Coordinated jobs strategy called vital for S.C.

GREENVILLE -- A unified work force development strategy, including a proposed Cabinet-level agency to coordinate the effort, and a viable port operation are two critical economic development tools for South Carolina to bring more jobs to the state, business leaders said.

More than $800 million annually for work force development and training flows into several South Carolina agencies, yet the result is fragmentation of services that makes it difficult for job seekers and employers to get the coordinated help they need, the business leaders said.

They believe that to better align the state's work force strategy that a single Cabinet agency with a "work force czar" should be created to coordinate efforts involving unemployment insurance, job placement, job training and temporary assistance for needy families.

They said other states with a unified strategy are helping more people more quickly and cost effectively than South Carolina, at a time when the state's unemployment rate has risen to double-digit levels. South Carolina's jobless figure was 12.3 percent in November, the latest available unemployment number.

Officials from the South Carolina Chamber of Commerce said, however, their goals for the new legislative year, which began last week, aren't limited to work force development.

"There's also the issue of education in our state to prepare the work force of the future," said Dick Wilkerson, chairman and president of Michelin North America.

Chamber officials said there has been discussion about redirecting some state lottery money to benefit education from kindergarten through the 12th grade, but no plan has emerged.

Employers such as Michelin, Duke Energy and the Greenville Hospital System, "companies that tend to feed at the top of the food chain," don't have an issue with work force development in South Carolina, Wilkerson said.

It's the mid-range companies, and the companies that are starting up, that have a real issue with people being prepared, he said.

"And if you're going to start a large company, is there enough skilled work force to support that?

"That's the 'now' issue," Wilkerson said. "What we need to do is really look at how we develop people and how we retrain people moving from one industry to the other."

Longer term, state officials must focus on improving K-12 education in the state, he said.

"If we invest for a generation, then a lot of good things are going to happen in terms of job creation, in terms of social problems disappearing, that free tax dollars for other issues," Wilkerson said.

Through its recently announced "Michelin Challenge Education" program, Michelin employees will volunteer in South Carolina elementary schools, serving as mentors, tutors and volunteers to provide support to teachers.

The state's port, Wilkerson said, is a "major, major engine" for economic development and a critical underpinning to South Carolina's business health.

The port's position as a deep-draft operation gives it a competitive advantage with shippers who use larger vessels and will go through an expanded Panama Canal, Wilkerson said. Michelin is a major user of the Port of Charleston.

With supplies from Asia having to go to the West Coast and then be transported across the United States, it becomes "much more economical to ship directly from Asia to the East Coast and after you cross the Panama Canal, one of the first places to stop with a deep-draft port is Charleston," Wilkerson said.

"We need to really support it," he said.

State chamber officials stressed that as part of work force development that the structure of the Employment Security Commission must be changed to ensure taxes businesses pay into the system are used responsibly.

Over the past decade, South Carolina's Unemployment Insurance Trust Fund has been in steady decline, the officials said.

They said a restructuring of unemployment benefits would bring more accountability of who receives benefits, a better matching of people and jobs and stronger management of the overall fund.

The new work force agency would take funds from the ESC, departments of Commerce, Education and Social Services, technical colleges and others to coordinate short-term job development activities where it's so fragmented now, said Otis Rawl, the state Chamber's president and chief executive officer.

"If you go to an ESC office right now, depending on which state agency you're dealing with, you'll have to go to a different (computer) terminal to be able find out the information that you need just to be able to apply for a job, find out where a job is, the type of training you need, the type of qualification," Rawl said. "All that ought to be interactive and you ought to be able to go to one location, one place, to be able to access that information."

The Department of Education would continue to focus on preparing young students for the jobs of the future, Chamber officials said.