Workers gain skills upgrades
Program takes on the region’s underemployment challenge
Jared Pitts was working toward a degree in mechanical engineering when the tuition became too burdensome and he had to drop out. He worked as a tutor and Waffle House cook to sock away money and return to school, but he couldn’t save much while earning roughly $17,000 a year.
So the 22-year-old began a different journey that should help him earn more than $40,000 a year. Pitts enrolled in Fluor Corp.’s U.S. Gulf Coast Craft Training Center to become a millwright who will install, align and maintain motors and pumps that move material through pipelines. In addition to saving for school, he wants to get a better understanding of the parts
he hopes to one day design.
“To me, it’s definitely a huge stepping stone for my career,” he said.
Pitts was connected to Fluor through ASPIRE, a program that will officially launch Wednesday. ASPIRE was created by Neighborhood Centers with the help of Workforce Solutions and JPMorgan Chase & Co. It’s designed to help 1,000 individuals move from low-wage jobs to living-wage middle-skill jobs. The program connects hard workers who want to advance their careers with training programs and employers. By making these connections early on, participants shouldn’t have to worry about furthering their education and not finding a job afterward. The soft launch began in January, and 175 people have applied to participate.
“The Houston region does not have a big unemployment problem. We do have a very big underemployment problem,” said Angela Blanchard, president and CEO of Neighborhood Centers, a nonprofit that helps low-income families get a foothold in the region’s economy.
Middle-skill jobs require more than a high school education but less than a four-year college degree. This was the largest sector of Houston’s economy in November 2014 when JPMorgan Chase released a study on the topic. It reported 1.4 million middle-skill jobs in Houston and projected 74,000 new positions to open each year through 2017.
Such jobs can more than double the paycheck of a minimum-wage worker. In the petrochemical sector, production supervisors earn a median hourly wage of $30.61. In commercial and industrial construction, electricians earn an hourly wage of $20.80, according to the report.
ASPIRE strives to help people earn at least $21 an hour. Many of the individuals applying for the program earn $13 to $15 an hour.
“We can either continue to work on the issues and symptoms of very low wages, of families not earning enough,” Blanchard said, “… or we can say what would it take to move this person to a higher-wage job. That solution is permanent.”
Neighborhood Centers has signed agreements with 12 employers to participate in the ASPIRE program, and it’s in discussions with more than 30 additional employers. Overall, these employers are identifying labor shortages among welders, electricians, pipe fitters, riggers and scaffolders.
“We don’t want to train people for a job that’s going to disappear,” Blanchard said. “We want to train people for the jobs that are going to be in demand in the next couple of years.”
ASPIRE works with a variety of training programs that have different structures. Some have a cost for participants, though grants and scholarships can help mitigate this. Participants with ASPIRE also have access to the services provided by Neighborhood Centers and Workforce Solutions, such as day care.
At Irving-based Fluor, a global engineering, procurement, fabrication, construction and maintenance company, entry-level training programs are free but require a time commitment of 40 hours a week for 12 weeks. Pitts was the first ASPIRE participant in its Pasadena training center that opened in December.
“It’s going to take resources across all industries to rebuild this workforce,” said Jim Hanna, vice president of craft services and industrial relations for Fluor.
Funding ASPIRE is a $1 million grant from JPMorgan Chase. In June 2014, the banking giant pledged $5 million to workforce training in Houston as part of its $250 million initiative to end the global skills gap.
“As we look at different kinds of initiatives that we want to fund, one of the things that’s really important to us is who we’re partnering with and also scale,” said Gina Luna, Houstonbased managing director for JPMorgan Chase. “We want to fund projects where we feel like we can have a real measurable, meaningful impact.”
With the 2014 announcement, JPMorgan Chase gave $250,000 to the Greater Houston Partnership for UpSkill Houston, a business-led effort to work with various community entities to close the skills gap, and $500,000 to Lone Star College to expand its training opportunities.
The $1 million grant for ASPIRE is its largest in the Houston area, with Luna calling the nonprofit a “partner who has the ability and the capacity to do something big.”
Jamie Dimon, chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase, will be in Houston on Wednesday to help Luna give the grant to Neighborhood Centers.
In the bigger picture, ASPIRE aligns with UpSkill Houston, an initiative Luna leads as chair of the executive committee of UpSkill Houston. Luna was also the 2015 chairwoman of the Greater Houston Partnership.
Luna described UpSkill Houston as the region’s overall plan for addressing the skills gap. ASPIRE, she said, is one of many programs helping achieve this plan.
“UpSkill took a look at the entire region and what resources and assets existed to try to address our workforce needs in general,” Blanchard said. “And it brought all the elements and partners together.”
Workforce Solutions, the public workforce system in the 13-county area, is helping connect ASPIRE with job seekers who visit its 24 career offices.
“I think ASPIRE plays a vital role in helping a segment of our population here who want to get a better job,” said Mike Temple, director of the Gulf Coast Workforce Board.
Its network of career offices can also help workers access training and determine what is best for the job they’re interested in.