Testimony of Michael Mulgrew before the Council Civil Service and Labor Committee on Pathways to Trade Professions: Oct.30, 2007

Oct 30, 2007 4:19 PM

 I want to echo what President Weingarten said about how much on point Comptroller Thompson was in his remarks. It’s also fitting that he gave his talk to business leaders at an Association for a Better New York breakfast.  He told some of the city’s top employers that “A competitive city is a skilled city. A skilled city is a city that works. A city that works is a city of hope.”

To achieve all that, we need to nurture and expand a skilled workforce. The business community knows that. So do we in the labor movement. So do political leaders and educators. But at this time there are 200,000 young men and women between the ages of 16 and 24 with no discernable skills. In addition, there are many more working poor in New York, even as we have skilled-worker shortages in almost every major industry in New York City.

Meanwhile employers say they can’t get the help they need.   

I hear it all the time from employers. Even The New York Times (Oct 24) reported on it. The paper quoted Automotive HS Principal Melissa  Silberman as saying that once her students have the skills:

“There are jobs out there waiting for these kids. There is a real need for mechanics. A lot of baby boomers who became mechanics are retiring, and there are not a lot of people filling those spots. It’s not something you can outsource to some other country. I tell the kids, ‘People can’t call Lexus and say, ‘Can you troubleshoot my car for me over the phone?’”

Such a workforce requires regular training and skills upgrading. To a great degree, the city schools’ Career and Technical Education programs do provide that. They are the only entity inside the school system addressing the problem. Over the last seven years, CTE has proven to be successful. Students enrolled in CTE sequences graduate at an 18 percent higher rate than the non-CTE population. However, during the same period, the number of students enrolling in CTE declined.

The UFT believes that the CTE sequences in New York City need to be expanded and aligned with the workforce needs of the city.

Just as the comptroller outlines, we want more funding for CTE, funding that reflects actual costs.

We want to see more public-private partnerships developed.

We want academic intervention programs expanded for CTE-enrolled students.

We want CTE components added to the new DOE progress reports.

We want all students to have access to career development opportunities.

I agree with the Center for an Urban Future researcher David Fisher, who found in his workforce study “Work in Progress,” that unlike the practices of the previous administration, “issues of workforce development command the attention of the mayor and top city leaders.”

So far, so good.  

What Fisher faults the Bloomberg administration for, and I agree, is a glaring  “absence of coordination, [which] has meant overlap and duplication of some services, while other major needs have gone practically unaddressed.”

There is a lack of communication in the workforce-development community. Two years ago the DOE opened a construction school in Queens. That was a good move, since it marked the school system’s acknowledgment of a severe shortage of skilled workers in the city’s construction industry.  Because up until then the DOE was downsizing and closing programs, based on the assumption that there was no need for additional workers. But there’s still a disconnect of communication and coordination between the industry’s needs, the workforce development community and the school system. That disconnect  needs to end.

There are more than 200 entities involved in worker training in the New York area, and most do excellent work. But in too many cases they do that work in isolation. There is no formal system for collaborating and sharing information and resources. The UFT is working with the Cornell University’s School of  Industrial and Labor Relations just to map out the existing programs—forget about their working together better.

Other states are doing something about funding and coordination. In California, state voters approved a $10.4 billion school construction bond last year. The bond contained $500 million for career tech facilities. In addition, a bill wending its way through the California legislature would simplify credentialing for career tech teachers, eliminate the requirement that their voc.ed teachers have a bachelor’s degree, provide more flexibility in what they can teach, and require every high school student to take at least two career tech courses.

Let me lay out things the Council should consider adopting.

We’d like you to

·        Support discrete funding in each school budget that guarantees shop upgrades and adequate supplies and material;

·        Keep after the DOE to ensure that career and technical education students are allowed adequate time in the school schedule to meet the requirements of their certified programs;

·        Advocate that the schools running CTE sequences receive credit in the DOE Progress Report;

·        Use the Council’s bully pulpit to ensure that the city emphasizes the hiring of qualified teachers in its recruitment efforts;

·        Envision the schools not just as training grounds for emerging workers but as centers for adult retooling and training, too;

·        Help the schools and industry to implement mechanisms that share information on workforce needs.

·        Help create mechanisms for partnerships to be formed at the school level and create incentives for principals to prize partnerships

·        Ensure that when a business does commit resources to a program , the program isn’t cut back, as was the case when Bushwick HS received a full-scale, state-of-the-art printing press and a major grant from XEROX to run a graphic arts program, only for XEROX to be told the school and the program would be closing.

Bottom line:

We need to streamline the training and employment services system and  make it transparent.

We need to identify employers’ labor market needs, then direct services to meeting that demand.

We need to end the disconnect, where little or no coordination goes on, between  public and private agencies that provide workforce services.

We need a system that both focuses on training while being sensitive to the types of jobs companies need to fill or the jobs they anticipate creating.

Most important, we want career-track employment that pays a living wage,

We can do this. We can save young people from being economically disenfranchised by creating a system that uniformly teaches skill sets that business needs. Do this and it’s all win-win. And how often do policy makers and legislators and union leaders and business people find themselves in a win-win situation?

Thank you.