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News that Daimler will not be closing its truck manufacturing plant in Portland caught our attention this week. This follows news that a South Korean company may buy the old Hynix plant in Lane County and put a thousand people to work there. Not to mention, things seem to be looking up in the housing market, with another month of rising home prices.
Of course, Oregon's unemployment rate is still in the double digits. So can these positive developments be considered the "green shoots"—as Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke called them—needed for a bona fide economic recovery to take root?
Have you recently gotten a job or had your hours increased at work? Have you sold your house or started a new business? What does it take for a business to create or maintain jobs in this economic climate? Are you seeing any "green shoots" in your economic backyard?
GUESTS:
Frank Rouse: Steward and President of the Machinists and Aerospace Union at Daimler Trucks North America
Art Ayre: State Labor Economist
Brandon Kilgore: Lane Community College student and laid off Hynix worker
Dave Hauser: President of the Eugene Area Chamber of Commerce
Chris Baker: Co-founder of CrossCurrent, a small software start-up in Portland
Photo credit: BlueRidgeKitties / Creative Commons
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A major characteristic of successful regional economies is a skilled workforce. Oregon's next economy, our greener economy, demands world class talent. The Oregon Workforce Partnership. the alliance of local workforce investment boards, recently published a paper outlining guiding principles for a greener economy. These principles are:
1.Transitioning to a Green Economy Requires Systems Thinking & Enhanced Strategic Partnerships. Oregon must develop a comprehensive, systemic approach to catalyze transformation and align investments, strategies, policies, and incentives. This can only be achieved by creating strategic partnerships of players who do not typically work together.
2. Think Globally, Act Locally. Economic and workforce development happens at the local level. Use the opportunity created by the growing green economy to increase local alignment of economic and workforce development strategies to further green goals.
3. Focus First on Real Jobs & Real Demand. The development of a green/sustainable economy must be demand-driven, led by private/public sector partnerships.Local Workforce Investment Boards are skilled in convening these sector partnerships and provide logical forums for grounding proposed training and skill enhancement initiatives in the real world demands of industry for green economy workers.
For more information on the green principles of the Oregon Workforce Partneship click on the followng;.
http://www.oregonwfpartnership.org/
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The Hynix plant in Eugene wrung expensive tax concessions and rebates from local government for a period of 10 years. When they expired, the company closed the plant the same year. What have we learned about the benefits of tax incentives to lure business?
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This topic I find ironic.
More then 30 years ago the points raised in the document referenced in the first post were well known by the people charged with or searching for skilled workers.
What you are looking at is a rather simple failure of both the red and blue sides of government at every level, and certainly a condemnation of the Public Education System.
Why the public education system is designed to send people to collage when the predominance of the population it serves since its inception, never completes any degree beyond High School, is… -
Info (and the full report) for "The Greening of Oregon's Worforce" here:
http://oregonemployment.blogspot.com/2009/06/greening-of-oregons-workforce.html
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When times are good we are all working. When times are bad we are all working harder.
I am a small business owner in Eugene. I currently employ 23 people and I am currently hiring another 5 people in technology and sales positions. I have always had difficulty finding computer support people and find it unfortunate that Lane Community College and the UO are unable to invest in training workers effectively to meet the needs of our growing new economy. It isn't the Administration at the colleges but rather the voters of our fair state and county that fail to make the investment in education and training at LCC.
The most important asset to surviving an economic downturn like this is making sure that places like LCC are able to support the retraining of our work force. I hear that they are turning people away from programs because they don't have the capacity or capital to invest in supporting the needs of retraining.
A shame that we are so greedy that we don't invest when times are good so that we are able to make a difference when times are bad.
Adam W.
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As a follow-up to a question on the program here is a link to the analysis of the effectiveness of incentives offered to Hynix. The study indicates that $49 million in incentives yielded $226 million in local economic benefit. http://economics.uoregon.edu/honors/2003/Hynix.pdf
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Comments are now closed.
In the last session the Oregon Legislature passed HB 3300 which required the Oregon Workforce Investment Board to develop a plan to create a future green workforce. While green jobs currently only make up about 3% of all Orgon Jobs, according to a recent Employment Department report, they are likely to pay more and grow fater than a number of other economic sectors in Oregon. What's really important about this disscussion is to assure that Oreogn has the skilled workforce it needs not only for future green jobs, but for all skilled jobs. Oregon has a gap of skilled workers as demonstrated by The Workforce Alliance's "Forgotten Middle Skill Jobs" report, published last spring
http://www.skills2compete.org/atf/cf/%7B8e9806bf-4669-4217-af74-26f62108ea68%7D/FORGOTTENJOBS_OR_FINAL.PDF. This will challenge our state to take advantage of growth opporutnities in the green sector and otherwise as the economy starts to turn around.