Workforce Development: A Region's Key Business Retention and Expansion Tool (cont.)

Sector-driven regional workforce agenda

GNO, Inc.’s sector-driven workforce efforts are coordinated through partnerships with various groups, many of which serve on GNO, Inc.’s guiding committee, the Regional Workforce Partnership. These groups include area industry partners, the Louisiana Community and Technical College System (LCTCS), the four area Workforce Investment Boards (WIBs), the Greater New Orleans Literacy Alliance and the Louisiana Department of Labor.

Through regional, cluster-specific task forces in the aforementioned sectors, as well as through advocacy for state workforce system realignment, GNO, Inc. is working to create unified strategies endorsed by all workforce system partners in order to positively impact high job vacancy rates in high-demand occupations. The lion’s share of GNO, Inc.’s program focuses on addressing systemic workforce ‘bottlenecks’ that impede the growth of the regional target clusters.

Film and video

The impetus for GNO, Inc.’s work with the budding film and video sector is a positive one – a dramatic upsweep in film/video production in the state of Louisiana as a result of the passage of the Motion Picture Incentive Act of 2002. Since this legislation passed, Louisiana has seen more than $900 million in production come to the state and more than $90 million generated in Louisiana payroll. The great majority of production has taken place in the New Orleans area.

However, one of the barriers to the sector’s growth is the problem that production companies have cited in finding qualified workers. Because growth in this sector has been so rapid, the community and technical college system, the Louisiana Department of Labor and area WIBs were not prepared to meet industry demand for qualified people, particularly in the crafts. To bridge this gap, GNO, Inc. partnered with the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees union (IATSE) Local 478, the City of New Orleans, the four area WIBs, the community college system and the state Department of Labor to drive a two-pronged workforce initiative.

The first focus was a City of New Orleans-funded targeted advertising campaign to bring skilled workforce from other areas of the country to New Orleans to have the workforce necessary to sustain the current volume of production.

The second focus has been on designing fast-track, fourweek training programs with union input, and securing funding from the state to establish the programs at local Louisiana technical colleges, which will train local New Orleanians for jobs in this sector. A pilot set of three onemonth fast-track courses, funded by the four area WIBs and led by the Orleans WIB is planned. Longer-term funding for the fast-track programs currently is being solicited through an Incumbent Worker Training grant which IATSE Local 478 is submitting to the Louisiana Department of Labor. (The LDOL Incumbent Worker Training Program is the flagship workforce resource for companies in the New Orleans region and state. Annually, $50 million in employer unemployment tax revenues is allocated through this fund for customized workforce training for existing companies in Louisiana – the largest fund of its kind, per capita, in the U.S.)

Advanced Manufacturing Trades – Shipbuilding

GNO, Inc.’s Advanced Manufacturing Trades initiative is focused on building a strong pipeline of technically skilled, entry-level workers for high-demand, high-wage jobs with career ladders in the manufacturing sectors of oil and gas, petrochemical and shipbuilding. There are several components to this initiative, the first of which is the creation of a standard curriculum to be launched in the fall of 2005 for the top-demand jobs in shipbuilding, including ship fitting, pipe fitting and welding. GNO, Inc. organized and convened a shipbuilding consortium with leadership from the five major shipbuilders in our region and the Region 1 Louisiana Technical Colleges to design the comprehensive training program.

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