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| Topic | The Atlantic: Economy stronger than ever, workers benefit from more pay |
| FLUFFYGERM 07/06/18 1:55:21 PM #2: | But his daughter connected him with a training program, which he completed. In time, that led to a position at a factory in Des Moines. I take the raw rubber and I break it down, he explained. I send it over to be [combined] in a machine with fabric. That leaves the machine, and goes to the tire builders, and they build the tire. He said the work was hot, dirty, and physically exhausting, but still that he loved the job, where he now earns $21 an hour, as well as health benefits. Younger and older workers have also found more success, labor experts in central Iowa said. Businesses are accepting applications from high-schoolers and retirees who want to come back to work and are providing on-site education and accommodations like flexible schedules too. Mollie Frideres is the human-resources director at Green Hills Retirement Community in Ames, just north of Des Moines. The company normally hires a number of Iowa State students interested in healthcare, she told me. But of late, it has found that the good economy has meant fewer undergrads need a job. It has raised wages, but still found itself short. Thus, it has started a program with the local high school, Frideres said, training the workers the business needs. The teenagers require a little more hand-holding, given that they are less experienced and perhaps a little less mature than college kids, Frideres told me. We are in the process of developing some classes or training programs on social skills or soft skills for them, she said. You know: What is professionalism? What are our expectations? But they had filled the gap, she said. Younger workers with more or harder barriers to the workforce were finding more luck, too. What Ive seen in the past two years is employers really forcing and I really mean it when I use that word forcing themselves to be more nimble, said Laurie Phelan, who heads Iowa Jobs for Americas Graduates, or iJAG. It is an initiative that seeks to prevent drop-outs and help students transition to work, aimed at kids who have grown up in poverty. She said businesses were more willing to grow their diversity IQ, and to look at their expectations for education and their willingness to spend time in mentoring and shepherding this new young workforce into their world. Refugee and immigrant workers including those with literacy or language challenges, or a lack of credentials were also getting drawn in and picked up. A little over a year ago, I hired a woman that focuses on this kind of high-touch service, Bontrager told me. She has 40-some clients were working with, specifically on helping them work through some of their barriers, whether that's going back and recertifying in something [here in the United States], or working on the language skills, or working on how to present themselves their resumes, how to interview. All of those kinds of things. Companies are really being very receptive to taking a little more time, if you will, in the hiring process. The fierce competition for hiring has led to both a drop in the unemployment rate and a rebound in the prime-age employment-to-population ratio in Iowa. It has also raised the specter of labor shortages, with businesses simply unable to find experienced workers to fill their positions. There are not a lot of welders sitting around looking for work. The construction trades, the roofers, the framers, the dry-wallers, said Dan Culhane, the president of the Ames Chamber of Commerce. Those are [workforce] challenges that Ames and Story County and Des Moines face. --- Do good. Eat communists. ... Copied to Clipboard! |
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