Conference on Global Entrepreneurship: Economic Development for Asia and the U.S. – Session 2B: Global Entrepreneurship and Workforce Development

John Mogulescu: Good afternoon. I’m John Mogulescu. This is the session called Global Entrepreneurship and Workforce Development. If you are not interested in this session, you should leave. [Laughter.] I’m the Senior University Dean for Academic Affairs at CUNY and the Dean of the School of Professional Studies. I’m going to be moderating this session. I think we have an absolutely marvelous panel and very, very distinguished people. Let me take a moment to just introduce our panelists and maybe I could station you there. I apologize: it’s not a perfect way to start a session but we’ll get there.

I’m going to take a moment to introduce our panelists. I’m not going to read their full bios—they are in your programs—but I will introduce them in no particular order other than starting on my right. This is Marilyn Shea, who is the Executive Director of the New York City Workforce Investment Board. She was appointed in June 2004, where she’s been working on Board Development and Strategic Planning of New York City Workforce Investment System. Prior to coming to the Board, Marilyn has held a number of significant positions in workforce development at the federal, state, and local level.

Next to her is Katy Gaul, who serves as the Senior Policy Advisor for the Workforce Development Unit at the New York City Department of Small Business Services. Prior to coming to Small Business Services, she worked for several years at the Department of Homeless Services as well, and also worked for Homeless and Housing non-profits and was a State Representative in Texas.

Next to Katy is Angelica Tang, Regional Representative of the United States Department of Labor, appointed by President Bush in October 2001. She is Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao’s chief spokesperson at the Governmental Constituency Leaders in Region Two, which includes New York, New Jersey, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands. Prior to joining the United States Department of Labor, she was Senior Advisor at Emergent Capital, a venture capital firm in New York. She’s also been the Executive Director of New York City’s Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs and Language Services, and there’s much more in her bio as well.

Finally, on the far right is Neil Kleiman, who is the founding Director of the Center for an Urban Future, which he started ten years ago. The Center, if you live in New York, issues all kinds of reports. It’s a New York City-based policy institute focusing on education economic development in the arts. The center has really focused intently on the area of workforce development over the past five years with many articles and reports for details the labor force needs within specific clusters of the economy.

To get ourselves started, I’ve asked the panelists to introduce themselves and just take a minute or two before we really get into the meat of the session to describe their experience and role and relationship to the workforce development system. I will go down the row here and start with Marilyn. We’ll take, as I said, just a minute or two. I will then start by beginning to ask them questions that people will answer. We will try to have a bit of a conversation and also, hopefully, engage the audience where you can ask questions of the panelists as well. I have been told that we should be finished no later than 4:30, so we have about an hour to do this. So I will start with Marilyn.

Marilyn Shea: Thank you and good afternoon, everyone. The Workforce Investment Board was created under the federal legislation Workforce Investment Act, which was enacted in 1998. The Act designates this board to be the leader and strategic vision provider for the New York City Workforce Investment System. It has taken a while to start getting into that position, but I think now we can safely say that the Board is in position to work on developing key workforce challenges in New York City and working with all kinds of partners and stakeholders to begin addressing some of the major issues here in the city.

Katy Gaul: I’m the Senior Policy Advisor of Small Business Services. One of my tasks is that I’m the Trade Act Coordinator for the local implementation of the Trade Act. We’ll talk about how, locally, we’re implying that federal legislation affects trade-affected workers, workers that are affected both by trade exporting from and to; that changes their work status. So we’ll talk about that.

Angelica Tang: In an hour I think all of us will have to talk very fast to give you even a very topical understanding of what we all do. Marilyn and Katy have both talked about the workforce development system that is here, locally, in the city. The Department of Labor, as referenced by Marilyn, is the agency of the U.S. federal government that propagates the legislation, the Workforce Investment Act, which creates the entire nation’s Workforce Development System. It’s a very large expansive system that spans across the nation. We’re talking about 3,500 offices statewide, municipal governments, many of the stakeholders, city agencies; in addition to those entities, stakeholders, and partners that we have in each of those local areas. It’s a 50 billion dollar system that spans across the country.

The Department of Labor does much more than just Workforce Development System. It’s also the department that oversees workforce safety that you may know about, the agency OSHA, Occupation Safety. We also oversee the nation’s laws that govern the workplace such as [wages,] power, many of those labor laws that we have to enforce. In addition to Workforce Development System, we really have more of a macro view. We take the position that we follow the Federalists’ model in that in creating the Workforce Development System, the goal is to really give flexibility to the states and localities because they best know what their clients and what their demographics are, and what the special needs are in those areas. Today, instead of just giving you an overview of what they would say in a local area, I will talk more about some of the initiatives that may apply specifically to Asian Pacific Americans or maybe to the Asian Pacific area. We will be able to talk about that and I encourage you to maybe ask more questions. I would like to leave more time for that, for interaction.

John Mogulescu: Neil, your opening remarks.

Neil Kleiman: Just to situate myself amongst the panelists: clearly all the panelists represent agencies, and they personally are partners and colleagues in the work that I do. But, the Center for an Urban Future functions outside of government, so it’s a non-profit policy think tank. What is interesting about our organization is there are a number of policy groups that look at job training or workforce programs, but they tend to take either a human service or a job training perspective. We really came at this issue initially looking at job training from an economic development point of view, meaning we initially focused on businesses and business growth development and individual business sectors and clusters before we began looking at labor and market force needs. I think we bring that kind of interesting perspective to the work that we do. We do look at different cities but most of our research focuses on the five boroughs of New York. In particular we look at small businesses throughout the city.

