Get involved in schools, Kasich urges

Ohio manufacturers need to go back to school, Gov. John Kasich told the Ohio Manufacturers’ Association on Wednesday.

“Stick your nose in the school district,” Kasich told an audience of about 400 gathered at the Greater Columbus Convention Center to discuss workforce development amid a shortage of qualified workers.

The governor lamented a “disconnect’ between businesses and schools, saying, “You need to be out there in these schools.”

Manufacturers should

study the curriculum to make sure schools “are teaching things that matter to you” and offer high school students an opportunity to intern or work in their plants, Kasich said.

The governor said such jobs also would serve to teach teenagers discipline, life skills and manners.

“Too many of our young people are like, ‘Hey, man, what’s happening?’ That doesn’t cut it,” he said.

Kasich again criticized the refusal of the General Assembly to adopt his proposal to place business people on elected school boards as non-voting members to help steer change.

He called on state universities and colleges to become more “customer-focused” to ensure that students are taking classes and learning skills that will prepare them for the rapidly changing workplace.

The remarks were a continuation of a Kasich theme that K-12 schools and higher education need to be “blown up” to make sure they are turning out students prepared to join an increasingly high-tech workforce.

Kasich also called on the manufacturing executives to

help mount a publiceducation campaign to let Ohioans know “that it’s safe to go into manufacturing,” that good-paying, reliable jobs await as modern manufacturing continues to evolve.

They have. A “Making Ohio: Ohio Manufacturing” campaign has been launched by the manufacturers association. It includes a website — www.makingohio.com — that provides information for students, parents, educators and displaced and underemployed workers on manufacturing careers and the training needed to land them.

“We have in our DNA that we want to make things,” but Ohio must continue to diversify its economy with data analytics, health care, energy, financial services and other growing fields, the governor said. But “manufacturing is cooler today that it’s ever been, and it’s going to get even cooler,” he added.

Kasich also told his business crowd that he continues to oppose a right-to-work law in Ohio that would outlaw mandatory union membership and the payment of union dues.

Manufacturing association President Eric Burkland said, “Ohio’s future competitiveness and prosperity depend on access to a robust

talent supply chain comprising workers with the specific capabilities and credentials employers say are necessary to enter and succeed in today’s and tomorrow’s indemand jobs.”

Jay Timmons, president of the National Association of Manufacturers, said companies can blame the education system and politicians, but it is ultimately their role to foster improvements in workforce development to fill jobs in modern manufacturing.

The nation will need about 3.5 million “high-tech” workers over the next decade, said Timmons, an Ohioan whose roots trace to Chillicothe.

Amid the national recession, Ohio manufacturing employment fell from nearly 800,000 to 620,000 in 2010. The state since has added 70,000 manufacturing jobs, including nearly 4,000 in the past year, for a total of 690,000.

Ohio has about 15,500 manufacturers that pay an average annual wage of $58,765 to employees, according to federal figures. At nearly $109 billion in 2015, manufacturers produced about 18 percent of the goods and services in Ohio.