By Garry Hojan
Our Solution
In the last newsletter, we answered part one of this question. In this newsletter, I’ll answer the second part of the question with an example of federal policy and how it affects us locally.
It was 2012 and I still remember it like it was yesterday.
I was standing on the production floor and heard a heavy sigh, fake sobbing, and light stomping of feet.
I turned around to see our production manager looking up at the ceiling and acting like a little kid who didn’t get the toy he wanted. He turned to me and laughed half-heartedly at his own drama as I asked him “What’s up?”.
He informed me that the latest new hire was found by the state office of child support services and the employee owed support money. So rather than pay, he quit without notice and took off to Alaska to work on a crab boat.
After some discussion about continually training employees at 100% of our expense because of not finding skilled employees, and seeing the angst it was causing, I said to myself “I’ve got to do something about this.”
This started inquiries, using my connections with the Idaho Department of Labor (IDoL) and North Idaho College (NIC). The timing was serendipity, but let’s flip to government policy and local effects for a second.
The Trade Act of 1974 led to the U.S. Department of Labor’s Trade Adjustment Assistance for Workers program as part of policy changes to help workers impacted by the effects of foreign trade, under this federal framework the Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College and Career Training (TAACCCT) grant program was a major investment to increase the ability of community colleges to address the challenges of today’s workforce.
There were 256 grants totaling $1.9 billion. TAACCCT grants, which continued through September 2018, impacted 60 percent of the nation’s publicly-funded community colleges and built industry-aligned programs in manufacturing, health care, information technology, energy, transportation, and other industries.
The year before I reached out, NIC’s TAACCCT grant application was rejected due to insufficient industry support. A few other business owners and I formed the Idaho Aerospace Alliance, the members underwrote support for NIC to reapply for the grant.
That year, North Idaho College received a grant of $6,438,050 to create the NIC Aerospace Center of Excellence. Nine months later, the doors opened onto a new facility, with aerospace composites as a central theme. The program was for two semesters and could be laddered into an associate’s degree if the students wanted to continue.
Six months later, we hired three graduates out of the first graduating class. Two of the three were veterans receiving retraining. They came into our employ at $3- $4/hour higher than someone without the training. We also received $42,000 from IDoL to put towards employee training under the program. A side benefit was that we also became an NIC extension for aerospace composites training.
This is just one example of how policy affects nationally and locally.
Did you know that even 4-H has an aerospace program? Do you need help finding creative solutions to your business issues? Let’s chat.