John Mogulescu: With those introductory remarks as a base, let me now ask each of the panelists a question to get us started. I think I’m going to start with you, Neil, if I might. You’re a little different, as you said, than the other panelists. I’m just curious about what you’ve observed in your work both here in New York and elsewhere about the kinds of things that are working and the kinds of things that you think need attention within the framework of both New York and this conference having to do with globalization and global competition as it relates to workforce development. From your view, would you start us on that?

Neil Kleiman: We’ll try to keep it short because that’s a big question.

John Mogulescu: I would actually like to ask all of our panelists to keep their answers short so we do in fact get to have some exchange.

Neil Kleiman: I guess I will start out by saying our main focus, if you look at the name of the organization, Center for an Urban Future, is that we look at cities and municipalities. I think one of the most exciting things is that more than ever before, cities and municipalities and counties are becoming, not only interested, but also very creative in terms of their focus on workforce and job training types of programs. The federal government has been funding job training since the 1960s, and some might argue even before that. But it really has been sort of fits and starts that you’ve had much of a commitment from states and localities. Beginning around the ’80s and ’90s you had a number of state-funded, what are referred to as Incumbent Worker, programs, in which the state really did become committed through multimillion dollar projects to create customized training. But then, even that didn’t really bring in cities as much, but with the passage of the Workforce Investment Act and with the increasing importance of labor force needs in addition to just capital programs by local businesses, you’re starting to find more mayors and local government and local bureaucracies begin to not only engage, but to really develop new and innovative programs.

And connected to that, I think what’s very encouraging is that you’re beginning to see across the board a number of very innovative programs that connect directly to the business sector. I’ll just mention a few. One in Maryland represents a great example of our Workforce Investment Boards, which are sort of public-private entities in which you are able to attain business support for the workforce system. There is also a number of sectoral initiatives, in which you are able to work within individual business clusters, whether it be biotechnology, precision manufacturing, or arts and culture, and target a workforce program within a particular sector of competitive strength in your area.

Another is the One Stop Career Centers that were mandated by the federal government in the recent round of workforce programming, and cities—New York is another great example—have become very creative in terms of using these One Stop Career Centers to have major employers recruit out of those centers. Some place like Philadelphia has actually done a tremendous amount, where they’ve had UPS and Aramark base their recruitment centers within the One Stops. That’s a lot of the interesting stuff.

I just want to very quickly get back to John’s other point, which is what are some of the areas to focus on. One of the things I think we often forget is that workforce encompasses many different funding streams. It’s not just one funding stream such as the Workforce Investment Act, but includes many others that are encased within agencies, including the Department of Homeless Services, Probation, the public schools, of course, and we always argue that higher education is probably the greatest example of workforce that anyone could rely on. It’s very important to see how you can link these partners, but it’s very difficult to do in practice. That’s one of the areas that is very tricky and I think always needs to be done with eyes open, but with a willingness to see where it’s going to work.

John Mogulescu: Angelica is picking up with what both of you said in your introductory remarks and, Neil, you have talked about new initiatives and some of the things that are coming out of the Department of Labor that would be specific to our topic at hand. And maybe you would elaborate a bit on some of those.

Angelica Tang: I picked up a couple of things from Neil as well that I wasn’t trying to talk on but I think that would segment into what I was going to talk about. Innovation is really a big topic within the government. In this dynamic global workgroup, where there are changes every day, where a local competitor is no longer someone you have to worry about to get across the ocean, innovation is the key that can keep us on the edge as an economic competitor. That’s why the Workforce Development System that we have engineered, that we have reformed, has the goal of being business-driven, the goal of being sensitive to the local economic needs, whereas is market driven, that it also brings a sense of symbiotic relationships between employers, between the local partners, state government, and obviously the workers.

Innovation is the key to keeping alive the business engine and so that applies to not how we react to changes in the workplace, but how to anticipate them. That’s what I’m going to address. How do we anticipate changes not just being brought on by globalization, but there are many changes in the workplace: women are working more and more out of homes. It’s how we work, where we work, when we work, what kind of benefits we’re getting, what applies to our pension and personal lives. In so doing, to better anticipate these changes, the first major policy changes Secretary Elaine Chao adopted for the first month into her tenure in 2001 was to create an office, called the Office of the 21st Century Workforce. What that essentially does is to study the demographic and the changes in our nation’s workforce, the makeup of our workforce, where they work, where are the gaps. In identifying these gaps, this office then is charged with going out to try to bridge those gaps in advancing and providing technical resources and in setting up opportunities for them, for groups to be trained. This is not a grand making opportunity, but really more about a technical know-how to help [the community].

I’m going to give you two examples today. One: I’ve just come back from Washington. The month of May is the Asian and Pacific origin month, as most of you know. Every May since 2001, the Department of Labor, under the leadership of Secretary Chao, has been hosting an annual summit for Asian Pacific American federal employees. It’s not a large number: I would say, maybe Asian Pacific Americans comprise about 4.5% of the federal workforce. Most of them have needs just like any other worker who is facing and who is in an increasingly technologically-driven workplace needing to adopt new skills. In addition, many of them who were immigrants and may have special needs, especially as it applies to the softer side of the workplace. We’re talking about communication, networking, talking about writing skills. When we started this summit about four years ago, it was attended only by about 200 federal employees. This last summit that was held on Tuesday was attended by 1265 employees from all around the country, not just federal employees that are based in Washington, but who came from Utah to Wichita, and all of them from different branches of the federal government, who have the same needs.

