H. Martin Lancaster, President
North Carolina Community College System
Sponsored by North Carolina Rural Center
Raleigh, North Carolina
September 2, 2004
(Panel includes President Lancaster; Harry Payne of the Employment Security Commission and Roger Shackleford of the North Carolina Department of Commerce. Each responded to questions submitted in advance.)
WHAT ARE WAYS YOUR AGENCY AND OTHER ORGANIZATIONS HAVE ADDRESSED THE NEEDS OF DISLOCATED WORKERS IN THE LAST SEVERAL YEARS?
North Carolina’s Community Colleges are about jobs: We prepare people for good jobs. We help them upgrade their skills so they can keep the jobs they have and look for better ones. We help attract and CREATE new jobs through services to business and industry and small business development We help KEEP the good jobs we have here with services to existing industries We retrain people out of work for jobs where there is demand.
State and local community college staff serve on the Rapid Response Teams that help communities deal with layoffs and closures. Our people serve on both planning and implementation teams.
The core services that our community colleges provide on a regular basis for dislocated and underemployed workers include:
- Student Services, including counseling and financial aid;
- Assessment to determine the mastery of literacy, basic academic skills and work-related skills
- Training and educational programs, including short courses and degrees, suited to student goals and available jobs.
- Adult Basic Skills including literacy in reading, writing and computation; English as a second language; high school equivalency and GED.
- Job Readiness Skills offered through the Human Resources Development (HRD) program – interviewing, presentation, work culture, and the other non-technical parts of getting and keeping a job.
- Partnership in Job-Link System in North Carolina to place students in jobs
- Training in entrepreneurship through the Small Business Centers located on every community college, plus innovative partnerships such as Project New Opportunities for Workers (NOW) in conjunction with the NC Rural Economic Development Center, NC REAL, NC Department of Commerce, NC Employment Security Commission, local Workforce Development Boards and others,
You’ll hear examples of how individual colleges are putting these services to work in rural communities this afternoon from Dr. Stephanie Deese and Dr. Randy Whitfield. Here’s a small sample. drawn from the Annual Report of our Economic and Workforce Development Division.
South Piedmont Community College serves Anson and Union Counties. Pennsylvania House Furniture shut down there last year. Among the hundreds of people thrown out of work were three women who had more than 50 years in the plant among them. One of them was Sandra Yost, who put in 15 years with the company.
"I always joked they would have to push me out in a wheelchair," she told a newspaper reporter "They got to me before that happened." In most places, Ms. Yost and her colleagues said they probably would have settled for something that offered far less than they had, and was less fulfilling. Fortunately, Union County isn't most places thanks to the efforts of South Piedmont Community College's Human Resource Development program. The aim of the program is to give the unemployed the help they need in finding a new job or career. For those pursuing a career change, the school looks at three things: interest testing to see where a person may fit in, an evaluation of what skills crossover into other lines of work, and career readiness - a prep course that introduces people to a career field and gives them some basic skills. Ms. Yost and her friends now have hope, as they continue their studies – and a solid start on the future.
Here’s an example about creating jobs. The Small Business Center at Asheville Buncombe Technical Community College took part in the TVA study several years ago to determine what types of businesses were needed in Madison County. When Andrew Ishee came to the Small Business Center to talk about his business idea, he was told a dry cleaning business was at the top of the "needed" businesses list and began the process of developing a business plan and acquiring SBA financing for Madison Dry Cleaners. Today, business is booming at the cleaners and they’ve added tuxedo rentals to accommodate the needs of the Mars Hill College students in the area.
Here’s an example from the agricultural east: "If you build it, they will come" is an often-quoted phrase from the movie Field of Dreams. And, "if you grow it, they will buy it" was the vision behind the 5th Annual Area Alternative Crops School hosted by Southeastern Community College Small Business Center and North Carolina Cooperative Extension Service. The all-day school was designed to help farmers discover new ways to use their land and to market their crops. Participants learned that restaurants and caterers get excited about fresh, local grown crops . . . and they’re willing to pay premium prices because freshness means high quality and great taste. According to one small herb farm owner, "being a smaller farm has its’ advantages, we’re very flexible and can zero in on the markets that want what we grow."
You know I can’t discuss layoffs without talking about Pillowtex. Cabarrus, the home county of Pillowtex, is not rural, but Rockingham County certainly is…and that’s home ground for the part of Pillowtex that used to be Fieldcrest…just as shocked by the layoffs as urban counterparts to the south.
