Lamont: Expand state’s workforce training
Gov. Ned Lamont will ask for more state funding to train out-of-work Connecticut residents — many stranded by the coronavirus pandemic’s effects on the retail and hospitality industries — to start new careers, including health care and manufacturing.
He said the expansion of the program, which will offer shorter-term certificate programs of up to 12 weeks, will be included in the budget he proposes to the General Assembly next month.
“Right now, putting workforce front-and-center in terms of our agenda, as it impacts education, as it impacts job opportunities, as it impacts business, will be a big piece of what we want to try to do,” Lamont said. “We’re making sure we’re training people for the jobs that are out there.”
“Going back a couple years, I think we knew how important the workforce was,” Lamont said during an hourlong news conference on Friday with officials from a variety of state agencies. “I wanted to do a better job of aligning our training programs with the jobs that are out there. You’ve got to make the best out of these tough situations.”
For Julie Mathon, 26, of Bridgeport, a former bank employee, the program, funded by part of the state’s federal pandemic relief, was a chance to become certified in sterilization technology for surgical instruments, and she landed a job at Yale New Haven Hospital’s St. Raphael campus.
“During the pandemic, the banks collapsed and I wasn’t really able to work at the bank anymore,” Mathon said. “I started to feel hopeless and felt I needed a change in career direction. From the moment the course began, I was fascinated to know that sterile processing technicians serve a critical need in health care settings.”
Mathon is one of 800 people trained in recent months, at a cost of $7,000to-$10,000 each, to use the Governor’s Workforce Council, private-sector employers, community colleges and the regional workforce development boards, to offer trade skills in intensive eight-week courses. The program includes health care, transportation and uniforms. The state won a $10 million grant to extend the program, starting Feb. 1.