Over the last four years we have, during the evaluation process, asked them, “what are the top things that you need?” and increasingly we’ve been hearing the skills in networking and the skills in communication and presentation. After listening to them, we customize and we model our training skills presentations. We bring in experts that address small sessions that would be really interactive and then we added emotional IQ sessions and added a special panel of executive coaching, fellow Asian American employees at a very senior level that would be kind of a mentor to these federal employees. We see that this is really a model that could be expanded out to a pan-Asian workplace, but of course, we wanted to make sure that we do this as a model technique, concentrating on this one sect of Asian Americans, so that we know what we can address in needs as well, so that it doesn’t get to lose focus.

The second initiative that we’ve also done is called the Opportunities Conference. These two initiatives are called events and special projects that are run out of the Office of the 21st Century Workforce. The Opportunities Conference is actually a conference that reaches out to two segments of the fastest growing communities of the nation: Hispanic Americans and Asian Pacific Americans. In October, in the Fall of the past two years, we’ve been hosting this Opportunities Conference and we’ve been partnering. I think that’s the key, that we bring in other federal partners, that it is not being led by the Department of Labor, but we’re institutionalizing the need for Asian Pacific Americans to have these resources, to have this exposure, to have the funding for these training opportunities by leading the federal government, by leading SBA, by leading the Department of Commerce, by leading the Department of Justice to come in to partner with us. Besides the Federal Employee Summit, the Opportunities Conference brings in Hispanic Americans and Asian Pacific Americans, mostly businesses, small businesses; these are entrepreneurs and community organizations.

The goal is how to foster the partnerships between federal government and these groups; how to do business. For example, how do you read a grant even? It’s an entire workshop in itself, how do you read a federal [inaudible]?, how to do you even get to the point before you can start applying for a grant, how do you prepare yourself, as a community organization, to go to this level? There’s a lot of capacity-building there, there’s a lot of also training for both businesses and community groups so I encourage those who are interested to look it up on our website.

John Mogulescu: We turn to you now. New York City in the past couple of years has totally changed the way they look at the delivery of services and did away with one agency and salary and services under the Small Businesses Services Agency. You, I know, are directly related to some of that work. What do you think the benefit of that has been, and how has the change really affected people in the field and prospective workers and workers that perhaps that have been given the opportunity? And I’m going to ask again our panelists to limit their comments so we can get questions in.

Marilyn Shea: I think probably over the last two years there has been more change than I have seen in over twenty years in New York City. Two years ago the mayor decided to abolish the Department of Employment, which has been overseeing the federal workforce funds, and transferred responsibility for the Adult Funding Stream, the Dislocated Worker Funding Stream, responsibility for the One Stop System and the Workforce Investment Board, and put it all into an economic development agency, the Department of Small Business Services. And they moved the youth programs to the Office of Youth and Community Development.

What has happened over the last two years is really phenomenal. For those of you who are familiar with the system, when WIA was first implemented, there was a requirement that there be at least one One Stop Center—they’re called Workforce Fund Centers here in New York—but one center per local area. The law was not designed for New York City, but, at the time, to be compliant with the law, there was one center established in Jamaica, Queens for the entire five boroughs, an eight million population there. So now there is full service Career Center in each borough, and there are plans to open two additional ones this summer that will be operated by CUNY. The focus is on a demand-driven system, and by that we mean that instead of training people and then going out to help them find jobs, we have a focus to really understand what’s happening in the economy, establishing closer relationships with business, understand what they need now in terms of workforce, what they predict they’re going to need in the future, and then help the workforce get the skills and knowledge they need to fill those jobs.

Over the past year, the Small Business Services has developed a sales force of people that go out and meet with businesses—often not only workforce services, but other business services—and offer to help them recruit. Recently they have set up a hiring center that is going to serve as a citywide coordinating body, so if someone in Queens has a job opening, then people in all boroughs will know about what that job opening is. They will have an assessment process so that people that are referred to these jobs will be assessed first to make sure they have the skills and the knowledge they need to keep those jobs. There are some really exciting projects all over the city: Hunt’s Point, the Workforce Center up there, the Fulton Fish Market will be going in, opening up there, I believe next month. They are going to be preparing and recruiting people right out of the community. The same thing is happening in Brooklyn. A center has just been open in Staten Island and certainly in the Bronx as well as Queens. I am thrilled about the accomplishments. The focus is on serving both the business and the job seekers. I think there has been a tremendous amount of progress.

John Mogulescu: Let me turn to Katy who mentioned, I think in your opening remarks, the Trade Adjustment Assistance, that program and your involvement in that. Maybe you can talk a little bit about that and its role in the Workforce Development System.

Katy Gaul: Yes, I’d be glad to. I think that, back to what we were talking about even earlier about funding streams, we’ve heard a little bit about macro, I’m going to go micro. I’m going to talk specifically about one funding stream and the Trade Reformat of 2002, which impacted the Trade Act of 1974. What’s happening here locally is just what Marilyn was talking about: it’s innovative, you said innovative, we all have said that word. It’s innovative, it’s collaborative and what it is, is that at our Workforce One Career Centers, we are assisting trade affected workers and we are doing it through guidelines, through the Trade Act; we’re following the letter.

