Pooling resources
Five Capital Region community colleges launch a new workforce development coalition to tackle labor shortage.
The region’s five community colleges launched a new workforce development coalition on Tuesday to pool resources to better tackle the labor shortage and skills gap that is dragging on the economy.
The new group, which held a news conference at Hudson Valley Community College in Troy on Tuesday morning, has been branded the C5, for Capital Community College Career Coalition.
In addition to Hudson Valley, the other participants in C5 are Schenectady County Community College, SUNY Adirondack in Queensbury, Fulton-montgomery Community College in Johnstown and Columbia-greene Community College in Hudson.
The role of C5 will be to come up with “actionable, sustainable” solu-
tions to grow the potential number of trained workers for local jobs, especially in the high-tech and advanced manufacturing sector, where the greatest need exists.
And with a historically low unemployment rate and more than 11,500 new jobs created locally since 2016, the new coalition has a big job ahead of it.
“Whether it’s in manufacturing, software development, or health care, we know that there is a labor shortage right now in the region. But there is also a skills gap between what companies need and what those in the workforce can offer,” said Fulton-montgomery Community College President Dustin Swanger. “Our job as community colleges is to recognize that gap, and to work together to educate people for the careers that are
out there.”
Swanger said that as the manufacturing sector has evolved over the years, there are a lot of underemployed workers. And there are many workers who need retraining. And since the economy is doing well, and the advanced manufacturing sector has grown, there is a shortfall of trained workers.
That is where the C5 comes in. The group will work to target programs so that their students —both traditional and nontraditional — can fill the job openings.
The people are there. The job openings are there. There just aren’t enough of those people who have the qualification for the jobs, officials said. But they can learn those skills at the community college, even through noncredit, affordable programs.
“There’s a disconnect really in our region,” Swanger said. “This is a real problem for us. We have more capacity than we have students to vie for jobs. We’re in a crisis.”
The group is planning an early November summit to meet and come up with potential solutions for going forward, although details have not yet been decided upon for the location.
Bill Hart, vice president of U.S. business operations for Irving Consumer Products in Rotterdam, says the C5 is an ideal candidate for state funding through the Regional Economic Development Councils, also known as REDC, that are overseen by the governor and involve Empire State Development and other state agencies.
Hart sits on the Capital Region council, and Irving has its paper mill and tissue conversion plant in Fort Edward and uses SUNY Adirondack for a lot of its executive and workforce training.
“The C5 consortium is exactly the type of initiative that the REDC was designed to support,” Hart said.