Monday, March 20, 2006

Employers looking for magic answers

From: Letters to the Editor RGJ March 19, 2006

http://news.rgj.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060319/OPED02/603190357

I am responding to the Business article on the Nevada economy ["Job market continues to flourish," March 7]:
The reporter interviewed several people who stated that they were looking for specific skills and that they sometimes had to look outside the region for these people. As a degreed professional who has taken as many as five different low-paying wage jobs in order to call this place home, I believe I can speak to this issue.
It is my opinion that businesses in general seek magic answers to internal process of resource deficiencies by looking for certain skills that they claim they can only find outside the state. The reason they have to look outside the state is that people with these skills refuse to work for the pitiful wages, as well as for organizations that operate these very types of profit models.
The leadership in this country trickles down from the people in our government to those in our businesses. Those managers whining about the need to look outside the state need to understand that if they do not fix their own process deficiencies and empower their existing workers with the skills they seek, they will be forever looking for greener pastures at the detriment of this state.
Mark Ahearn, Carson City

posted by cl @ 8:21 PM 0 comments

Employers overlook skiled Americans

From: Letters to the editor RGJ March 19, 2006
http://news.rgj.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060319/OPED02/603190358

Re "Experts forcast issues with labor" [Business, March 9]:
While I was attending school, I never heard a teacher speak well of shop classes, or the trades in general. However, I did hear them publilcly berate students who attended those classes with the implication that only mental duds took them. As my children were going to school I, on several occasions, asked their teachers why young people were not encouraged to enter the trades. The subject was quickly changed.

In the last few years, businesspeople have been saying that there are not enough people in the skilled trades, and we needed to recruit foreign nationals to make up for the shortage. When asked why Businesses are not training young people in the trades; it comes down to money. I guess training can not be budgeted for.

Apparently skilled American workers are not worthy of $20 an hour, but foreign nationals are worth $5 an hour.

Their unemployable reletatives can then come in and get issued a 12-guage straw to tap into our welfare system with.

Gordon Birmingham, Reno

posted by cl @ 8:13 PM 0 comments