But we’re also bringing in our own unique New York innovations to it by having this business-driven approach and making sure that those that are affected by trade are getting the job services, search services that they need to go out and become reemployed. Just to let you know, we do outreach to companies that we know that are closing because of trade affection; we do outreach to companies that are closing period, but specifically narrowly to stay on track here, we mentioned the petition process for customers who were employed to apply to become a trade affected worker, get that notice, so they can come into Workforce One Career Centers and access the full menu of services that the government has put in place for them. What they have is very similar to what any New Yorker can walk in and access, but we just have enhanced it to make sure that we’re helping these folks out because we’ve identified them as a population that we wanted to make sure is retrained and reenters the workforce. So customers are able to come into our career centers and access the full menu, as I just said, including job search, health coverage, tax credit, and income support.

I think that what I wanted to say about these services is that we have employed a team approach, that staff both from Small Business Services and our vendors, as well as the State Department of Labor have worked collaboratively to make sure that these trade affected workers get full access to any benefit and programs that are available to them, and then mainly, that they get retrained if necessary in demand-driven occupations and they get access to this full range of business opportunities that are out there, as we’re making collaborations with businesses in our local community. I think that that’s probably what is going on locally with the Trade Adjustment Act and how we’re able to serve those petitioners that are in our area.

John Mogulescu: Let me now just open to any of you some of my reaction and then try to bring some of the audience in as well. On the one hand, listening to all of you, I would say, what all of you talked about was more positive results, and yet we read every day in the paper that we are coming up short, that we are being challenged by other countries like China and others, that our workers on the one hand don’t necessarily have the educational background to compete, and at the same time, certain jobs do not pay enough and yet they can’t be paid any lower because our competitors may not be paying the range that we are. I guess my question to all of you is, within the framework of your generally positive opening statements, why is it that there is this perception out there that things are troubling, and down the road a bit we may have some real problems? I mean, is it perception or is there a reality? I’m just curious as to your reaction. You can’t read the newspaper any day without some aspect of us being in this competitive fight, that somehow we’re falling a bit short. I’m just wondering if any of you would want to provoke a little bit here as well, if any of you would want to comment.

Angelica Tang: I’ve just come back from a summit where a lot of these issues were discussed among the White House. We haven’t discussed quite what the President has started, called the High Growth Job Training Initiative, where we actually went out and identified the top 12 or so industries that are expected to have tremendous growth over the next decade, and our sectors or industries that are facing a shortage of skills that are much needed and are not being competitive. We go and meet with the leaders of these industries, and time and time again they’re telling us the same thing, “We don’t have the skills. We don’t have the workers with the skills to meet these jobs.” I think we’re talking about education being key here, but a must, obviously, is to start early and then we need to go into an area we call contextual learning—that you have to apply to your job, to apply your knowledge to something that you would use in the workplace. Unless we do that, we’re really falling behind.

I’d like to quote from someone who recently, who is one our nation’s finest—I want to see you if you can guess who it is—the finest innovator and entrepreneur of our generation. He gave some remarks recently at a national education summit and he said, “Training the workforce of tomorrow with the high schools of today is like trying to teach kids about today’s computers on a 50-year-old mainframe. It’s the wrong tool for the times. Our high schools were designed fifty years ago to meet the needs of another age. Until we design them to meet the needs of the 21st century, we will continue to limit and even ruin the lives of millions of Americans every year. Today, only one third of our students graduate from high school ready for college, work, and citizenship.” Anybody want to guess who said that? Bill Gates. You know what, Bill Gates neglected to talk about what is scary; when he talks about one third of the students who graduate from high school, he looked at ready for work, but only 70% actually really graduate.

And then, when I reference contextual learning, it’s what are you learning, even if you graduate, you learn whole sets of knowledge that you can’t really apply to your workplace. You get the grades, but let’s say, I see a very good friend of mine, Joyce Lee, who’s the Chief Architect for [inaudible]. Let’s say she’s an architect, right? In our days, when we learned math, we learned trigonometry or calculus, all you learned is formulas on how to do trig, how do you draw parabolas, right? And you swore at that time you would never take another math class after that stupid class, and you never used it. But today, let’s say if Joyce were to go back to school, if she were an architecture student… We, at the Department of Labor, fund certain initiatives, especially with community colleges that we call career academies and which we really try to concentrate on the concept of contextual learning. The idea is that you learn better if you can apply the knowledge in some execution. Let’s say if she were asked to design a bridge, what we’d be asking her to do is not just not just apply physics and math equations, but we’d be asking her for chemistry of compounds that would resist the rust and corrosion of whatever it was, and all of that was for support of AutoCAD and simulations, but she would have to know how to apply it, not just know how to use that equation. What I’m trying to bring in is really education to complement our vast Workforce Development System.

John Mogulescu: Anybody else wants to pick up the mic and share [???]

Marilyn Shea: John, there is an adage about thinking globally but acting locally, and that’s what we’re trying to do with the Workforce Investment Board: really understand what is happening here in the city. Some of our challenges are that one, we need good data, we need good economic data and we need good demographic data. And it’s not that it doesn’t exist, it’s just that there is so much in the city and there is no one place to access and really have a good understanding of what is going on. But, given that constraint, and actually it is one of the WIB’s goals is to really support, providing critical labor market information is on our agenda. Short of that, we are doing other things now. We’re conducting research projects, we’re doing focus groups, we’re meeting people and talking particularly with businesses about what’s happening and what their needs are. We’re taking a spectral approach. Right now the Board is looking at health care and hospitality, but the Small Business Services Department, which is actually the program operator for the system has created industry depth for seven or eight industries, so we’re trying to develop the expertise of really understanding what’s happening in these industries, what are their needs now and what are their needs in the future.

