On and on
IN the NMI, since the Trust Territory era, criticizing the government for the supposed “lack” of local workforce development is like hitting a piñata without wearing a blindfold. Easy peasy. And yet the TT government relentlessly promoted workforce training, and so did every single governor of the Commonwealth. Since the 1950s (or even earlier), workforce training programs and initiatives — federally and/or locally funded — have been implemented and are still being implemented under new names or new agencies or old ones with new names, and we will continue to hear or learn about them in the near future as if they’re the very latest reinvention of the wheel.
Perhaps the main problem is that many of us believe that government can make people do things we believe they should do for their own good. So we continue to insist that we’re just one government program/policy/incentive away from “solving” a “problem” that mainly involves basic arithmetic: not a lot of people to fill so many jobs that may be unattractive to a lot of people who have so many other career/lifestyle choices here or in the states and the other territories.
It is truly amazing that the same politicians who are for college scholarships and for higher education — that is, all politicians — are always “surprised” to learn that there are not enough local workers for jobs that do not require college diplomas. The same politicians, moreover, support the expansion of generous welfare programs that allow able-bodied individuals to choose not to work, and the same politicians are “puzzled” why so many of these individuals prefer not to work.
To listen to politicians go on and on about the NMI workforce issue, you would think that hiring nonresident workers is a uniquely NMI “problem” — something unthinkable in the United States, “a nation of immigrants,” with its population of over 300 million, or in other U.S. territories, Pacific islands, Japan, China (yes, China), Western Europe, including Great Britain. (Prince Philip once said, in jest, to a Filipino nurse: “Your country must be half empty — you’re all here….”)
So many bigger nations with economies that can afford to pay high wages — the U.S. foremost among them — are hiring foreigners for certain jobs, but the tiny CNMI with a tiny economy and a tiny but mobile local U.S. citizen population shouldn’t?
To be fair
THERE is at least one “modern” government workforce program whose implementation was a “success.” In Cambodia in 1975, the Khmer Rouge declared that agriculture was the key to self-sufficiency, progress and a just society. They then made an offer that millions of Cambodians couldn’t refuse: be a farm worker or we’ll turn you into fertilizer.
In other news
ACCORDING to a recent editorial of The Wall Street Journal:
“Immigration restrictionists say employers could attract more American workers if they raised wages, but they need to get out of their think tanks and talk to employers. Few Americans are willing to relocate every few months for physically demanding seasonal jobs such as shucking oysters in the Gulf Coast or cleaning rooms at Rocky Mountain ski resorts, no matter how much employers pay. So employers year after year rely on the H-2B program.
“Demand for visas exceeded the cap even before the pandemic, but the mismatch has grown as millions of U.S. workers have left the labor force, enabled by generous welfare payments. As of Dec. 1, the Labor Department certified that employers needed 65,717 H-2B workers for the first half of the 2022 fiscal year. Last month the Administration said it had received 136,555 visa applications from employers for April through September — four times the cap.”
The Journal also reported that the U.S. food industry is now “increasingly reliant on temporary workers, a costlier and usually shorter-term solution to persistent staffing shortages at food plants, supermarkets and farms…. Executives said hiring temp workers can be expensive because they typically cost more per hour than permanent staff and require additional training.”
Erewhon Market told the Journal that it pays about $26 an hour for temps versus $20 for staff — and “the training is never ending.”
