Deal seeks to promote traditional labor force development
Rome News Tribune
By Doug Walker
Tuesday, Jan 17
Gov. Nathan Deal revealed a new initiative called Go Build Georgia to focus on increasing the potential workforce for traditional skilled labor jobs.
Deal’s announcement comes four days after members of the Greater Rome Existing Industries Association met with Greater Rome Chamber of Commerce leaders to discuss the same problem.
“All we have to do is think about it and the governor is on it,” said Diane Lewis, Lewis Chemical Company, chairwoman of the GREIA group in 2012.
Lewis said that when the GREIA board was planning for 2012, Rome Tool and Die and Georgia Power representatives were very vocal about the need for electricians and machinists.
“We have to seize educational opportunities with a very serious sense of urgency and I see all of these things coming together where our existing industries need employees and we have dramatically underemployed kids coming out of high school, even post-secondary school,” Lewis said.
Go Build Georgia is being developed to address the skilled labor shortage across Georgia through a public campaign that will educate young people about the potential wages, lifestyle and employment benefits in the skilled labor trades.
The problem involves a skilled labor force largely comprised of baby boomers who are beginning to retire.
In recent years, much of the educational focus has been on so-called high-tech, computer-based jobs, information technology along with jobs in the healthcare professions.
Even the Greater Rome Chamber of Commerce has set its sights on attracting technology and bioscience based jobs to Rome, while at the same time doing everything it can to service its older, more traditional industrial base.
“We are pleased that Governor Deal is continuing to promote his jobs agenda,” said Chamber of Commerce President Al Hodge. “In addition to economic development initiatives, this community development-education and workforce program will build upon Georgia’s recent ranking of seventh in the nation for overall education quality”
The governor’s office estimates that during the course of the next year alone 16,500 jobs will become available in industries that rely on skilled labor.
Go Build Georgia will be a public-private initiative that will merge business leaders with education officials to reinvigorate students’ interest in some of the traditional skilled labor positions to make the state even more competitive in the future.
Lewis said GREIA is attempting to pull together a program highlighting the needs of traditional skilled labor jobs to pique the interest of students in conjunction with the 2012 Symposium of Technology.
Mike Rowe, executive producer and host of Discovery Channel’s “Dirty Jobs,” is partnering with Go Build Georgia and will serve as a spokesman in the first round of advertising for the campaign. Rowe similarly worked with the state of Alabama on its Go Build Alabama program, launched 16 months ago.
“All of this, if I had come up with it in a dream, I couldn’t have done a better job of having all these things intersect at the right moment,” Lewis said. “I think it will be an opportunity for Rome to lead the state, I can’t imagine that there are any communities around the state that will be jumping on this as far as we are.”
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