With the research that we’ve done, we’re uncovering several cross-cutting issues. The first one is simply work readiness. Yes, we’re not graduating enough engineers and scientists, but at the same time what the businesses and employers in New York City are telling us is even entry-level workers are not coming equipped to work. They don’t have the necessary basic skills, sometimes the so-called soft skills that would enable them to come on time, take responsibility, and work with each other. They don’t have understanding of the system. They don’t know how to use technology. One area that we are really going to be focusing on next year is working with the Nation Consortium on developing a work readiness initiative that would include an assessment tool curriculum that is being developed and eventually having a work readiness credential not only for adults, but we’re even going to be working with the school system to integrate that into the school system. At least people will be ready to work when they get to work. Employers so frequently say, “If we just have that, we can train them on the specific application that we may want them to provide.”

The other cross-cutting issue is something that I think we’re all very integrally involved in is the fact that the workforce in New York City is made up of 43% of non­native-born people. Of course, that has all kinds of ramifications. We need a much better understanding of who is in the city, what education levels they have, what languages they speak, what languages they don’t speak. A real critical issue that we’re looking at is how important it is to be able to speak the English language in New York City. Some of the earlier immigrants have been able to successfully have careers with never speaking English. Is that still possible? I would argue no, particularly after September 11 down in the garment district, for example. So many people were dislocated that we had to work on helping them get English language skills, as well as other skills. These are important things that we can be going while the whole issue of globalization goes on.

John, I don’t know whether you read the New York Times today, but Tom Friedman published his book on the flat world. The article today in the paper about what is it going to take for our young people, parents are asking this all the time, and parents are asking him, “Should my children study Chinese?” He says that he’s not an educator and can’t answer that, but what he can tell them based on a lot of solid advice is that it’s important for people to be able to learn how to learn because at the rapid pace of change in this world and in this economy, jobs are going to be created and going to disappear, and it’s going to be important to understand how to find out how to keep up with this rapid pace of change. That was out of the New York Times today, Tom Friedman’s advice.

John Mogulescu: I actually saw that today. Of course, he also talked about why there are so many people in America getting their news from Jon Stewart on the Daily Show, but that’s another question. I just want to pause for a moment and I will go back to questioning the panel, but I wonder if there are any pressing questions that anyone here has. Yes, why don’t we open up. Please..? And if you want to introduce yourself, you may, or just not, and just ask the question.

Male Audience Member: I am a representative of the Indo-Caribbean people in New York City, on many different levels, including business. I’m also a journalist. I grew up in [inaudible], which follows a British system of education. Basically, you are in a competitive education system from the time you’re in first grade. Do you think that the reason that we’re in this position right now is because of the entire education system?

John Mogulescu: Do you want to address that to one of the panelists? Anyone wants to take a shot at answering that or trying to answer? Neil, you look like you’re…

Male Audience Member: There is a focus on the strength that we speak English with close to 98% literacy. Close to 73% of students who come out of high school can read and write English at a secondary level.

Neil Kleiman: Just one thing I would say and I think it’s something that might echo what we’ve been talking about recently is that, if you’re really talking about the global issues and how to deal with this and a lot of the issues that are coming out in the media, the article that I’m thinking about is on the cover of Newsweek this week, which is an article about China and it’s competitive advantages. This was written by an Indian American based in New York, writing about China. Some of you have seen the article, it was a very good piece. What I liked about the piece, it was kind of like a policy piece, it was very wonky, because in addition to all the analysis, at the end there were some recommendations, and the main recommendation was we’ve got to circle back to our education system and realize that we’re not cranking out enough people with engineering or technology degrees. And in general, I think this speaks of the whole issue of education.

I think what we’re really missing in this country, and I think including in the city, is a lack of leadership around education. I think one example, just to think because its something that we’re living with everyday, is what’s called the CFE lawsuit. The Campaign for Fiscal Equity has sued the State of New York to dispense more money to urban areas particularly in New York City. Now, without passing any judgment on that law suit, I think what’s troubling is that everybody seems to think if we flood the education system with more money, then we’ll have the answer and we’ll have the higher literary that you’re talking about, and I don’t think that’s true at all. I think what we have to do demands a lot more leadership, a lot more thinking in terms of: one, how do all the various grade levels connect? So one thing we’re talking about is what we call P-20, which is pre-kindergarten through first grade, and how do you have a seamless connection to junior high school, to high school, to college and to graduate work. Unless you begin to think in more of a seamless manner and the interconnection in this country, then there’s no way we’re going to begin to address this system. We have a very false bipartition between the traditional public school system and then the postsecondary system; there’s almost a meat clever that comes down at the 12th grade, and the two don’t connect.

I think that there are certain ways that you can begin to deal with this, and I’ll give just two examples. One, and this is something that I think we should be very proud of in New York, the City University of New York has the greatest number of programs as a higher education institution working with the public schools. This is an example of not necessarily pouring more money into the public schools, but a higher education institution taking the responsibility to work with the local public schools. Another example, which I don’t think we’re seeing the leadership on, and this is just something that happens to be on my mind, we talk about the need for engineering degrees, in particular especially in a city like New York, we have very weak overall engineering programs in this city. PolyTech and downtown Brooklyn are pretty good, but then City College and Columbia have modest programs, and that’s basically it, which is ridiculous.

