Senate Asked For Training Bucks

Date: Tuesday, May 20, 2003 8:08 PM

JOB DESTRUCTION NEWSLETTER

www.ZaZona.com

Tech schools want a bigger piece of the loot that is collected from the
$1,000 H-1B visa fee. They argue that Americans have to be trained or
companies will import more H-1Bs. It's a false argument because a lack
of training or skills has never been the reason that U.S. companies
prefer H-1Bs - they hire H-1Bs to save money on wages and to have
docile indentured labor. The tech schools wouldn't get any money at all
if their logic was true since companies would prefer these newly
skilled IT people over H-1Bs. In other words, no H-1B means no
government handouts to the paper mills.

These training programs are nothing more than boondoggles that do
nothing to help unemployed technical workers find jobs. The only jobs
that are likely to be produced would be a few tech teachers who will
get temporary jobs to teach their fellow unemployed co-workers how to
fix TVs or change bed pans.

For those of you that aren't familiar with these training programs,
email me and I'll send you information from previous newsletters.

http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=10000065

IT Vendors Lobby Congress For More Tech-Training Dollars

Vendor reps want more funding from the Workforce Investment Act to be
used to train IT workers and people who use technology.

By InformationWeek
May 15, 2003 (04:40)
URL:
http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=1000006
5

A group of IT vendor representatives on Thursday lobbied a Senate
subcommittee that manages some $11 billion in workforce training
funding to direct a greater portion of that money to developing
technology skills. The Workforce Investment Act, which distributes
funds to workforce training centers managed by each state, is pending
reauthorization by Congress.

Tech-industry reps say most of the funding has gone to training for Old
Economy jobs such as manufacturing. They would like to see more funding
go to training--not just for IT workers, but for people who use
technology, such as clerical or call-center workers. "We needed to get
in front of legislators and convince them that the IT industry needs to
be more of a recipient of those funds," says Martin Bean, chief
operating officer at IT training company New Horizons and chairman of
the CompTIA trade association's Technology Workforce Coalition. "Every
knowledge worker in America is becoming more and more dependent on
technology to do their jobs."

The coalition is concerned that legislators will put a cap on funding
for training IT workers because of the surge in unemployment for those
workers, Bean says. If legislators limit funding because they think
there's a surplus of skilled IT workers in the United States, there
won't be enough skilled IT workers when the economy improves, he
argues. That, in turn, could increase the reliance on offshore IT
workers or those who come to the United States on the H-1B visa
program. A similar scenario could happen if not enough knowledge
workers are getting technology training, he says. Adds Bean: "We'd like
to think that these funds can be used to educate Americans for these
jobs rather than relying on imported skilled labor from other parts of
the world, or more tragically, losing jobs to overseas workers."

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