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ETA News Release: [08/11/2004]
Contact Name: Ed
Frank
Phone Number: (202) 693-4676
Labor Official Addresses the Importance of Training
Hispanic Workers for Careers in Growing Industries
WASHINGTON—U.S. Assistant Secretary of Labor for Employment
and Training Emily Stover DeRocco addressed over 700 human resource and
training executives from the hospitality industry this week. DeRocco addressed
the importance of providing occupational and language skills training to the
Hispanic workforce for careers in growth sectors during the annual
Multicultural Foodservice & Hospitality Alliance conference in the
nation’s capital.
Hospitality industry leaders -- presidents, CEO’s and vice
presidents -- were on hand to hear DeRocco’s remarks about ongoing efforts
at the Department of Labor to meet the employment needs of growing industries
under the President’s High Growth Job Training Initiative and the Hispanic
Worker Initiative.
The Hispanic Worker Initiative and the President’s High Growth Job
Training Initiative encourage collaboration between employers, educators and
the public workforce investment system to target worker training to meet the
needs of business and provide workers with the skills to obtain jobs and build
successful careers in growing industries.
The Hispanic Worker
Initiative is focused on helping Hispanic Americans take advantage of
job opportunities in high growth sectors of the economy such as hospitality,
health care, service and construction. These growth sectors of the economy
offer ample opportunity for employment and career advancement.
The President’s High
Growth Job Training Initiative is a strategic effort to better prepare
workers to take advantage of new job opportunities in high growth sectors of
the American economy. Through executive forums with leaders of expanding
industries, critical workforce gaps and issues are identified. Solutions are
then created in cooperation with employers, educational institutions and the
public workforce system.
For more information on the Department of Labor’s employment and
training programs, please visit www.doleta.gov.
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Remarks of Emily Stover DeRocco Assistant Secretary of
Labor for Employment and Training
To the Multi-Cultural Food Service and
Hospitality Alliance
Tuesday August 10, 2004
Washington, D.C.
Thank you, Dave. Congressman Diaz-Balart, it’s a pleasure and an
honor to share the stage with you. The Administration and the Labor Department
share your concerns about training the Hispanic members of our workforce. Our
country cannot afford to leave any worker behind.
Figures just released on Friday show that our economy is continuing to
improve. After 11 consecutive months of growth, more than 1.5 million new jobs
have been created. The unemployment rate is now down to 5.5%, the lowest it has
been in almost three years.
This recovery has been broad based too, as businesses from all sectors
of the economy have met the challenges that we all faced over the last several
years and are now hiring more workers again. One sector that has been
particularly strong on recovery is your industry, hospitality.
During that same 11-month period, you have been responsible for over
220,000 of those new jobs or nearly 15%. And that’s not all, by 2012, BLS
projects over 1.6 million new jobs in the hospitality industry. Each of you has
a major challenge ahead to find, recruit, and train these new workers.
The Bush Administration and the Department of Labor recognize the task
that you face and are marshalling our resources to help you meet that
challenge. Each year, the Federal government spends over $23 billion on
programs to prepare our nation’s workforce. The majority of these funds,
over $15 billion are spent on something called the Workforce Investment
System.
As the Assistant Secretary for Employment and Training, I oversee this
system and the $11 billion annual contribution that the Department of Labor
makes. Our services are delivered through a nationwide network of 3500 One Stop
Career Centers found in communities all across the country. You probably know
them better as the old unemployment offices.
Unfortunately, for too long, that is exactly what these offices were.
They were built on a social services model. Workers would file for unemployment
compensation and receive services with little knowledge of or regard for the
job market that they would have to reenter. The process of helping someone was
more important than the results of that assistance.
No longer. Today, we are moving towards a new kind of system; one that
is both aligned with, and an integral part of a community’s economic
development strategy. Individuals who receive training will know that there is
a good job with good pay and good career opportunities available to them when
they complete their coursework. Through this new approach, companies will
benefit from a regular supply of skilled labor and workers will benefit as new
career pathways are opened up to them.
The Administration and some members of Congress are working through the
statutory, regulatory, and budgetary processes to make this new system a
reality. But, as I’m sure all of you are aware, Washington was not
designed to run quickly or efficiently. So, to demonstrate this important
change in workforce development strategy and to prepare the system for the
coming changes, President Bush created the High Growth Job Training
Initiative.