What we need is leadership from our higher education presidents and chancellors to come together—imagine that!—and actually talk about how can we collectively, not just within our institutions, but collectively, begin to focus on the areas where we need the greatest technology, engineering degrees, what have you, and at the same time executive leadership from the mayor or the governor, what have you, to try and convene those educational leaders to begin, again, not pouring more money in, but to be creative in the ways that we need to, to have a seamless system and one oriented towards the skill sets that we need.

John Mogulescu: I think that it’s no surprise that any time you talk about workforce development, it ultimately circles back to education. I’m going to continue to open up because there are a couple of other people.

Female Audience Member [Betty Lee Sung]: Yes, I’m Betty Lee Sung. I’m Chair of AAARI, also professor of Asian American Studies some time ago. My studies have always been on the Chinese American community or Asian Americans, and I think that we’ve been talking a lot about generalities, and I’d like to bring it down to more specifics. Marilyn, you just alluded to that, and I was very happy that you were going to mention some of that, I thought perhaps you would go further; that is, talk about specific communities or have information about specific communities like the lack of language, and also the circumstances that impact certain communities like what 9/11 did to Chinatown. At one time half the Chinese females in New York City were employed by garment factories. Now that’s a heavy, heavy proportion. Almost as many of the males were in the restaurant industry and they were in two industries. When 9/11 impacted and they cut off the transportation and inroads into Chinatown, the community was impacted so heavily. And then, of course, a lot of the garment factories died, a lot of the restaurants closed their doors, and a lot of people were out of work.

The idea is, have you ever looked at specific communities and said, “Oh, there’s a tremendous need, a specific need of these communities, and also, what are the characteristics of the workforce there?” One of them that you mentioned was the lack of English language. Taking these considerations and characteristics into question, have you developed any programs that will say, “Okay, how can we help the women find other sources of employment, or how do we replace the industries that were affected and sort of disappeared because of circumstances beyond their control?”

Marilyn Shea: First of all, I want your card [laughter]. The answer to your question: the WIB, I, and colleagues have been working with this over this past year to be strategic. One of the key issues, as I say, is the whole question about what kinds of policies the city should have for assisting workers and businesses with a very multicultural, multi-ethnic workforce. Our thinking is that there are a lot of people in the city that have information. One of the roles the WIB can play is as a convener. The WIB is going to be putting together a conference, a symposium, something, where we can bring people together who have knowledge about what is happening in the city. It’s the first step to just start getting answers to questions that you’ve just raised. I really would love to invite you and hope you will join us, as we try to put this conference together and really understand what kind of programs should be designed to serve different populations in the city. We would very much welcome your feedback.

Betty Lee Sung: Do you fund grants to do the study?

Marilyn Shea: We do. We have money and another important role of the Board is to leverage and get other partners to help support it, so definitely.

Katy Gaul: I’m sorry. Can I jump in a little bit? I just want to tell you that one of the way Small Business Services has been doing it is that we focus a little bit reversed of the way you were framing it. You were saying we’ve got there, what I’m going to call dislocated workers, these women and men who are working in restaurants or garment industries that are out of work. How can we serve them? What we’re doing is we’re saying, “Where are the jobs?” We’re going from ‘where are the jobs?’ to ‘what are the training programs that feed well into that, have great placement rates, or are doing really well at training people for the current demand occupation?’ Then, when we get dislocated workers into our Workforce One Career Centers, we can put them on that track. We get those dislocated workers, those garment industry women, and those men from the restaurant industry. We have this track where we’re starting with the job and going back that way. That’s the way that we frame it right now, where we’re looking to help dislocated workers as well as all adults who are looking for work.

Betty Lee Sung: Were you able to …?

Katy Gaul: Around the industry, the way I’m talking about right now, we really have done a lot of innovation and we have just opened our fifth Workforce One Career Center this year, in 2005, in Staten Island. Back in the time of 9/11, I know there was lots of activity—I don’t want to comment on that because I wasn’t actually with the Small Business at the time, or actually it was the Department of Employment at the time—a lot of changes and innovation. I just wanted to talk about the way that we’re framing it today.

Angelica Tang: The issue is still the people that need additional help. If they need language skills, if they need other things, and that’s the part we’re trying to figure out now, even as people are coming into our centers. They need additional help. We need to develop the system so that we can have specialized services particularly for language proficiency or cultural issues.

John Mogulescu: We’re going to go to the next question.

Female Audience Member: I have a question and comment on the topic of [exports]. I don’t think we’re addressing it in the workforce or in education. There seems to be a huge schism between Friedman and everyone else who are talking about engineers and this and are going to be out-paid, and it’s the whole issue which I understand and I recognize. And then when you say, well, education, but in our education system, meaning the American education system, we have not addressed the workplace. In the ’60s, with the cultural revolution we went through, we also then threw out the rule, which I don’t think the British system did. We don’t need geography. We don’t need to learn certain grammatical rules. I remember being in ninth grade, being asked, “Do you want to study punctuation or do you want do a Beatle’s song?” What is a ninth-grader going to say? So they lost that whole thing and that’s why I know my parent’s generation, they knew where countries were, even when we didn’t necessarily need to know. That’s why Asians and others really know that because they sort of had that system that you had to learn these things and memorize things. I think, how can you get to these things where we can produce workers who can be engineers and all the other things that we say we need and that we’re losing, if you have a system that doesn’t regard that? I thought I would ask the panelists. That’s to me, as a person in education and in the workplace, saying, I don’t see how we’re going to get where we want to go unless we address this huge issue that you raised, over there. Because you can’t produce people unless we say to kids, “You might not want to study and learn twelve different things, but you have to and that’s what China and other cultures have done and have been successful.” And obviously we’ve been so successful because we have the great freedom; you’ve had Bill Gates, who was able to have the innovation. There needs to be a balance as we think it through, I would love to hear the panelists’ thoughts.

