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Retraining funds higher but more seen needed

By Davis Bushnell, Globe Correspondent, 9/19/04

Globe Staff Photo/Janet Knott Retraining paid off for Suzanne Curtain, 34, who works as a medical assistant in Lahey Clinic's Danvers office.

Federal funding for retraining displaced workers is rising nationally but it still is not at the level needed to serve the thousands of people who have been laid off since 2000, according to employment specialists.

In Massachusetts, 189,000 jobs were lost from February 2001 through July of this year. Some 82,000 of those jobs were in manufacturing, 69,000 in computer-related sectors, said David Pace, a regional economist with Global Insight in Lexington.

As individuals who have been laid off consider retraining options, many have had ''to scramble around'' for help since the number of retraining vouchers is limited, tied to the federal money available for each region of the state, said Mark Gyurina, a vice president of the Jewish Vocational Service of Boston.

There is also some confusion about how dislocated workers can go about being retrained for new jobs.

''We have to explain these programs better and match retraining with jobs that are available,'' noted Peter G. Torkildsen, head of the Statewide Workforce Investment Board in Massachusetts.

Another problem, job counselors say, is that individuals who have been retrained and are able to find work are often paid considerably less than they were by their previous job.

But progress is being made to give people new skills for new jobs, and there are indications that retraining programs will be ratcheted up in the coming years. In a recent campaign speech, for example, President George W. Bush said ''worker training'' needs to be ''transformed'' in line with changing times.

Federal funding for retraining dislocated workers in Massachusetts has increased from $8.4 million in fiscal 2002 to $25.3 million in fiscal 2004, according to the Department of Labor. From fiscal 2000 to 2002, 4,526 workers were retrained in Massachusetts. Retraining figures are unavailable for fiscal 2003 and 2004, the labor department said.

Determining how many workers receive retraining in a given year is based on the federal money on hand for a particular region, said Conny Doty, director of the Boston Mayor's Office of Jobs and Community Services. For example, at the start of fiscal 2003, the city had $477,000 in federal retraining funds, she said. Knowing that the average cost of retraining an individual was $3,800, Doty said she then set a limit on the number of vouchers to be issued, or 125. Subsequently, a Labor Department National Emergency Grant of $1.3 million was received by the city. That resulted in an additional 275 vouchers being issued, based on an average retraining cost per individual of $4,700, she said.

Although statistics are not readily available on percentages of people retrained in each region of the state who rejoin the workforce, results reported by the city of Boston provide some indications of what may be happening across the Commonwealth.

From fiscal 2001 to 2003, 1,068 individuals were retrained by technical schools, community colleges, and other vendors. Seventy-one percent of them were placed in jobs in 2001, 69 percent in 2002, and 70 percent in 2003, said Doty. Many of these were lower-level jobs in industries ranging from healthcare to hospitality, Doty said.

''Our placement rates, which equate to getting jobs three months after retraining, show that these programs are paying off for individuals and employers,'' Doty said.

Retraining paid off for Suzanne Curtin, a former high-tech manager who works as a medical assistant in Lahey Clinic's Danvers office.

Curtin, 34, who lives in Medford, started working in June for Lahey, after being retrained by the Medical Professionals Institute of Malden. She began her medical assistant course work last September and completed it in May of this year.

''I'm thrilled at what I'm now doing, especially because healthcare had been at the back of my mind for some time,'' said Curtin, who was laid off three years ago as a technical support team leader for eRoom Technology of Cambridge.

Curtin said the pay cut that she took was significant, from about $60,000 to $25,000 currently. But ''I'm satisfied because I'm working mostly with kids and am studying to become a registered nurse,'' she said.

The route Curtin took to be retrained and to find work is typical for dislocated workers, who report first to one of the state's 32 One-Stop Career Centers. These centers provide services once handled by the former Division of Employment and Training.

Curtin went to The Career Place in Woburn. She met with job counselors and then was steered to the Medical Professionals Institute for retraining.

All individuals who qualify for retraining receive a voucher from a career center. In Curtin's case, it amounted to $5,000, she said.

In the last two years, some 300 people have been approved by The Career Place for retraining, said executive director George Moriarty. Other state-certified vendors providing retraining, he said, include the Boston University Corporate Education Center in Tyngsborough and Clark University in Westborough.

A specially tailored career center, and the only one in the state named for a company that shed a large number of jobs, is the Lucent Career Center in Haverhill. It opened in January 2002 following layoffs by Lucent Technologies in North Andover. Since 2001, Lucent has laid off some 4,500 people at its North Andover plant, which still has about 700 workers, said Fran LaCerte, the center's project manager.

The center is funded mostly by National Emergency Grants from the labor department, which recently funneled $530,420 in additional grants to the center. In the last 2½ years, 289 former Lucent employees have completed retraining programs, said LaCerte. The retraining has run the gamut, he said, from teaching certification to tractor-trailer driving instruction.

Seventy-two percent of those who have been retrained are in new jobs, LaCerte said, adding, ''The biggest issue for many of these people is the differential between Lucent pay and their new pay. In some cases, individuals who once made $26 an hour, let's say, are now earning half that.''

To better match workers with growing industries, the state's workforce investment board is researching future job opportunities in biotechnology and the life sciences, nursing and the allied health professions, and education, said Torkildsen, a former Massachusetts congressman.

It's expected that a report on the committee's findings will be submitted to Governor Mitt Romney by the middle of next year, he said.

A committee member, Joan Cirillo, said it's critical to identify where ''the jobs will be in those sectors in the very near future. After all, there are now tons of people out there who need retraining for the jobs that there will be a big demand for.''

Cirillo is executive director of Operation A.B.L.E., a nonprofit group with offices in Boston and Woburn that works with individuals 40 years of age and older. (She also contributes to The Boston Globe's Job Doc column.)

That there is more federal money currently for job retraining is indeed encouraging, said Nancy Brown, executive director of the Metro North Regional Employment Board in Cambridge. ''But the challenge of getting that money to people who really need retraining will be an issue for some time.''

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