THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, September 22, 1996 TAG: 9609210504
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: D1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MYLENE MANGALINDAN, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 96 lines
When economic development specialists gather, they often focus on the needs of prospective companies looking to expand or relocate.
Terms like infrastructure, accessibility, quality of life and business costs get a lot of discussion.
But labor, another key criteria companies use to evaluate their choices, is becoming the No. 1 issue of economic development, said Julius A. Denton, president of the Virginia Peninsula Economic Development Council. Mainly because the quality of a company's employees determines much of its long-term success.
At an Urban Land Institute panel discussion last week, two economic development professionals and two corporate executives stressed the importance of labor when companies consider opening a manufacturing plant or expanding an existing facility. Their comments returned to labor's affordability, its availability and its caliber. Companies desperately need more educated, skilled and disciplined workers, they agreed.
The labor market has tightened in Hampton Roads and the state, making it harder for companies to find employees. The region's jobless rate fell to 5 percent in July. Virginia's unemployment rate hit five- or six-year lows every month this year except July.
``What's happening in Austin (Texas) is now happening in Tidewater,'' Motorola spokesman Dan Rogers said. ``You're down to the type of employee we're not trying to hire.''
Rogers sat on Motorola's site selection committee for the West Creek semiconductor facility in Goochland County and the White Oak Semiconductor plant in Henrico County. He links a weakened work ethic to the decline of the family and the military.
Americans' lifestyles have changed, he said. They've moved away from the tight-knit family unit and lost values in the process. The decline of the military - its presence in communities, downsizing among its ranks - has only exacerbated the trend.
``A lot of employees we hired in the '70s and '80s were from a military family background,'' Rogers said. As the military presence fades, so does its regimented, disciplined lifestyle.
Today's workers have no commitment to the company that signs their paychecks, Rogers said. It's not necessarily an issue of loyalty, but one of responsibility. They don't arrive on time. They don't stay as long. They don't come in every day.
This apathy will hurt companies, particularly those in high technology, because they rely increasingly on their assembly line workers to maintain and monitor the quality of their products, the panel said.
Motorola and others generally hire ``C'' students for their assembly lines. They are discovering that students who hold a high school diploma have only an eighth grade education.
Employees' educational abilities have deteriorated, inversely proportional to the growing complexity and demands of their jobs.
If turnover rates climb because new hires can't make the cut, companies suffer from the disruption to their production schedule. Hiring temporary help or starting the recruitment process over again wastes time.
Attracting quality employees isn't just an issue for companies seeking new locations for plants. It ranks as one of the most important factors for an existing company's growth, said Jack G. Boyd, assistant to the executives at Canon Virginia Inc. in Newport News.
Canon often recruits engineers and highly skilled or professional workers outside the area because ``we have a hard time getting engineers locally,'' Boyd said.
Plant workers, those who produce copiers, toners or laser beam printers on Canon's assembly line, are hired from local vicinities. But ``we're having more trouble getting qualified workers,'' he admitted.
As employment opportunities expand, like they have on the Peninsula with the arrival of Gateway 2000, UPS and MCI, the applicant pool shrinks for expanding companies like Canon.
Its effect on the bottom line isn't trivial.
Education and training, not research and development or technology, have proven to be the single most effective way of boosting an organization's performance, said Robert G. Templin Jr., president of the Center for Innovative Technology, a public-private organization that promotes technology and its application in Virginia.
Other successful areas have applied that lesson already.
An average public school in Austin has 15 companies working with it through partnerships to improve education, said John Myers, executive vice president of the Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce.
Hampton Roads firms such as Canon, Siemens Automotive and Anheuser-Busch, have entered the classroom to show how basic math and science skills are applied on the job.
Labor ``will be the major force of the technology age,'' Myers said. Americans must stay competitive with workers all over the world. It isn't just Hampton Roads vs. Raleigh or Richmond anymore.
``I would venture to guess Virginia's Achilles heel is its work force,'' Templin said. ``We need to be in the business of growing our work force to be in a growing competitive environment. When you grow your own, it creates stability in the work force, which these companies desire.'' ILLUSTRATION: Graphic
TOP CITIES TO LOOK FOR EDUCATED, SKILLED WORKERS
SOURCE: Jack Boyd, Canon
[For complete graphic, please see microfilm] by CNB