Reynolds cheerleads Future Ready Iowa at Burlington summit

BY CHUCK VANDENBERG

PCC EDITOR

BURLINGTON - A vast group of players trying to tackle the troublesome state of Iowa's skilled workforce gathered Tuesday for one of the state's first summits to address the issue.

At the Comfort Inn in Burlington, officials from Iowa Works hosted a group of about 200 people from the arenas of economic development, industry, education, and politics to hear and share best practices in trying to address the 400 lb. gorilla in the room. - how to fill immediate skilled workforce shortfalls in southeast Iowa.

Gov. Kim Reynolds made a stop at the summit to give a pep talk to the crowd and said it was time to go to work.

Reynolds' initiative Future Ready Iowa is a programmg aimed at getting 130,000 additional Iowa residents either to a college degree or post-secondary certificate by the year 2025. The program sets a goal of 70% of Iowa adults meeting the criteria.

"This is a perfect place to hold one of 18 summits across the state. We were gonna start with six, but the fact that we had community after community call and want to be a part of this, it speaks to, first of all, the need, the momentum, people are aware of it, and they want to figure out what they can do to make their communities vibrant as well."

She said she was most proud of the fact that the entire legislation signed off on the Future Ready Iowa initiative during the last legislative session.

"This also relies on strong regional private/public relationships building on the legislation so we can meet the local challenges, but northwest Iowa might be different than what you need here in southeast Iowa."

"The need has never been greater. We've often talked about workforce, but everything is starting to come together and align," Reynolds said after her presentation. Future Idea really addresses all that with additional money to help people get two-year degrees tied to high demand jobs.

"We're at 58.4% right now and when I talked to other governors across the nation, they are not anywhere close to that," she said. "We're starting at a pretty good point, but I think it's about getting in front of them and that's what the summits are about so that they're aware of the opportunities that exist and what that pathway is like and that there's funding there to help them with that."

Iowa Works officials have said the apprenticeship program that the state is offering businesses with tax incentives and schools with funding assistance to set up apprenticeships, is struggling in the early going.

Bruce Hardy, plant manager at Silgan Containers, said the apprenticeship program requires a lot of paperwork and the incentive is capped at $1,300 per person per year. He said he believes in apprenticeships, but set up collaboration with the schools in Lee County that provides a career specific maintenance tech track that will result in those completing the program being offered jobs with the container manufacturer.

Brian Langerud, plant manager at Pinnacle Foods, and Jason Huffman, of Huffman Welding & Manufacturing, both spoke during the session where county business and industry leaders shared thoughts and ideas.

"In our minds as plant managers the perception for us was when career counselors sat with students the conversations usually went something like, 'Well if nothing else works you can always get a job at the local factory'. I think that was a lot of people's perceptions 5 to 10 years ago. Industry is trying to do things to combat that mentality," Langerud said.

He said manufacturing isn't just a muscle job anymore. He said he has lines that do 1,400 cans per minute. He said industry is a lot more mental now.

"You need skills... you need welding skills, people to put the machines together and skills to keep the lines filled and running. We've got great people in Lee County who get it and know the number of people that aren't going to four year schools. So we got involved in the schools and helped develop curricula and those are the things we've been involved in."

Huffman said the experience at Huffman has been a long, drawn out process, but he said when you get a leader involved in the right program, turn around can be quick.

"What we do is all custom. Our jobs are highly skilled, we don't hire a lot of basic welders, but one of our biggest boundaries to growth is finding those additional people. We put on an addition, but we're still in the process of finding that specialized skilled employee."

Huffman said he sees it on a personal level where people with the four-year degrees are struggling to find a supervisory position and bringing two-year certificate programs with specialized skills is important to helping provide other career tracks for Iowans.

Reynolds said there needs to be more awareness of the programs being put together locally, regionally, and statewide.

"We just need to make people aware of it and talk about it more. That's part of what Future Ready Iowa summits are about. Bringing awareness to these types of jobs and getting into high schools and we're seeing some tremendous momentum there."

She said there is a lot of momentum with welding, but there is also nursing, accounting, and other opportunities that she said were limitless in today's economy.

She said she believes the goal of 2025 is attainable, if not maybe a little ambitious.

"You set an ambitious goal. You shoot high and work your tail off to get it done. They thought we should get to 68 and we said 70."