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

Also in the shipbuilding sector, GNO, Inc. is serving as an intermediary on a two-year, $100,000 grant awarded to Bollinger Shipyards from the National Association of Manufacturers and the Shipbuilders Council of America to train 90-100 people in job readiness, literacy and technical training for tacker positions through a collaborative of the major shipbuilders in the region. The effort also will focus on regional and state workforce system changes that need to be made to sustain the effort.

This project accelerates the work of GNO, Inc.’s Shipbuilding Consortium and builds on its successful partnership with Loyola’s Lindy Boggs National Center for Community Literacy, workforce investment boards, the community and technical college system and others. Over the past year and a half, the group has designed and implemented a pilot training project, which to date has successfully moved 16 unemployed people into good shipbuilding jobs with the largest private employer in the state, Northrop Grumman Shipyards. Six months after placement, the retention rate for this first group of trainees is 87.5 percent.

Oil, gas and petrochemical

In the oil and gas and petrochemical sectors, GNO, Inc. is working closely with a team of 12 industry partners and the Louisiana Community and Technical College System to bring the two-year associate degree in process technology into our region starting in spring 2006 and to modify it to fit the needs of oil and gas companies. A local advisory committee is driving this initiative, which started as a result of a May 2004 Labor Demand Survey of 12 oil and gas exploration and production companies. GNO, Inc. conducted the survey in response to anecdotal accounts that various companies were experiencing severe difficulties recruiting technically skilled workers. The companies also reported expectations of these difficulties to worsen due to rapid advances in technology as well as baby boomer retirement.

The survey identified 642 current and near-term 2005 vacancies in 14 occupational categories in those 12 companies alone, paying average wages of $45,540; the top demand position identified was Production/Process Operator, with a total of 375 vacancies. Thus the Process Technology degree program was established as the primary focus; subsequent initiatives are planned to focus on training for Electrical Technicians and Instrumentation/Automation Technicians.

Complementary to program development is a major outreach campaign. Currently in the planning stages, the campaign will publicize high-skill, highwage jobs with good career ladders, in target highdemand occupations in the advanced manufacturing trades. GNO, Inc. in partnership with industry, is currently designing and securing industry funding for this project. The campaign will be a combination of grassroots and multimedia marketing and will target the 15- to 26-year-old emerging, underemployed and transitional workforce and those who influence them. The campaign will focus on publicizing the salaries and day-to-day reality of these jobs, as well as the training needed to access them, thus dispelling many misconceptions about jobs in these sectors and motivating ‘new blood’ to enter these promising careers.

Healthcare

For the past two years, GNO, Inc. has driven the New Orleans Regional Task Force on Economic Development and Health Workforce Training, which has focused on filling 7,000+ nursing and allied healthcare vacancies in the 10- parish region. The task force identified insufficient training slots at area schools as the sector’s major workforce bottleneck; schools were turning away qualified applicants due to lack of capacity.

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