Of course, the full resources of all the community colleges in all counties affected by Pillowtex, bolstered by some emergency federal funds, went into action to find the unemployed, match them with the programs they need and get them on track to new lives.
Also vital, however, is the success of the industrial recruitment efforts, particularly in Rockingham County, since then. With the help of top-quality community college training, Rockingham County has attracted three major industries since the layoffs, with hundreds of potential jobs.
WHAT HAS BEEN CHALLENGING TO YOUR AGENCY AND THE WORKFORCE DEVELOPMENT SYSTEM IN TRYING TO MEET DISLOCATED WORKERS NEEDS?
- Money: Particularly in the wake of the Pillowtex shutdown but in many other areas as well, our colleges have been strapped for cash to hire intake staff and faculty and buy supplies and equipment to meet the sudden surge in demand when many colleges were already full
- Space: The Higher Education Bond of 2000 pumped a lot of capital money into the system. Those projects are just coming on line – and those projects were designed for enrollments that did NOT include the sudden need to accommodate thousands of laid-off workers.
- Flexibility: Emergency response requires speed and flexibility in finding and spending money; designing and delivering instruction; and providing financial aid. Community colleges and our local, state and federal partners have had to find new ways to approach problems, in order to solve them.
- Effective liaison with federal agencies: This has been a very important and so far very positive aspect of our response. As policy and funding opportunities shift in Washington, our community colleges must be able to adapt and to persist in seeking help to get the job done
WHAT KINDS OF PARTNERSHIPS HAS YOUR AGENCY/NETWORK OF AGENCIES FORMED TO ADDRESS RURAL DISLOCATED WORKER’S NEEDS?
Examples I gave earlier are all about partnerships. A few other examples are as follows:
- Project Health assists dislocated workers with additional job and academic skills via the HRD Plus approach and Capacity Building for the Allied Health and Health Care fields, where we already have acute shortages and the promise of strong future demand. Our partners are the NC Department of Commerce Division of Education and Training, the North Carolina Healthcare Commission, and the US Department of Labor)
- Career Start assists those on Food Stamps to get additional training that will lead to more marketable skills applied to earning greater wages/salaries that help remove them from assistance (Our partners here are the NC Division of Social Services and the Employment Security Commission)
FROM YOUR PERSPECTIVE, WHAT ARE THE LARGEST OR MOST URGENT UNMET NEEDS OF DISLOCATED WORKERS IN RURAL AREAS?
- Jobs. Jobs with futures. That’s so obvious that it’s often forgotten. That’s why we’re working so hard with all our partners to build new industrial sectors, like biotechnology and biomanufacturing; to support new crops and agricultural products, like grapes and wine; and to create new businesses
- Basic Literacy Skills: You saw in the earlier slides the stark reality of very low educational levels among many of our rural manufacturing workers. Add to that the surge in immigrants whose native language is not English, and you have a huge challenge for educators at every level.
- Student Services capacity at each community college due to demand. Dislocated workers need counseling, testing, financial aid – all of those services that don’t show up as "instruction" but are vital to getting them into the classroom and helping them succeed.
- Portable Workforce Readiness Credentials, such as manufacturing certifications and licenses, that define just what potential employees can do and how their skills transfer from one set of occupations to another.
WHAT OPPORTUNITIES EXIST TO EFFECTIVELY ADDRESS THE NEEDS OF RURAL DISLOCATED WORKERS? ARE THERE NEW OPPORTUNITIES (AS WELL AS CHALLENGES) IN THE ECONOMY FOR RURAL WORKERS?
This most recent series of economic shocks must be a wake-up call. Education matters. Skills training matters. No one can expect to make a decent living now and in the future without the ability to read, write, solve problems and function in the workplace. We talk about the need for a higher college going rate. Absolutely. Let’s also make the commitment to attack our state’s appalling ILLITERACY rate and the number of young people dropping out of school. Let’s make the commitment to educate more teachers and keep them in our rural classrooms, where they can do the most good! I have no doubt that among the laid-off workers are smart men and women who will make great teachers in their home towns– once they earn the credentials. This is our opportunity to end for good the cycle of low-skill, low-wage, high-risk work in North Carolina.We also have the opportunity to help people truly believe in lifelong learning. Nothing stands still. It’s fine to appreciate the good old days and hold onto things we treasure. It’s vital, however, to recognize that change is inevitable. Remember Carol Channing in Hello, Dolly! ? As she struts down the stairs, she sings, "Tomorrow will be brighter than the good old days!" Now’s our chance to make sure of it!
I look forward to your questions. Thanks.
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