Bridging the Gap

I would say that in the past there's been an antagonism between Private Industry in the government basically because Private Industry felt that nobody was listening nobody cared about their concerns all of us in the private sector looked at Ceda with a ja his eye we felt it was another bureaucratic uh idea that wasn't working uh it was obviously trying to solve the unemployment Problem by putting uh uh the unemployed in a public sector job in the last few years the move has been to cut down on the am of public service employment monies increase it to training people for the private sector if five out of six jobs are in the private sector let's train them for the private sector it seems to me by involving the private sector that c is is coming up with a concept of new management for his program and saying here private sector you manage this program you tell us what you [Music] need the private sector Initiative Program is a program a Ceda program that set up to be to have the fun funds administered by Private Industry by A Private Industry Council to be spent to train people for private sector jobs Private Industry has been projecting their needs for as long as I've been in the labor market and that is a lot of years and the government is now taking advantage of what Private Industry has done it's a very Progressive step maybe the single most important part of that is is that it is brought into a government program uh people that daily face up to business problems realize what those problems are realize the uh the necessity to have a very fast and expeditious solution to uh training uh Manpower problems we found that the some of the major problems in the training programs in the past have been that the program was not directed at the right occupations or even if it were directed towards the right occupation that it was uh technically not centered in where the job content uh should be we were never asked before what was needed the training may have taken place but we were not ask where the needs were where we expected them to be the members of the Private Industry Community know where the jobs are they know what the obstacles are and they know how to overcome them by being given the opportunity through the private IND District Council to identify those obstacles they can more easily fit the training to the jobs there's no doubt about it I am the one that knows our needs our training needs our you know what secure level we need the Manpower requirement what these people need to bring to us so my involvement with the SE program and having the flexibility help design that program has just been a tremendous tremendous help for us I think that uh uh many of us uh perceived originally erroneously that we had to conform to a very stringent regulatory situation and that is not true true under the private Initiative Program uh we have the way of making it very simple you have great flexibility and you can mold the program to suit the circumstances that's one of the interesting things about Ceda has a great deal of flexibility if if a company wants to go to them and say look I I I need 15 employees that can do this that and the other thing they have the opportunity to sit down with the people and structure a training program very specifically for their own needs here in Columbus the pick uh efforts uh are geared to our own labor needs as you could expect Columbus is a city of course which has a heavy population of uh of state employees and uh we have a large number of Banks and a large number of insurance companies and uh considerable industry so our pick programs here have been aimed in those those areas of need we have a excellent set of programs at Starling and at Bell school that relate directly to uh input uh employees and uh clerical jobs that would apply to almost all kind of industry whether it be typing whether it be accountants whether it be bookkeepers we have some very fine programs in uh the medical field for uh medical secretaries so I think we have tried the Private Industry has uh tried very hard to uh encourage the development of programs that fit their needs so when the young people do come out of the uh training programs there is employment opportunity for them the program in Columbus has been very successful but that doesn't necessarily mean that it's successful everywhere else and I think the key to the whole thing is flexibility the program has the flexibility internally to be able to succeed [Music] anywhere Milwaukee is very heavily involved in The Foundry industry I 70 foundaries in the Vader milwauke area and uh they've always had a problem in in securing the skills and the quantities of of employees that they needed so uh we generated um a an interest in The Foundry industry uh to get together collectively uh to help train people we use existing facilities to train we have found there are a lot of excellent training facilities in the community and we utilize their resources whenever possible because as businessmen we don't want to reinvent the wheel we don't want to put more sunk cost into the community what we want to do is utilize what's available as economically as possible the actual training in Milwaukee is uh taken place in the Milwaukee area Technical College and the Milwaukee School of Engineering at the schools we have the specialized uh equipment necessary to teach the different programs for example at uh both Ms so and MATC there's a a Foundry lab where the people can actually make castings uh work with patterns work with sand work with molten metal in The Foundry program the person that's doing the instruction for molders and corn makers is a long-term founder man that's worked in this area most of his life and uh so in that case while he's now in in a full-time teaching position he had a background of full-time industry experience the training was was designed uh to stress uh work ethic attendance reliability because that is the one of the main characteristics you need in order to run a business you need people that are are reliable as many the original Advocates of no involvement in a federal program have changed around now because they recognize what they've received it's been an economic stimulus to Milwaukee we have increased the number of skilled workers in Milwaukee which has to be a stimulus economically to everybody the of any business is to make money and the key to that is not uh uh tying up uh management for things that are not directly business related all of industry has all has held back from joining in many of the programs initiated by the government they were afraid of the paperwork and one of my fears was that it was going to be a big paper mill and that I was almost have to hire a person full time to handle just the paper work that's going to be generated but as I got into this one program I found out you know entirely different I think the one single thing that is causing an employer to come to a federal program to uh to look for a solution to an employment need is looking around them and seeing other employers that have had successes Private Industry Employers in Las Vegas have been able to see results in A needs assessment something that is reaching out to them for the first time in this entire community's existence to find out what they as an employer really need in terms of Manpower and training we find here with our convention and tourism industry we have over 12 to 15 million tourists that come here in any one year that generates a lot of automobile travel and so the need for good automobile mechanics uh is great and so they find uh great opportunities through the Community College through the training programs also you find them in the catering area here most of our hotels have dramatic catering demands placed upon their staffs and we find through the community college and some of the other training programs that we hope will uh be developed to provide these people with greater abilities to service this industry as a business person the bottom line for me is well-trained well motivated productive employees that's my whole responsibility as a director of personnel as someone has indicated you don't uh hire programs you hire people and there are many many folks coming of Ceda who are uh Ceda programs who are geared exactly to giving us the kind of performance that we want by the time someone comes to us from the Ceda program they're they're an efficient employee already they can do their job they know what it is that that they have to do and how to do it we don't make money if we don't have good employees how do you get good employees not everybody is trained to do the jobs that we need them to do well if we have to spend a lot of time and money training employees well that impacts the bottom line of our business training cost itself is uh uh tremendous you know it's been said that it's about 200% of a person's salary over a period of six six months for small companies cannot afford that it would just just sink us that we can't afford to train people if we can uh participate in an efficient Federal program that will cut some of those training needs and provide us with uh good employees that that it makes good sense for us to do that the program is flexible it can be very efficient and the key to that is the involvement of the business person if it isn't being efficient or effective in a given area my guess would be it's because the business person has not gotten involved and there frankly isn't very much excuse for that because this program makes a lot of sense the business can save a lot of costs and it can provide them with good enthusiastic productive employees it takes uh what is a real problem and provides a real solution in the best possible way employers are finally getting an opportunity to determine the best usage for their own tax dollars if you don't take advantage of it you are cheating yourself it's our tax dollars let's do something with it as businessmen let's make it work this program works it's good good it's good for our company it's good for the Eon economy it's good for the country it's it's a it's a beautiful program [Music]