Ready or Not Here it Comes...Skills Shortage

Thursday, March 09, 2006 07:30 PM

B.C. Federation of Labour President Jim Sinclair, and Bob Kaplan of Heavy Industry Apprenticeships Council

There are estimates there are anywhere from 100 to 200 thousand jobs in B.C. that will soon be empty with no one in the ranks to fill them. While there are efforts to try and attract workers from other countries, (see previous story) the B.C. Federation of Labour thinks we should opt for another route.

B.C. Federation of Labour President Jim Sinclair says ttrying to resolve our skills shortage by increasing immigration sends a negative message "That's like hanging a huge failure sign on this province and on the doors of every high school in the region."

"We used to have a situation where if you were male in this town, you could walk out of high school get a job at the mill, and within a week, you had bought a car and had a debt that would keep you here for a while. Now, only 6% of the jobs available require grade 12 or less." So Sinclair would like to see some major committments to education.

Here are his three ideas for change:
1. We have to decide to make a committment to youth, by putting young people into facilities, and llowing them to advance.

2. Make it wrong to "poach" trained workers from other companies, Company's who fail to train should have to pay a 1% tax, while those who train get tax breaks. Its a program that works well in Qubec which has the highest apprenticeship levels in the country.

3. Open the doors to publicly funded post secondary education. Yes, he knows this would be expensive, but ,he asks "What is the cost of NOT doing this? What is the cost to our economy? What is the cost to our kids? What is the cost to our Communities?

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Posted on Thursday, March 09, 2006 07:30 PM in News by 250 News

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Comments

Posted by: Chadermando on March 10 2006 12:13 AM

It would be a good start IMO.

I would add a 20% payroll surtax for the employer on any skilled labour brought into the province from out of province for four years from the date of acquisition. That would level the playing field for this provinces workers and eliminate the LCD (Lowest Common Denominator) approach of employer groups who wish to poach skilled labour from other countries at the expense of Canadian workers to keep their costs down.

Posted by: owl on March 10 2006 11:30 AM

Let me see.

Let's say we need 1,000 welders per year in BC and we only have training seats for 600. So we get the rest of our welders from out of province. Thus, the province and its taxpayers do not have to pay to educate the 400.

Yet you want to tax those employers who bring in people from out of province to fill the gap the government has not been spending money on to educate. Such a deal!!! If I were government I would get out of the business of education right away and import all the educated workers we could.

I arrived in this province in the 70's. I know enough about the post secondary education system in BC and the rest of Canada to know that this province never pulled its weight as far as providing anywhere near the number of post secondary seats as other provinces did and still do. The result? People here actually could get a job straight out of high school and get a job for which, back east, one would have to have a two or three year community college education.

The recent expansion of seats in the one and only medical school we have, UBC, is a good example of that. I believe we still do not pull our weight once the seats in Victoria, Kelowna and PG are all open.

Of course, now we have the additional whammy hitting the entire country of the boomers reaching retirement age. That was foreseen 20+ years ago. Like the pine beetle, it is beginning to hit us and we are not prepared for it. Except, in this case, we knew what was going to happen and we were unable to ready ourselves for it so that there would be a seamless transition.

We are a free enterprise federation. Our governments are generally reactive, not proactive, so this is something we should be used to.

The bad news is that BC, Canada, North America are not alone in this.

http://news.thomasnet.com/IMT/archives/2005/03/the_beat_goes_o.html?t=archive

So, do you still think we should be penalizing the employers when those responsible for high level planning flubbed it?

Posted by: owl on March 10 2006 11:41 AM

The "get a job" in the above should be "got a job". Although if the skill shortage continues, we may get back to companies training on the job if regulations do not stop them.

"In these countries, the percentage of students graduating with science and engineering degrees is hovering in single digits, far below that of India and China. Add to that a general shift among U.S. students away from ‘hard skills’ such as science and engineering, and the U.S. Department of Education estimate that 60% of all new jobs in the 21st century will require skills that are possessed by only 20% of the workforce."

Do we begin to get the picture of one of the reasons for outsourcing?

From the linked article in the above. Couple that with what CNC has done here in the last 10 years in decimating their skill-based education for general knowledge based education. How could ther government have helped prevent that had they projected the obvious need? Fund less general education seats and more skills based seats. Promote students getting into those seats through program specific bursaries and scholarships.

But, we are a free enterpise system and the marketplace will take care of itself.

Psssst ... have I got a deal for you ;-)