The Growing Gap in Retraining

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Enticing well-paid workers into retraining programs, even where such instruction is available, is often difficult. General Motors is training laid-off employees at two of its closed California auto plants for high-paying positions in the aerospace and data processing industries. Yet only 1,522 of the 5,400 eligible workers at its Fremont plant have signed up because many think they will be rehired when GM and Toyota begin building small cars at the plant.

Another obstacle to retraining is convincing workers that they and their families may have to move to find new jobs. Harvard Economist James Medoff believes that worker re-education must take place where jobs actually exist, because the best training is done by employers who need to hire workers. While Medoff is convinced that business, along with schools and labor, should handle that job, he advocates taxpayer financing of the cost of moving workers. To pay for their relocation, he suggests that a national fund be accumulated from an increase in unemployment insurance taxes.

Even the best program is worthless unless there is something for the worker to do once it is over. Unfortunately, that is seldom the case, as former Rubber Worker Russell Silcox, 56, knows well. He has not held a permanent job in 4½ years despite taking a 40-week course in diesel mechanics and spending six weeks in a Government-funded program making plastic coat hangers. Earlier this month he began a twelve-month training program as a heavy-equipment mechanic. His family of four is just getting by on his unemployment benefits and his wife's nursing-home job.

Far more fortunate in finding beneficial retraining programs are workers with jobs. U.S. corporations spend about $30 billion annually to train new employees and upgrade the skills of wage earners. Digital Equipment, for example, has 1,800 of its 67,000 employees engaged in worker reeducation. At the moment 450 Digital repair and installation technicians and administrative personnel whose jobs were eliminated by technological change are being tutored for sales.

Control Data of Minneapolis has been investing in the corporate retraining business for several years. It sells a computer and software system called Plato that lets workers teach themselves skills ranging from high school math to robotics, then follows up with on-the-job instruction. Insists Chairman William Norris: "You can't retrain unless you use computers. It costs too much for small companies otherwise." Control Data's effort has yet to pay off, but the company hopes Plato will be in the black next year.

One of the most dismaying situations prevails at the entry level to the work force. Many young people just out of school have a stunning lack of basic proficiencies. In Delaware, students can graduate from high school with just a single credit in math and science. A different problem exists in higher education, where colleges and universities have been unable to beef up their engineering and electronics faculties fast enough to meet the demand. According to Pat Choate, a senior policy analyst at TRW Inc., the shortage of new engineers amounts to probably 40,000 a year, and there is also a scarcity of computer programmers and systems analysts. Says Choate: "We have got to make sure that the college offerings meet the projected needs of our society."