{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://courtney.house.gov/media-center/press-releases/icymi-groton-ct-serves-national-example-us-training-system", "ICYMI: Groton, CT Serves as National Example of US Training System", "2023-10-25", "2023", "2023-10", "Democrat", "House", "CT", "Joe Courtney", "C001069", "courtney.house.gov", "courtney", "https://courtney.house.gov/media-center/press-releases", "scraper", "WASHINGTON, D.C. \u2013 Yesterday, Bloomberg featured how Groton, CT has successfully leveraged the federal workforce training system\u2014the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA)\u2014to help workers in eastern Connecticut gain in-demand skills and help employers, like Electric Boat, recruit qualified candidates into rewarding careers.\n\nAs a senior member of the House Education and the Workforce Committee, Congressman Courtney has been a champion for WIOA and has worked to increase federal funding for WIOA programs to expand their reach.\n\nBloomberg Law: Worker Skills Gap Fuels Fight Over $3 Billion US Training System\n\nRebecca Rainey and Diego Areas Munhoz\n\nBloomberg Law\n\nThe air inside the Groton, Conn., classroom where Givens Louis-Jean clutched a blow torch hung even thicker than the September heatwave simmering outside.\n\nStill, Louis-Jean felt blessed. This welding class was more rewarding than his last job, as a mover, or the community college courses he looked back on as a waste of time.\n\n\u201cThey weren\u2019t teaching me something I was going to use in life,\u201d he explained, sparks flying, as he welded two pieces of metal.\n\nCompleting his 10-week training will earn Louis-Jean a job interview at General Dynamics Electric Boat, a local submarine manufacturer. The 20-year-old is among nearly 4,000 workers hired into such jobs over the last six years through eastern Connecticut\u2019s Manufacturing Pipeline Initiative, in trades that on average pay close to $31 an hour.\n\nPrograms like the Pipeline Initiative only exist because of federal funding through a little-known law called the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, which sets up and funds local boards to help train and place skilled workers. Passed in 2014, it combined federal training programs dating back decades; these days, more than $3 billion flows through the system.\n\nBefore the battle over an elected speaker paralyzed the House, lawmakers were working to reauthorize the law, even as skeptics questioned the effectiveness of a program originally intended to be the country\u2019s workforce development backbone.\n\nBetween 2019 and mid-2020, about 30% of the enrollees in WIOA\u2019s core programs were still looking for work months after finishing their training, its records show. For the plan year ending July 2021\u2014the latest year on record, but also one upended by the pandemic\u2014nearly 60% of the participants struggled to find work.\n\nDemocrats and Republicans have diverged on the best path forward for the program, but lawmakers on both sides share concerns about how much of its funding is spent exclusively for training, a lack of accountability, and just too much bureaucracy.\n\n\u201cWe can improve outcomes by cutting back the wasteful and inefficient bureaucracy,\u201d Rep. Burgess Owens (R-Utah.) said during a September hearing on WIOA.\n\nThe review comes as employers are desperate for high-skilled workers in a competitive labor market still churning from the effects of the pandemic. US job openings rose to 9.6 million at the beginning of September, with postings increasing in manufacturing sectors.\n\nThe long-held thinking that a four-year college degree is the pathway to economic success is also being challenged as states and businesses drop degree requirements and major companies like IBM Corp. and Boeing Co. urge Congress to invest in reskilling the American workforce.\n\nWith the House struggles over its leadership and government funding, passage of major pieces of legislation in the coming months remains an open question. But a carefully crafted WIOA reauthorization could fulfill employers\u2019 voracious search for new workers, and revamp the job pipeline to serve an economy experiencing major shifts stirred by technology, Democratic Rep. Joe Courtney said.\n\n\u201cPart of that problem is the skills gap, and what\u2019s the most efficient way to close it? \u201d said Courtney, who represents the Connecticut district where the manufacturing pipeline has thrived. \u201cI\u2019m all for higher education and all that. But there\u2019s just no question that WIOA can, in a pretty rapid way, help solve that problem.\u201d\n\nReagan-Era Roots\n\nThe law we now call WIOA was the successor of the Workforce Investment Act signed in 1998 by President Bill Clinton, which itself replaced a Reagan-era workforce development system.\n\nBroadly, the goal of each has been the same: deliver job training through a network of \u201cworkforce boards\u201d composed of representatives from local businesses, unions, government, and other groups\u2014people with their fingers on the pulse of their community\u2019s specific economic needs.\n\nIn eastern Connecticut, for instance, the 28-member board and council includes elected mayors and selectmen, as well as a technical high school principal, a pharmaceuticals executive, the head of a local carpenters\u2019 union, and a bank vice president. On top of that, there\u2019s a management staff of 12.