John Mogulescu: I’m an educator and I’m happy and even admiring… again, because we have little time and in some ways you could probably have a day of discussion related to whether you would agree or disagree with what you said. My sense is I would agree with some of the things you said, but we’re 45 to 50 years beyond the ’60s and so to blame everything on the ’60s at the moment, I think, in some ways…

Audience member: I’m not blaming the ’60s…

John Mogulescu: I am exceedingly critical of what we do in our educational system. I think there is much that needs to be done. I’m also very supportive of what Joel Klein is trying to do in New York City and I think we all have to get behind him in that respect. But the issues, and again I can only begin to talk about them, the education system in New York City happens to serve certain people quite well. They do fine, they wind up in good colleges, they’re well educated, and there are some that it serves okay, and then there are whole large numbers of young kids that it serves hardly at all.

The question is, what is it about the system that has created that situation? We really don’t have time to go into that. In fact, it’s a stretch even as far as what our topic is at hand, but I’m not surprised that it has come back to that, because it seems there are so many issues related to that and if you can get kids to graduate, reading and writing better, and not, as Angelica said, lose two thirds of them along the way, we’re going to clearly do better. But, I think, it’s not simply about that we’ve moved away from the basics or that they would rather serve a Beatles song as opposed to something else. I think it has to do with how we address education for different parts of our population. It’s a very complicated time to think. Who are the teachers who wind up teaching in the South Bronx as opposed to who are the teachers who wind up teaching kids on the Upper East Side? Even that is different. There are so many aspects of this, and I wish we could go into more, but we just don’t have time and I’m just beginning.

Angelica Tang: I wish we could go into more, but that is the spirit behind the No Child Left Behind Act started by President Bush in 2002 is really to go back to the basics: reading, get everyone, all of our students back to being able to read, core competencies.

John Mogulescu: I would even argue, forgetting K-12, what do you do? We’re talking about large numbers of people with language difficulties, okay? Marilyn talked about what we need to do, that we need to see that, she said that it’s essential that they learn English, and I don’t think there’s any question. But what do you do though when someone doesn’t speak English at all. We want to try to get them to learn English, but let’s say it’s going to take a couple of years to be proficient, what happens to that person in the interim period? What do we do? Do we say that they’re not employable? I’m not so sure. How do you answer that question?

Angelica Tang: I just want to point out the fact that we just finished a round of competition on the ETA, Employment Training Administration, for grants that would specifically serve to Limited English Proficiency population, the LEP population. I’m not in a position to comment, after we’ve just finished this round, but we have been over the last two years looking at different models to adjust to this need. Like I said, it’s really about anticipating changes.

John Mogulescu: Paul, you got a question in the back?

Male Audience Member: Yes, John. A large proportion of the city’s workforce is undocumented, especially in ethnic communities. I’m specifically working right now a Korean group and an African group. Is there any support for them?

John Mogulescu: Any one of the panelists going to answer that?

Marilyn Shea: There could be. The WIA itself requires citizenship or some kind of ability to work in this country, but WIA funds aren’t the only funds available in the city, and, as I mentioned before, the role of the WIB is to leverage funds, and to figure out what the needs are and then figure out how to fund them. For undocumented workers, we would have to be more creative in how we could assist them. The City Claims Department report, at least to my understanding of the new New Yorkers, is counting both documented and undocumented people. We are actually having Joe Salvo from the Planning Department come in and do a presentation to the Board, specifically on who is here, where are they, regardless of documentation, and really trying to develop workforce policies for the benefit depending on their needs.

Angelica Tang: In addition, the workforce development services may not be accessible to this population, but they’re still protected under our nation’s vast employment laws. They’re entitled to protection in the workplace—safety, a safe environment, and the wage and hour regulations still apply to them.

John Mogulescu: There was a question over here.

Female Audience Member: I was just wondering, in your career track, is social work in there?

Katy Gaul: I am a social worker. I knew that. I knew that. So that’s why your question, about customers or about training folks to become social workers? In our training, we really look at getting people who… People have families and responsibilities, so what we’re looking at is people coming into our Workforce One Career Centers to get them a skill set or a job that’s appropriate for them, and then if they’re interested in higher education or further on that’s something that’s going to have to be as they’re working. It’s not that we specifically are able to fund; we’re not able to fund someone to get a master’s in social work through out Workforce One Career Center at all. But I know that in our Business Hiring Center, now our new vendor for that is [Seedco], and they were talking about that there are a lot of jobs at entry level from case workers and social services that are very, it’s an area that, it’s a sector-based approach. They are specifically looking at that as a sector in the human services field, the women and men that do the case management and assisting case manager. We do have a sector-based approach to look at how we can address the needs in that area of workforce.

Audience Member: You were talking about, it depends on whether you are…

Katy Gaul: At the Business Hiring Center, that is going to be the area that they brought up and they will be specifically looking at what the demand is in that area.

John Mogulescu: Are there any other questions at the moment? This would be our last. We’re going to be running out of time, and I want to ask our panelists, we’ve been a little all over the place, I guess. But we’re going to have one more question and we’re going to ask our panelists each to take a minute or so if they wish to kind of give some final closing thoughts or comments.

