Addressing skills gap in infrastructure jobs
WASHINGTON D.C. — Ohio Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) held a conference call Tuesday and had a few things to say about wages and jobs in Ohio.
Portman focused on the topic of jobs during the Tuesday call, focusing on how certain jobs are being left to the wayside due to many different factors, one of them being finding skilled workers.
“There are literally hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs that are open right now,” he mentioned at the beginning of his talk, after discussing some businesses he had went to. “But we have a difficult time filling them because of the skills gap.”
Portman said many companies are worried about tax hikes coming up as well due to upcoming legislation involving President Joe Biden. Some infrastructure legislation, which he claims only a fraction will involve actual infrastructure, might effect things involving their business. He says that it will also primarily come from American workers, which he thinks goes against any wage increases they’ve had within the past few years.
“And that’s a real problem,” Portman said in conjunction with this. “We were finally getting to see some recovery.”
Portman believes this type of legislation, along with similar movements, are going against any movement to fix what COVID-19 has done to the economy. This even goes from work done in the late 2010s where some legislation was able to get profits back into the hands of workers. Portman thinks it could also affect the unemployment rate and other factors.
However, Portman didn’t disagree with all forms of legislation done by President Biden, happily celebrating an extension on legislation involving Fentanyl and any analogues under stricter regulation.
This is to help curb the rate of opioid deaths, along with abuse or anyone trying to skirt around restrictions.
“We’ve introduced legislation bipartisan with Senator Manchin to make these classifications of Fentanyl analogue permanent,” Portman added. “And that’s the why we should go, but at least the Biden administration said they would support a seven-month extension.”
The senator says that he hopes that the temporary measure will help, especially since Ohio has recently surged with issues involving the opioid after years of bringing the fatalities down. He hopes a permanent solution will eventually be reached.
Portman is also working with Senator Tim Kaine and U.S. Representatives Suzanne Bonamici, Glenn Thompson and Tim Langevin to introduce the Building U.S. Infrastructure by Leveraging Demands for Skills Act (BUILDS) in order to address the issue with the gap between jobs and skilled workers. The act itself focuses on making sure people have the proper training to deal with infrastructure jobs related to construction, transportation, maritime and energy.
The way BUILDS works is to try and make job training more available to in-demand career paths, especially in addressing the gap that widened due to COVID.
Since the demand for skilled workers are projected to rise, and even give more people opportunities.
Any businesses with troubles processing apprenticeships, creating learning programs and helping success in the workbased learning are also covered.
The BUILDS Act is supported by Advance CTE, ACTE, AFT, NSC, Jobs for the Future, the National Taskforce on Tradeswomen’s Issues and the National League of Cities, This is the second introduction the bill has gone through since an earlier attempt done in the 116th Congress.