I read with interest the News & Record article this morning Are N.C. jobs waiting for right workers? in which Gov. Pat McCrory expresses concerns that our high schools are not offering enough technical and trades training to meet demand in North Carolina and I don't doubt that to be true. I've long believed the push to send everyone to college results in too many chiefs and not enough indians.
But the governor is also missing a point I've been making for the last year: The jobs have to be where the people are. Take for example, PEMMCO Manufacturing, pointed to in the article as having long been unable to fill open positions. I know numerous people he would consider more than qualified to fill those positions but driving 30 plus miles to a plant located in the middle of nowhere when they already own homes in which they are under water or are almost paid off is not an option. It's time that business owners faced reality and realized that with the ever increasing costs of transportation you are going to have to locate your businesses where the people already live and not out in the boonies.
Jim King, President of Okuma in Charlotte laments, "“Many of the parents, they want manufacturing in their backyard, but they don’t want their kids to work in manufacturing,”
Where's Okuma's plant? Miles southwest of Interstate 485, the Charlotte bypass, though much more populated than the area around the PEMMCO Manufacturing site.
Of course it isn't all these business owner's faults. They are caught in the same trap their prospective workers are caught in. In Greensboro, wealthy developers like Roy Carroll buy up all the available properties with help from commercial realtors like Greensboro Mayor Robbie Perkins who then uses taxpayer moneys to subsidize Mr Carroll's projects over competing projects giving companies but two choices, locate in taxpayer subsidized industrial park like Okuma most likely did or locate out in the boonies like PEMMCO Manufacturing chose to do. There are other properties inside the cities but the Roy Carrolls and Robbie Perkins of the world have a grip on those as well and only intend to build houses and shopping centers there, giving us at best, the choice between long commutes and minimum wage jobs.
Fact is: The actions of subsidized developers pushes up the costs to manufacturers-- the backbone of our economy-- and forces them to charge higher prices while paying lower wages to workers.
So the question becomes, in the interest of lowering unemployment over the long term, what is Gov. Pat McCrory and the State house and Senate going to do to stop local governments from subsidizing developers and enabling them to move jobs away from our most populated areas and into areas where employers cannot attract qualified workers because qualified workers haven't the means to get to and from work?
I don't care if you're liberal or conservative, you still have to buy gasoline or pay for transportation one way or the other. In China they warehouse workers at their place of work, is that going to be the solution for North Carolina?
But the governor is also missing a point I've been making for the last year: The jobs have to be where the people are. Take for example, PEMMCO Manufacturing, pointed to in the article as having long been unable to fill open positions. I know numerous people he would consider more than qualified to fill those positions but driving 30 plus miles to a plant located in the middle of nowhere when they already own homes in which they are under water or are almost paid off is not an option. It's time that business owners faced reality and realized that with the ever increasing costs of transportation you are going to have to locate your businesses where the people already live and not out in the boonies.
Jim King, President of Okuma in Charlotte laments, "“Many of the parents, they want manufacturing in their backyard, but they don’t want their kids to work in manufacturing,”
Where's Okuma's plant? Miles southwest of Interstate 485, the Charlotte bypass, though much more populated than the area around the PEMMCO Manufacturing site.
Of course it isn't all these business owner's faults. They are caught in the same trap their prospective workers are caught in. In Greensboro, wealthy developers like Roy Carroll buy up all the available properties with help from commercial realtors like Greensboro Mayor Robbie Perkins who then uses taxpayer moneys to subsidize Mr Carroll's projects over competing projects giving companies but two choices, locate in taxpayer subsidized industrial park like Okuma most likely did or locate out in the boonies like PEMMCO Manufacturing chose to do. There are other properties inside the cities but the Roy Carrolls and Robbie Perkins of the world have a grip on those as well and only intend to build houses and shopping centers there, giving us at best, the choice between long commutes and minimum wage jobs.
Fact is: The actions of subsidized developers pushes up the costs to manufacturers-- the backbone of our economy-- and forces them to charge higher prices while paying lower wages to workers.
So the question becomes, in the interest of lowering unemployment over the long term, what is Gov. Pat McCrory and the State house and Senate going to do to stop local governments from subsidizing developers and enabling them to move jobs away from our most populated areas and into areas where employers cannot attract qualified workers because qualified workers haven't the means to get to and from work?
I don't care if you're liberal or conservative, you still have to buy gasoline or pay for transportation one way or the other. In China they warehouse workers at their place of work, is that going to be the solution for North Carolina?