\n\nThe boards help establish and manage local job centers, the brick-and-mortar locations where staffers help unemployed or under-employed workers with every job-related need, from unemployment insurance to veteran benefits.\n\nEligible applicants choose from a list of training providers and programs that have been approved by their local board. Once a job-seeker starts their training, the board deposits funds to cover the cost of the classes for that student in what\u2019s known as their \u201cindividual training account.\u201d\n\nBut getting the dollars allocated by Congress down to trainees like Louis-Jean is an unwieldy process.\n\nThe billions set aside annually for the program run through the US Department of Labor, which takes a share for administrative expenses then allocates the rest to states based on metrics like population and unemployment rates.\n\nFrom there, governors first take 15% of the funds for their statewide workforce development initiatives and divide the rest among the local boards, who decide which training programs to support. How much they spend on actual skills training, versus ancillary services designed to help job-seekers, is up to them.\n\nOf the roughly $3 billion set aside for 2021 primarily for youth and adult workforce development under WIOA, only $547 million went directly to training services. Another $1.3 billion was spent on \u201ccareer services,\u201d which include intake at a job center, verifying an individual\u2019s eligiblity for training, and job searching, among other assistance, according to DOL records.\n\nThe myriad of steps and lack of effective performance measures for the program has sparked complaints that it\u2019s gotten too bloated and is slowed by bureaucratic hurdles.\n\n\u201cOverly prescriptive requirements act like a wet blanket on the whole system, stifling modernization, flexibility, and efficiency,\u201d said Burgess, a member of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce.\n\nFor example, an audit released last month by the DOL\u2019s inspector general found that federal officials failed to ensure that New Jersey workforce boards were verifying that all recipients and training providers of more than $100 million of the state\u2019s WIOA funding were actually eligible for the money.\n\nOf particular concern, two New Jersey programs had no system in place to document how they spent more than $6.9 million in WIOA grants, according to the report.\n\nThe size and scope of the local workforce boards is another problem, said Rosemary Lahasky, senior director of government affairs at education technology group Cengage.\n\nWIOA requires boards to have specific kinds of members, but doesn\u2019t dictate how many. That\u2019s resulted in boards with too many participants, which makes decision-making more inefficient, she added.\n\nThe physical jurisdictions covered by each workforce board are also outdated and might not reflect current market needs, according to Lahasky, who served on the House Education and the Workforce panel during the 2014 WIOA passage.\n\nBusinesses, schools, and other groups that want to offer training under WIOA must also navigate a patchwork of confusing and sometimes conflicting state-by-state eligibility rules.\n\nFurther muddying the picture is the lack of clear and uniform performance measures. The Labor Department\u2019s Employment and Training Administration this year waived performance measure requirements to allow state agencies more time to implement pieces of the law\u2014nearly a decade after its passage.\n\nThe administration said it was concerned the baseline data it had planned to collect from states wouldn\u2019t present \u201cconsistently reliable results,\u201d which some saw as reinforcing the program\u2019s flaws.\n\n\u201cThe Department of Labor cannot and should not be putting out guidance that says \u2018Hey, by the way, we\u2019re going to waive some performance measures because we need an orderly transition from a law that was passed nine years ago,\u2019\u201d said John Pallasch, who ran the DOL training office during the Trump administration. \u201cI can\u2019t overstate enough what message that sends to the states: Hey, performance isn\u2019t that important. Don\u2019t worry about it.\u2019 \u201d\n\nPowering a Community\n\nNestled along Connecticut\u2019s Thames River, the town of Groton is home to a little over 9,000 residents. Electric Boat Company, founded in 1899 and incorporated into General Dynamics in the 1950s, built US warships during both World Wars, and now, several ballistic-missile submarine projects for the Navy.\n\nThe stream of military contracts creates a constant need for skilled workers.\n\nThose economic forces led the company in 2016 to partner with the Eastern Connecticut Workforce Investment Board, which connected Electric Boat with Three Rivers Community College and other local schools to provide the training. From there, the Manufacturing Pipeline Initiative was born.\n\n\u201cWe could not be hiring the numbers of people that we are without it,\u201d said Courtney Murphy, director of talent acquisition, workforce development and compensation at Electric Boat.