Trump touts onthe-job training
President Donald Trump says apprenticeships could match workers with millions of open jobs, but he’s reluctant to devote more taxpayer money to the effort.
Instead, Trump and Labor Secretary Alex Acosta say the administration is focused on getting universities and private companies to pair up and pay the cost of such learn-to-earn arrangements.
The president has accepted a challenge from Salesforce. com CEO Marc Benioff to create 5 million apprenticeships over five years. Now, as part of a week-long apprenticeship push, he is visiting Waukesha County Technical College in Wisconsin Tuesday with his daughter, Ivanka, as well as Acosta and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker.
“Apprenticeships are going to be a big, big factor in our country,” Trump said during his first-ever full Cabinet meeting Monday. “There are millions of good jobs that lead to great careers, jobs that do not require a four-year degree or the massive debt that often comes with those four-year degrees and even two-year degrees.”
Many employers and economists — and Republicans and Democrats — welcome the idea of apprenticeships as a way to train people with specific skills for particular jobs that employers say they can’t fill at a time of historically low unemployment. The most recent federal government budget passed with about $90 million for apprenticeships, and Trump so far isn’t proposing adding more.
Volkswagen has touted apprenticeship programs at its Chattanooga manufacturing plant as a way to bridge the U.S. skilled labor gap. The graduates from the automaker’s mechatronics programs were the first Americans to ever earn certification from the German Chambers of Commerce, according to the company.
Wacker, the giant German chemical company with a plant in Bradley County, Tenn., also cites its apprenticeship efforts as a way students can earn a wage and real-world experience while completing a two-year associate of applied science degree.
Meanwhile, the Chattanooga Electrical Apprenticeship
and Training Center offers as a five-year journeyman wireman apprenticeship. An 8,000 hour program, apprentices work on the job 40 hours per week and are required to attend school, during the regular school year, two nights a week for three hours each night.
The Trump administration, like President Barack Obama’s, says there’s a need that can be met with a change in the American attitude toward vocational education and apprenticeships. A November 2016 report by Obama’s Commerce Department found that “apprenticeships are not fully understood in the United States, especially” by employers, who tend to use apprentices for a few, hard-to -fill positions” but not as widely as they could.
The shortages for specifically trained workers cut across multiple job sectors beyond Trump’s beloved construction trades. There are shortages in agriculture, manufacturing, information technology and health care.
“There aren’t enough people to fill the jobs and the people applying don’t have the skills necessary,” said Conor Smyth, spokesman for the Wisconsin Technical College System, where President and Ivanka Trump, Acosta and Walker were visiting.
That’s where apprenticeship comes in.
Participants get on-the-job training while going to school, sometimes with companies footing the bill.