(4 of 4)
Some states are moving to fill the void. Massachusetts, for example, last year set up the Bay State Skills Corp. and endowed it with $8 million to establish training programs. Already 3,400 people are learning such skills as computer programming and electromechanical drafting to qualify for jobs with 185 companies, including Honeywell and General Ship & Engine Works.
Labor unions are also actively pushing retraining. In September the United Auto Workers announced a $10 million joint venture with General Motors and the state of California to turn 8,400 laid-off GM employees into aerospace-equipment assemblers and data processing-machine repairers.
Though promising, the training now under way offers help to only a fraction of the structurally unemployed. The programs will have to be greatly expanded and improved through the combined efforts of industry, labor, governments and educational institutions. Giving today's workers the skills for tomorrow's jobs will be a formidable economic challenge for the 1980s.
—By Charles P. Alexander. Reported by Gisela Bolte/Washington and Paul A. Witteman/Detroit