney’s Northeast Regional Competitive Council, according to council member Gaylord Burke. The council met Tuesday to review recommendations it will present to the governor.
