Not just a coastal problem

South Central region looks for long-term workforce solution

By Angelle Bergeron

The hurricane-ravaged Gulf Coast region continues to drain the workforce from other parts of the country, and it's also calling attention to a need for a more comprehensive approach to workforce development.

Although the labor drain throughout the South Central states hasn't reached the epic proportions of the hurricane-affected areas, the area's industry experts are joining forces to look beyond borders and search for regional, industry wide approaches to alleviate their workforce woes.

Growth in the industry, fewer people entering the workforce and retiring baby boomers have led to predictions of a shortfall of as many as 250,000 craftspeople over the next decade.

The labor shortage, even at premium wages, is "not just a problem that is generic to the coast," says C. J. "Buddy" Edens, president of Mississippi Associated Builders and Contractors in Jackson. "It's a statewide problem. Wages continue to go up as contractors compete for crafts."

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The situation is the same in Alabama, where an estimated 2,500 workers are needed to complete current projects in the state, says Henry Hagood, president of the Alabama Associated General Contractors in Birmingham.

"If we had another 2,500 people in our industry, we would be able to handle most of the work," he says.

The shortages are in all crafts across the board. Combine that with the ongoing rebuild on the Gulf Coast and the school construction in the Birmingham area, and "I don't know where they (the workers) will come from," Hagood says.

Alabama's workforce needs may be greater than in Tennessee and Arkansas, but the problem will soon be everyone's.

"The Gulf South and the whole region have been built largely on the fact that we have cheap land and cheap labor," says Dr. Tim Alford, director of the Alabama Office of Workforce Development. "Globally, that is no longer viable because cheaper unskilled and skilled labor is available from other parts of the world. In order to compete, we must have workers with higher skills."

Training programs implemented by various private companies and industry associations have abounded for years, but they still haven't managed to produce the necessary numbers. Even though hurricanes Katrina and Rita unleashed a fresh flow of federal funding for workforce development, programs like the Gulf Coast Workforce Development Initiative is falling behind on its commitment to deliver 20,000 new entries to the industry by 2009.

Organizers of the Gulf Rebuild: Education, Advancement and Training campaign are still optimistic, says Tim Horst, program manager. However, plans to duplicate the GREAT program in Houston and Alabama have been pushed back to later this year.

"This is something that has merit nationwide, but we first have to prove our ability to train and achieve our goals on the Gulf Coast," Horst says.

"There is no short-term fix," says Susan Wasley, director of corporate communications for BE&K Inc. of Birmingham.

"This is part of the bigger problems of fewer people interested in careers in construction. The reality is that construction isn't a lifestyle that people are interested in."

In order to successfully combat the problem, the industry must take a comprehensive look at what caused the shortage, as well as how to attract, train and retrain, Wasley says.

"People need to know there are good, safe, well-paying jobs in construction," she adds. "They've got to know there are not just jobs but wonderful careers, and we've got to start working on that in the seventh, eighth and ninth grades with a commitment to education."

Eddie Rispone, chairman of the Louisiana Craft Workforce Development Board, agrees that the labor shortage has been looming on the horizon for years, but the industry hasn't effectively addressed the problem.

"If we don't get a large, comprehensive plan in place, we can't succeed," he says. To address Louisiana's workforce shortage, the board assembled a plan that includes image perception, education, recruitment, training and retention. Rispone says the recommendations have been well-received by the national Construction Users Round Table, Associated General Contractors and numerous user groups who herald the recommendations as a viable blueprint for other states, other industries and workforce development nationwide.

LCWDB's efforts coincide with the state's recent embrace of the nationally growing concept of sector strategies, says Pete Darling, employer liaison with the Louisiana Workforce Commission.

"Sector strategies differ from traditional employment and training programs in that they target specific industries or sectors within specific regions or labor markets to address the needs of employers and workers," he says.

Sector strategies are characterized by four key elements: They must be collaborative, targeted to a specific industry, include a job-training/skills component and represent systemic change.

More states are looking at sector strategies that embrace regional markets, rather than trying to look at workforce issues as being delineated by political boundaries. Emily Stover DeRocco, assistant secretary of the U.S. Department of Labor, addressed that topic at the North Alabama/South Central Tennessee Workforce Innovation in Regional Economic Development workforce summit in January.

"WIRED is about trying to eliminate state lines and look at economic development from a more regional aspect," says Susan Cowden, administrator of the Tennessee Employment and Workforce Development Division of the Department of Labor.

The combination of growth and historic lows in unemployment has every industry sector competing with construction to get more workers in the pipeline, says Alford, the Alabama Office of Workforce Development director.

"We need to plan our workforce needs around the needs of the regional economy," he adds. "We're trying to bring groups together on a regional basis to look at labor market information, employment dynamics and surveys about growth predictions. We're trying to pinpoint which industries are growing or declining, what jobs are within those areas and what future supply and demand will be."

This sort of sector-based, regional, economic approach is a fairly recent phenomenon for workforce development people, Alford says.

"Part of it is the fact that you don't have this big pool of unemployed individuals that you can cherry pick from," he says. "Rather than do an isolated parachute drop on a program, we thought it would be better to bring everyone together."