:Star Ledger;

:Jan 24, 2006;

:New Jersey;

:11

The poor need training that works for them

BY MARY GATTA AND KEVIN P. McCABE Mary Gatta is a researcher at Rutgers University, and Kevin P. McCabe is a former state commissioner of labor and workforce development. Their book, ‘‘Not Just Getting By: The New Era of Flexible Workforce Development,’’ was published in December.



    Imagine you are a high school-educated single mother with two children under 10. You work three days a week as a part-time bookkeeper at your local church and wait tables on weekends at a diner near your apartment. You earn about $15,000 a year and live paycheck to paycheck. A few slow shifts at the diner one week, and you are unable to pay your monthly bills.

    You know you need skills training to get a higher-paying job, but you do not know when you will fit classes into your day or how you will pay for them. Locating affordable child care at odd hours proves daunting. In addition, you may be among the one-third of families earning $15,000 or less that do not own a car, making getting to class a challenge. In today’s economy, full-time work does not guarantee a living wage. Some 9 million working families in the United States are trying to survive on jobs that do not pay enough to support their families or offer health benefits, pensions or career advancement. Research is clear that education and skills training would increase these workers’ economic self-sufficiency. Yet today’s antiquated training programs do not work for them for two reasons: They do not train workers in the computer skills that employers need, and they are not accessible to many of the working poor who want to improve their skills.

    The United States ignores this problem at its peril. As international competition intensifies and technological advances drive our labor market, workforce training and skills development must become America’s No. 1 economic development policy priority, as they are for emerging rivals India and China.

    We need integrated workforce development that targets the working poor. It won’t work to simply allocate funding to education and then expect marginalized populations to take advantage of it. The reality of their lives — child care, elder care, irregular work hours, transportation barriers —makes it difficult to access education in traditional classrooms. Instead we must develop innovative programs that accommodate the work, family and education needs of workers.

    Online skills training programs address these challenges. For employers, they provide a pool of workers trained in entry-level computer skills. And they deliver training to the working poor in a format that is accessible to them at home, any time of the day or night.

    New Jersey and other states are in the forefront in using technology to deliver skills training by providing computers, Internet accesses and online courses at home to low-wage workers. The results are promising: 92 percent of 128 participants completed a New Jersey pilot program in 2002. Participants reported an average annual wage increase of 14 percent, and several of them went on to college. Most important, all the participants emphatically reported that they would not have been able to complete a training program if it were not available at home and 24/7.

    In New Jersey, the program costs about $3,000 per client, including the computer, software, Internet and support. Those figures would apparently hold — more or less — for an expanded program, although bulk buying might provide some discounts in computers or the software.

    Since 2002, the program has expanded in New Jersey, and several additional states —Maine, Massachusetts, Delaware, Illinois, Alabama, Texas and Arizona — are establishing online training programs with federal and state labor department funding. Another dozen states are considering such programs.

    Policy officials cannot rely on economic growth to raise workers out of poverty or to strengthen the labor force. Proactive steps are needed to supply workers who can meet the demands of high-wage, high-growth industries. To best accomplish this, public officials must ensure that workforce training is delivered in a flexible format.

    The workers who will succeed are those who will meet the skill needs of employers, and the employers and industries that will grow state and national economies are the ones that have access to the best trained workers.