\n\nProgram classes cover skills ranging from welding, machining, and shipbuilding to planning and design, said Bret Jacobson, director of the apprenticeship center involved in the manufacturing pipeline program. \u201cA lot of the skills are transferable,\u201d he added.\n\nMichael Nogelo, president of eastern Connecticut\u2019s workforce investment board, said it receives funding from different streams\u2014including Defense Department programs\u2014but WIOA funding is the foundational structure for all of its job training.\n\nConnecticut as a whole will receive a little more than $35 million for WIOA\u2019s core job training programs in 2023. Leaders behind the Manufacturing Pipeline Initiative acknowledged that the job demand from Electric Boat has been key to their success.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s not going to succeed if you\u2019re trying to fill 100 jobs,\u201d said Chris Jewell, president of a steel fabrication supplier for Electric Boat and a member of the local workforce board. \u201cYou\u2019ve got to be trying to fill thousands of jobs for it to succeed.\u201d\n\nLooking Ahead\n\nThe Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee hasn\u2019t examined much of WIOA this year, so all eyes are on the House.\n\nThere, the Education and the Workforce Committee has held several WIOA hearings, and a Republican aide said a draft of the reauthorization bill could come this fall.\n\nDemocrats and Republicans agree on the need to reform training provider lists, minimize the bureaucracy, and ensure more funding for actual job training, as opposed to other services for trainees.\n\nChairwoman Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.) also wants to impose more accountability measures and shrink the bureaucratic pipeline to avoid waste.\n\nUnder WIOA, states are supposed to be subject to corrective actions, even fiscal sanctions, for failing to meet defined performance metrics. Some haven\u2019t been held to those standards and still are allowed to participate, committee Republicans say.\n\nResearchers at the Harvard Project Workforce also highlighted concerns this year with the lack of reliable performance data being collected by the federal government.\n\n\u201cThe net result is a highly fragmented system, where strong programs are not differentiated from weak ones, and where incentives for high-performing providers to participate in WIOA are limited,\u201d wrote researchers David Deming, Alexis Gable, Rachel Lipson, and Ark\u0101dijs Zvaigzne.\n\nThey said that ensuring quality in WIOA training programs would require \u201cmore frequent communication with local providers, including site visits,\u201d a prospect that would require more time and money.\n\nRep. Bobby Scott (D-Va.) is focused on making the WIOA individual training accounts mandatory spending in the federal budget, which would eliminate a future need for Congress to reauthorize the law and almost certainly lead to annual increases in program funding.\n\nVice President Kamala Harris introduced legislation that would have made individual training accounts mandatory spending when she represented California in the Senate, but the bill never gained traction.\n\nCurrent leaders at the DOL\u2019s training administration say they\u2019re eager to work with lawmakers on a reauthorization, acknowledging some of the concerns raised by the program\u2019s critics.\n\n\u201cThere\u2019s a reason why this bill needs to be reauthorized every every five years,\u201d Brent Parton, ETA\u2019s acting assistant secretary, said in an interview. \u201cLast time it was signed we were in a very different labor market, a very different economy than we are now. And if this is the nation\u2019s premier workforce investment system, we need to constantly be reevaluating at the federal, at the state, and the local level.\u201d\n\nWIOA doesn\u2019t deliver the workforce training by itself, it\u2019s merely a \u201cfunding mechanism,\u201d Parton emphasized, adding that it\u2019s dependent on \u201chigh-quality\u201d training programs being formed through partnerships at the local level.\n\nThe outlook for a WIOA reauthorization still is rosier than it has been in recent years. \u201cIt\u2019s a top issue for companies across the country, so I just think there\u2019s a lot of things behind this to help this get across the line,\u201d said Lahasky.\n\nWhat\u2019s unclear is how significant the changes will be, particularly with the uncertainty in Congress. House Republicans have been reluctant to increase government funding, and would be very skeptical of a new mandatory spending program.\n\nWithout a reauthorization and broader reforms to WIOA, programs like the Manufacturing Pipeline Initiative will have to work with fewer resources each year as inflation eats away at at the flat funding provided by Congress. And some much-needed training programs may never get off the ground.\n\nIn Groton, those relying on the training funds worry that Washington will slow them down.\n\n\u201cDon\u2019t mess with WIOA here,\u201d Jacobson said, \u201cbecause it works.\u201d", 1, "2026-03-30T01:40:41Z", "2026-04-08T00:49:26Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://courtney.house.gov/media-center/press-releases/icymi-groton-ct-serves-national-example-us-training-system"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 1.0254434309899807, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}