Yakima Herald Republic, June 11, 2006

Yakima Herald Republic

Published on Sunday, June 11, 2006

Getting back to work
By MAI HOANGYAKIMA HERALD-REPUBLIC
http://www.yakima-herald.com/page/dis/286303319446353

Yakima Resources and its workers have begun talking about retraining programs for the 225 employees who will lose their jobs when Yakima's century-old lumber mill closes this summer.
But success in retraining family-wage earners for jobs of comparable pay is mixed.
Experts say it can depend on a blend of workers' attitudes, quality of the retraining programs and whether local jobs are available to match the workers' new skills.
A look at what happened in Goldendale shows a bit of each.
At its peak, the sprawling aluminum plant southeast of Goldendale employed more than 700 workers earning wages well above the norm — entry-level jobs started at $16 an hour with plenty of opportunity for overtime.
After a series of layoffs, the smelter — now called Columbia Gorge Aluminum — has just six workers.
From 2000 to 2003, about 400 laid-off workers and spouses received federally funded job training, said Martin Campos-Davis, a program supervisor for WorkSource Columbia Gorge, a work assistance agency.
WorkSource says 83 percent of the workers who were trained had jobs when they finished. On average, they earned 84 percent of their former wages and nearly 95 percent were still working six months after the training.
But what the statistics don't show is that many of those workers relocated or faced long commutes to those jobs, including Yakima and The Dalles, Ore.
Former aluminum worker Joe Garcia, who lives near Goldendale, now commutes to Yakima.
Garcia worked as a mechanic for several years before moving to Washington in 1995. After a year working in an auto dealership in The Dalles, he took a job at the Goldendale smelter in order to be close to home.
After being laid off in 2001, he enrolled in Perry Technical Institute's one-year automobile maintenance program. After a brief stint at a Yakima dealership, Perry hired him as an automobile maintenance instructor.
Now he lives in a Yakima rental during the week. But when classes are over Friday afternoons, he heads back to his wife and 14-year-old daughter at their home near Goldendale.
It's not the ideal situation, but he accepts it.
"I'm going to do what I have to do to make a living," he said.
Garcia said his retraining was successful but noted that his former work experience probably put him in a good situation.
"There's no program that's going to give you a top-notch job," he said. "That comes from experience. You don't jump into a job and know everything. You have to work, learn and go through things."
Others faced similar choices.
Even with retraining, some former smelter workers had to accept entry-level jobs at lower wages because they lacked experience, said Mark Peterson, president of the Local 8147 United Steel Workers union.
Still others retrained for jobs not available in Goldendale and faced the choice of leaving, or staying and working at lower-wage jobs, he said.
"You're starting out at the bottom and going up the ladder again," he said.
"I don't think people are losing skills, but jobs are changing much more faster," said Eve Weinbaum, a labor studies professor for the University of Massachusetts-Amherst.
Weinbaum followed displaced factory workers in eastern Tennessee for her book, "To Move a Mountain." She writes that most workers failed to find equally high-paying jobs after retraining programs.
Some worked for temp agencies, others relocated to high-growth areas and others had long commutes, she said.
Government statistics, however, refute those findings. More retrained workers find jobs and earn an annual average of $2,000 more than those who didn't retrain, according to 2002 statistics from the state's Workforce Training and Education Coordinating Board
"The typical person can expect a positive experience. But obviously it's not guaranteed," said Kevin Hollenbeck, a senior economist for W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, who gathered data for state report. "For some people, it doesn't work and for some people, it works really, really well."
Typically one-third to one-half of laid-off workers want training, according those in displaced worker programs, said David Gonzales, program manager for the South Central Workforce Development Council in Yakima.
It's a toss-up of what exactly makes job programs effective.
It's a matter of attitude, said Art Wheaton, an industry education specialist for the Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations in New York.
Workers first need to realize the layoff isn't their fault, he said. And when they understand they have an opportunity to do something they want, they might feel better regardless of the exact wage of their new job.
If they expect others to do the work for them, they'll come out disappointed, he said.
"They can train you and make you perfectly skilled, but you're still the one that has to walk in and do the interview," he said.
But Weinbaum, the University of Massachusetts professor, said too much emphasis is placed on the worker. The assumption is that if there are jobs available, its a matter of getting workers trained for those jobs, she said.
It's not that simple, said Gordon Lafer, a labor studies professor at the University of Oregon and author of The Job Training Charade. There may be job growth, but growth is coming from an increase of low-wage jobs.
"There is not enough decently paid jobs for the people who need them," he said.
Dave McFadden, director of New Vision, Yakima county's economic development arm, said job training is one solution.
But it is probably easier to find a comparable-wage job in the Yakima Valley for a trained, dislocated worker who made $10 an hour than finding a job for another trained worker who made twice that amount, such as employees at Yakima Resources.
"I think that resources can be used in ways that help workers make that transition and help employers trying fill skilled positions at their plant," McFadden said. "The whole game is how to make that marriage, and that's not easy to do."
* Mai Hoang can be reached at 577-7685 or mhoang@yakimaherald.com.