Male Audience Member: A lot of starting a company is pretty much small businesses in USA, that very active, which is a good thing. Also, the SBA is very active and involved in companies. One of the challenges of a small business owner who deals with new technology is the beginning or entry-level workers. It’s very challenging right now. You’re looking at the people who have long experience getting laid off at big corporations. They have very high paid salary, but they’re not quite ready to fit into the new technology area. They’re going to need the same start as the new powers picking up. I think that early beginner-training, the way you call it, I would like to see the government step in to have a program, to form some kind of internship program or some that kind of way for the beginner experience it for our young kids. That’s the future of how we’re going to compete. You are talking about you don’t have a skill set of the employee. There are two ways to look at this: do you really pay that much money or do you want to start early? If they are kids is young, while it’s new, they should start early, but who is going to fund them, especially for a small start-up company, they don’t have a lot of money, they are hungry for these kinds of offers, If the government can fund some kind of program to market certain small business centers and help them create this program and bring in the way for our kids.

Marilyn Shea: There are new programs funded by the Department of Youth and Community Development. I’m concerned that you don’t know about them. But I think I understand why. They’re operating on a very small field now. They have all of the things that you described, the internships, mentoring programs, all kinds of things. I’ll be happy to give you information afterwards, if you’re trying to find out more about this. Butt they need to be developed, and they need the input from you, to hear what the needs are of small business owners.

Male Audience Member: If you team up with the bank or insurance group to help the kinds build they’re portfolios very young, getting in good financial situations, it would be much more attractive. The kinds are going to be in the growing industries, master’s programs, it would be very interesting.

Katy Gaul: At the Department of Labor, we do run a very low cost internship program. Throughout the year and also…

Male Audience Member: The problem with most internship programs is they are run by the larger corporations; it never happens with the smaller businesses.

John Mogulescu: I’m going to ask our panelists if they want to take a minute just to give any final thoughts or comments. I’m going to be starting with Neil Kleiman, if you would like to.

Neil Kleiman: One of the things I’m struck by is that if you take the big method of the education out of that, we’ve been talking a lot about various workforce and economic development programs, whether with focus on small business, entrepreneurs, individuals, immigrant groups, undocumented people, all that. What I think is an incredible thing about New York City is that we have programs out there to address almost everything we’ve talked about. But, one of the more difficult things about New York City is that it isn’t Boston so it’s very difficult to sort of find where those programs are and how they connect, and you might even be connected to some program that very easily links to another and have no idea. The good news is, and this is represented here on the panel, is the city is getting much better through things like 311, through the One Stop Career Centers, through Business Solution Centers. But we still have a little ways to go. I think the issue here is that a lot of what we have talked about we’re beginning to develop, and there are some programs historically that are on the books, it’s a matter of beginning to see how we can connect everybody to them.

Angelica Tang: Being a former advocate for immigrants, I continue to be an advocate for immigrants and newcomers to the city that bring so many of their talents and gifts to our diversity. I hear that a lot, sometimes there could be a synonymous pairing of immigrants with draining of economy or that they have special needs and that they might have diverted away from our workforce needs. I do want to say that in light of what’s happening around the globe, when we have this increasingly dynamic economy. We have, here in the United States, over almost 50% of our U.S. patents that are being held by foreign companies or foreign individuals. That is a very strong showing of the gifts that are being brought to this country. It’s not so much that we have to necessarily talk about the negative impact of globalization. Think about that as an opportunity for us to grow and to stay competitive and anticipate the trends and changes in this global workplace.

Katy Gaul: I think one of the things I’d like to add to this conversation, someone had asked about to tell you a little bit about what New York has been doing at the Business Solution Centers and what we’re doing to help small business and businesses stay competitive and stay local and stay in New York. What we have is we have these co­located Business Solution Centers that are at our Workforce One Career Centers and they’re also going to be in some other locations when we move downtown—right at our offices on John Street. These kinds of things are ways that help businesses get in touch with the workforce, help them get in touch with what’s going to support them in government and help get them in touch with other affiliate networks about starting-up costs, working on language issues, working on cultural issues, soft skills as well. I just wanted to put that out there that’s one of the things that the Small Business Services is doing, as Neil mentioned. That’s something that helps locals and there’s a lot of emphasis always on making sure that the Applebee’s that is opening in Bed-Stuy employs people from that neighborhood, helping local people stay local and get employed there, and that’s something that we’re very focused on.

Marilyn Shea: My last comment is that we are currently putting together a three-year plan for the local Workforce Investment System for the City of New York. Hopefully, it’s going to be posted on our Website for comment on Monday, and if not Monday, then Tuesday. One of the authors is sitting next to me here, and the other is back in the office writing and signing. The intention of this plan is to provide a vision. I invite each of you to look at it and we are sincerely and genuinely seeking comment on the whole system that we’re planning for the next three years. The website is www.nyc.gov/wib. Look for it either late Monday afternoon, or on Tuesday. It will out for a 30-day comment period. The guys are going to be working on it all weekend. Hopefully, you will really find it exciting that we look for your ideas.

John Mogulescu: I just wanted to take a moment to thank the panelists and thank you folks. [Applause.] It’s Friday afternoon, at 4:30, and we’re still at it, but we appreciate that you are here listening to us all talk. Have a nice weekend, thank you.

Neil Kleiman: And if people want some reports, I have a few here from my organization.