WEST HAZLETON - Grade-school children should be taught that trades like plumber and electrician are respectable occupations in which they can make a good living, rather than the old notion of a four-year college education, according to a group of state legislators.
That was the consensus opinion of those who participated in a legislative roundtable discussion held by the Northeast Pennsylvania Manufacturers and Employers Association recently at Top of the 80s in Sugarloaf Township.
State Rep. Jerry Knowles, R-124, Tamaqua, said a series of hearings by the House Policy Committee statewide are showing there is a lack of people trained in the trades because they've been conditioned to go to college.
"We told our kids you have to go to college if you want to be successful," Knowles said. "As a result, we don't have plumbers and electricians. There's nothing wrong with being an electrician. We've got kids graduating from college, who go away, find out they love this area and have degrees where they can't get jobs here."
Knowles said teaching is a good example.
"We pump out 15,000 schoolteachers every year," he said. "There are jobs for about 25 percent of them, which means they (the other 75 percent) have to go into another area of working or leave the area."
Jobs there, but ...
State Rep. Mike Tobash, R-125, Pottsville, said he learned of a specific case at the policy committee's hearing in Jim Thorpe, which he called "an eye-opener."
Tobash said that while unemployment in Carbon County is 9.9 percent, Kovatch Mobile Equipment, Nesquehoning, which manufactures fire engines, can't get a skilled, drug-free workforce. The Carbon Career and Training Institute, Jim Thorpe, just spent $20 million improving its facility and can't attract students to get the training it provides.
"We have a quality employer who's looking for skilled workers, and an educational facility that can train those people, and we can't make those things meet up," Tobash said. "We have a dynamic in this commonwealth, and in this country, where the stigma for being unemployed is better than the stigma of having a high-paying, blue-collar occupation."
Changing that stigma has to start with young children, said Jack Hallick, human resources manager for Michael Foods in Klingerstown, Schuylkill County, a Minnesota-based food processing firm that distributes egg products, refrigerated grocery and potato products.
"If we don't get to the kids at a young age, in grade school, we're still going to be talking about this 10, 20 years from now," Hallick said.
State Rep. Tarah Toohil, R-116, Butler Township, said the state's education formula, starting in kindergarten, has to change.
"We look at manufacturing jobs like they're these dirty jobs. We don't want our kids to have these jobs," Toohil said. "This is a stigma parents push on their children. You can make $100,000 a year for being a mechanic. We need to start making these resources available here to our children, and exposing them to these things so they can pick (the trades)."
Ransom Young, Toohil's Democratic challenger next month, said a public-private partnership is needed.
"With current cuts in education, the arts and extracurricular activities have been taken away from our students, which allowed them a well-rounded educational experience and limits their vision of the workplace," Young said. "This is where we need to involve businesses and industries in our educational process, to introduce our students to the skilled and variety of jobs outside of the college classroom."
Bring vo-tech back
State Rep. Eddie Day Pashinski, D-121, Wilkes-Barre, said needing trades-trained people doesn't mean abandoning four-year degrees altogether, but suggested vocational education programs be brought back into the high schools.
"The vo-tech systems were changed because it was felt that it would be more economical to have one vo-tech, because not that many kids were involved in that technical training in school, because the demand then was for a four-year degree because there were more jobs available," Pashinski said. "That demand has begun to switch. Therefore, we have to educate earlier so the kids know being a plumber is a very honorable profession, and you can become a very successful person."
Darlene Robbins, MAEA president, said the Your Employability Skills program, which MAEA administers, teachers high school seniors the soft skills - such reporting for work on time and dressing properly - along with "career education with tours, and they have to pass a drug test."
Some 320 employers participate in the program in Northeastern Pennsylvania
"The whole foundation of the YES program is to make sure our kids in our local schools are aware of the opportunities that are available," said state Sen. David Argall, R-29, Tamaqua. "Maybe their parents or guidance counselors don't get it, but we have to make sure the students do."