By C.V. Moore
BECKLEY — Southern West Virginia lacks a reliable, educated workforce, say business and industry leaders gathered Wednesday in Beckley.
“Everybody needs good employees right now. I don’t know of a business who doesn’t,” said local businessman Warren Hylton.
Hylton was among two dozen business people who gathered in Beckley for a regional meeting of the West Virginia Business and Industry Council (WVBIC), a lobbying organization for the business community.
Hylton says one of the coal companies he operates turns away three-quarters of jobseekers because they cannot pass drug tests or do not hold other minimum qualifications.
Recruiting an educated, drug-free workforce frustrates many in attendance.
“I don’t think there’s anybody in the room who doesn’t agree that we need to do something about our workforce,” says WVBIC chair Jan Vineyard.
“We’ve heard at all these meetings — ‘I wouldn’t dare drug test my workforce.’ We’ve got to get a hold of this problem.”
Auto dealers say they face a similar situation.
“We’ve been talking about how we’re going to start training our own service writers and (finance and insurance specialists) because we can’t find people with the training,” says Dennis Sheets, owner of Sheets Chrysler Jeep Dodge in Beckley and chair of the West Virginia Auto and Truck Dealers Association.
“We met with Sen. Manchin and he talked about giving us a $1,000 credit so we can hire and train people. I told him that I’d pay him $1,000 for a good employee.”
One of his colleagues says he recently ran a full page ad in the paper for technician positions paying $31 per hour and received one call.
This legislative session, the WVBIC will attempt to address the problem by advocating for high school and community college training programs; policies to decrease substance abuse in the workplace; and changes to unemployment law.
State Sen. Richard Browning, D-Wyoming, sees more vocational training, earlier on in a student’s career, as key.
“We’ve been spoiled by the coal industry. Where else in the world can you get a high school degree and get one of the highest paid manufacturing jobs in the world?” he says.
“But the price of coal goes up and down. We’re on a roller coaster. One day the bottom will drop out of it and we’ll be looking for other ways. We need to make some wholesale changes in education and we need to do it quickly.”
Delegate Linda Sumner, R-Raleigh, encouraged attendees to look at the workforce training program at New River Community and Technical College, which takes its coursework cues from industry.
She also says legislators are working on prescription drug legislation to introduce in January.
Several in attendance complained that access to unemployment benefits discourages potential employees as well.
The workforce issue was discussed more in Beckley than at other regional meetings, says Vineyard. In the north, she says, Marcellus shale and environmental issues dominated.
“It’s statewide, but the drug and education problems may be more prevalent in the south,” she says.
Besides boosting the state’s workforce, other focuses for the WVBIC this legislative session will include legal reform and initiatives to lower “the cost of doing business.” They want to see the creation of an intermediate court of appeals and the elimination of alleged loopholes in workplace injury law.
They also support more penalties for stealing copper and regulatory consistency at state agencies, and oppose laws to make pseudoephedrine a prescription-only drug.