As the lead agency on the President’s High Growth Job Training
Initiative, the Employment & Training Administration started by focusing on
a dozen key industries, including hospitality, that are projected to add many
new jobs or experience significant workforce challenges, including,
transforming in the skills required of workers in those jobs.
Then, through economic and news analysis, our staff learned as much as
they could about the state of each industry. How big is it? How many different
sectors does it have? Who are its major players?
In a series of Executive Forums I joined a small group of industry
executives to discuss the specific challenges that they face in recruiting and
maintaining a skilled workforce. This year, I have conducted two such forums
with the Hospitality industry, one at the beginning of the year with the
National Restaurant Association and the other just a week ago with the American
Hotel and Lodging Association. We learned that both major sectors of your
industry are facing similar challenges, including:
- Identifying and implementing solutions to workplace diversity issues
and facilitating English as the primary language in the workplace
- Retention
- Creating industry-standard training and career pathways
- Promoting positive images of the hospitality industry
The next step for us is to meet with the human resource professionals
from the Hospitality industry to design some specific model solutions to these
issues. We will fund these solutions to show our system as a whole how best to
serve the hospitality industry.
Thus far, we have invested over $90 million in 47 different projects to
demonstrate model human capital solutions in several sectors, including
supporting the National Restaurant Association’s ProStart program. What
nearly all of these projects have in common is that the solution design is a
partnership between the business community, the workforce investment system,
and the education system.
These are the partnerships that we believe are the most effective in
serving both our nation’s businesses and our nation’s workers. They
ensure that employers with available jobs are working with 1) educators who can
provide training with specially designed curriculum; and 2) the workforce
system that has the access to the human capital all employers need to
succeed.
To build a world-class workforce, however, requires us to understand the
characteristics of our workforce. 50 or 75 years ago it was pretty easy; White
Male with a high school education, age 20-60. Today, our country and our
workforce are very different. There are workers from all across the world
speaking many different languages. And no group is going to have more of an
impact than Hispanics.
Hispanics now comprise the largest minority group in America, a larger
community than the populations of Spain or Argentina or Canada. Their
population is expanding by 1.7 million a year, or nearly 5,000 people a
day.
With a purchasing power of $630 billion, Hispanic-Americans now
represent a larger economic force than the entire countries of Brazil or
Mexico. And this force will continue to grow. BLS reports that today, Hispanics
make up one out of every three new workers in the country and by 2025, this
proportion will be one out of every two new workers.
President Bush recognizes this trend and that is why the training and
integration of the Hispanic workforce is a priority of this Administration.
Labor Secretary Elaine Chao recently launched our new Hispanic Worker
Initiative designed to help Hispanic Americans take advantage of job
opportunities in high growth sectors of the economy.
The Initiative will: 1) help Hispanic Americans develop language and
occupational skills; 2) encourage Hispanic youth stay on an educational path
that leads to rewarding careers; and 3) promote partnerships between employers,
community colleges and the public workforce system to help Hispanic Americans
build the skills required in growing industries.
The Department of Labor has made initial investments of over $6 million
in grants to organizations that are addressing education and employment needs
of Hispanic youth, and are training workers for jobs in growth sectors of the
economy including hospitality, health care, and construction. We are committing
an additional $10 million for a fall grant competition for proposals that deal
with language and literacy issues of new immigrant workers.
As you can tell, there is an intersection between this Hispanic Worker
Initiative and our High Growth Job Training Initiative. Both seek to prepare
workers with the skills needed to grow and succeed in this rapidly changing
economy. However, if you do the math, you’ll see that we have committed a
little over $100 million to these combined efforts. This is really just seed
money, designed to show the larger $15 billion public workforce system the
types of services and strategies that will best meet the needs of both our
employer and worker customers.
But the real prize in this entire endeavor is the $60 billion spent each
year by the private sector on training and development. And that is why I am so
happy to hear that the main reason you all are here today is the launch of a
new English as a Second Language Initiative.
It is you all that make the real difference for our workforce.
Government programs at best facilitate the process and make improvements around
the edges. When the private sector sees and knows the value of investing in a
prepared workforce, that is when real strides are being made.
We are in an exciting and sometimes frightening new world of global
competition. If we expect to maintain our position as the world’s leading
economy, we must see to it that our workforce is the best educated and most
highly trained in the world. I am proud to know that the hospitality industry
is joining us in this mission and I look forward to continuing our work into
the future.
Thank you very much.
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