Clinton Plan for Training Workers

The Republicans are trying desperately to make Hillary Clinton seem like an interfering radical female who would do untold damage to the nation’s “family values” if her husband is elected in November.

That’s ugly nonsense, but, on the other hand, nobody should underestimate her potentially substantive role in a Clinton Administration, especially on behalf of workers.

She is probably best known for her work with the much-admired Children’s Defense Fund. However, a much better indication of her influence is her effort to promote one of the Arkansas governor’s most exciting, proposals--and, yes, it is radical.

He is calling for a new, nationwide program to train young, non-college bound students to be job-ready so they can more easily make the enormously difficult transition from school to the world of work.

The basic idea is to develop an educational program that would include an apprenticeship-like program combining traditional high school learning with on-the-job training for the more than 60% of our students who don’t go on to college. They would begin the program around the age of 16, or sooner in some cases.

President Bush last week suddenly announced that he too favors more job training. His plan is far less extensive than Clinton’s and is designed partly to retrain workers he admits will lose the jobs that will be shifted from the United States to Mexico as a result of the proposed U.S.-Mexican-Canadian Free Trade Agreement.

The Bush plan’s focus is on these “dislocated” workers and disadvantaged youngsters. It doesn’t deal with the much larger problem of training for the majority of workers nor does it impose any training or retraining requirements on employers.

Still enamored of private school “vouchers,” Bush would give jobless workers and those about to lose their jobs $3,000 worth of government vouchers to help them pay private or public vocational schools for the training they need.

Bush figures that will cost about $3 billion a year, but he hasn’t even hinted how he would pay for it. He says only that such details can wait until after the election. His proposal seems to be a hurriedly designed response to the Clinton plan since it wasn’t offered until last week.

Probably more accurately reflecting his view is the fact that since 1980 he and President Reagan together have actually cut federal training programs 30%. Bush had even proposed getting rid of a long-established program to retrain workers who lose jobs due directly to foreign competition.

Clinton’s much more ambitious plan includes elements of the highly successful German apprenticeship system that covers more than 65% of all German students.

Complete details of the governor’s plan are still being formulated, but it isn’t a do-something-quick idea. It is based on an extensive study and report issued recently by the Commission on the Skills of the American Work Force.

The bipartisan commission worked for three years to devise recommendations that address the school-to-work transition problem and Congress has already begun hearings on some aspects of it.

Clinton proposes that, among other things, all employers with 50 or more workers spend 1.5% of their payrolls on continuing education and training for their workers or put that amount into a special fund and let the states do the training. (Many firms already pay that and more.)

The governor’s decision to make the issue part of his campaign was at least partly due to the role Hillary Clinton has played on the commission.

She was, until recently, co-chair of a committee to implement the dramatic recommendations of the commission which includes prominent national leaders of business, labor, education, government and private organizations.

As the wife of the presidential candidate, and the would-be president, Hillary Clinton couldn’t be in a better position to help implement those far-reaching recommendations.

The chances for action on the proposals are enhanced by the influence of powerful members of the bipartisan commission and its co-chairs, William Brock, labor secretary under President Reagan, and Ray Marshall, labor secretary under President Carter.

Another indication of the importance of the commission’s recommendations to Clinton is that the commission’s chairman, Ira C. Magaziner, is now a key Clinton campaign policy adviser.

Millions of our youngsters who finish high school, or drop out before graduation, are now just dumped on the labor market to fend for themselves, without any particular skills or links with any employer.

The result is that a huge proportion of our work force isn’t trained for the high-skill, high-wage jobs we need to compete in the global economy.

The proposal, as recommended by the commission and Hillary Clinton, would also continue general education for all public school students, with more testing to be sure they are getting one.

Those not planning to go to college would be enrolled in apprenticeship programs to train them both in classrooms and on the job for specific skills.

Yes, we already have some apprenticeship programs such as those in the construction industry where management and union, under state supervision, give workers classroom and on-the-job training. But the average age of the apprentices is 29, there are only about 300,000 and they need a high school education before they can even start.

Clinton’s plan, while it needs refinements, addresses the urgent need for a well-trained high-wage work force. Since Bush now says he too wants at least some additional training for workers, maybe something can at last be done to reach that goal.