“What is freedom? It is the right to choose one’s own employment. Certainly it means that, if it means anything.” — Frederick Douglass
AFTER almost three decades of reporting on, and writing about CNMI workforce issues, I’ve finally noticed that not a lot of “concerned” politicians and citizens are hearing what each other is saying. Not everyone remembers what has been said about the same issues in the not-so recent past. No one seems to be aware of the history of these issues or what has been said and proposed and implemented in the past to “address” them. And many are unaware that the same “concerns” and “solutions” raised and proposed so many years ago, including in the TT and early Commonwealth eras, are still being raised and proposed today.
In early 2010, for example, PSS announced that President Obama’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act allowed the hiring of “more instructors and teachers in the various career clusters which are aimed to provide students with useful skills.” PSS also said that the “Career & Technical Education Program” was the new name of the voc-ed program “to combat the perception that voc-ed was only ‘second class.’ ” According to PSS, voc-ed provided six to seven program areas only to a few students. “In contrast, the new program has 16 career clusters for all students interested in air-conditioning, auto body, auto mechanics, bookkeeping, cabinet making, construction, digital video, video production, electricity, general business, home economics, hospitality and tourism, marketing, welding, technology and the arts.”
Over 12 years later, PSS said its Career & Technical Education or CTE Program “really needs help” in building a local workforce. PSS said CTE is “building career pathways for high school graduates.” One of the career pathways is construction for which PSS said it is working with the Northern Marianas Technical Institute. And how’s it going? “We really have a difficult time recruiting,” a PSS official said. “Initially, about eight students showed interest, but after they completed a summer program with the Department of Public Works, they just kind of, you know, stopped.”
The Commonwealth is an island jurisdiction that has a small (and dwindling) population but with a wide array of locally and federally funded education and scholarship programs that can allow any eligible and willing resident to obtain a college diploma or even a post-graduate degree (or two).
But we’re perennially surprised that we don’t have enough construction workers. And no one seems to notice that we have so many government employees — and government agencies that say they’re understaffed.
The federal minimum wage applies to the CNMI, and so does a federally mandated prevailing wage table for 848 occupations. But it seems that we’re back in the 1990s because many are still saying that the “problem” is the “low” wage rate here. And yet the U.S. and many other prosperous and advanced nations with large populations and ever rising wage rates are also facing labor shortages not only in construction but in many industries as well: manufacturing, healthcare, leisure and hospitality, food service, retail trade, etc. etc.
Lack of training then? Like many other wealthy nations, the U.S. has plenty of well-funded training programs at the state and federal levels. As for the Northern Marianas, since the TT era it has tapped U.S. training/apprentice programs while creating similar local programs and institutions all through these years. In his State of the Commonwealth Address in 1979, the CNMI’s first governor mentioned the local “youths between the ages of 17 and 22” who were enrolled at the Hawaii Jobs Corps Center in Honolulu, and the federally funded training for CNMI voc-ed teachers. NMC, which had a voc-ed program, was established in 1981. The original NMTI opened in 2008.
That’s all good. To be sure, PSS, NMC, NMTech, the CNMI government and the business community should continue “working together” to create a local workforce, but they shouldn’t be too hard on themselves whenever they fall short of their target. It is the individual, after all, who will decide whether s/he will choose the “right” career for him or her.
And that’s what missing in all these never-ending, repetitive discussions: the individual who has so many career choices before him or her, especially if s/he is a U.S. citizen. It’s always up to him or her. But, then and now, many do-gooders, concerned citizens and politicians believe that each and every one of us should listen to them and do as we’re told because they know what’s good for us, and because they said so.
To which the only rational response of a rational citizen is, Make me.
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