By Marilyn Odendahl, Truth Staff
modendahl@etruth.com
ELKHART -- Gathering at Ivy Tech on Industrial Parkway Wednesday afternoon, state officials said companies are growing and jobs are available in Indiana but the local workforce downsized from the recreational vehicle industry will need to learn new skills to find employment in the booming industries.
The number of workers losing their jobs and Elkhart County's climbing unemployment rate brought Gov. Mitch Daniels to Northern Indiana to first meet with leaders of the RV and manufactured housing industries and then to announce the state's actions to help the thousands of laid-off workers.
"We've got a mismatch of skills in some cases and we have geographical challenges in others," Daniels said. "We're prepared to do all possible to help people connect with jobs that are waiting for them."
Along with to extending the hours of the local WorkOne offices and hiring additional staff, the state is making $3 million in training grants available to workers displaced from either the RV manufacturers or supplier companies. With the grant, qualified workers can receive up to $6,000 to pursue an associate's degree or certification in a program, like CNC machining, welding or medical training, that serves a high-need occupation.
The state is looking to Ivy Tech Community College to provide much of that training.
Underscoring the shortage in some industries, Tobias Buck, chairman and chief executive officer at Paragon Medical Inc., an orthopedics implant manufacturer in Pierceton, estimated that at any given time between 500 and 600 positions are unfulfilled in the orthopedics industry in Kosciusko County.
He is confident about the employment prospects of the jobless who get proper training.
"They'll find work," Buck said. "They can find work in Warsaw, if not with us, with other employers because the demand is certainly present."
Buck did not say what the hourly wages for these jobs were but Daniels characterized the orthopedics jobs as paying better than the RV and manufactured housing industries.
Although the opportunities may be there, glitches in the system could be preventing displaced workers from learning about the training and services available. Seated in the back of the room, one laid-off worker, Tammy Gambill, told the governor of her experience at WorkOne of waiting outside the office, standing in line for long periods of time, staff not being able to answer questions and having to go back repeatedly.
Daniels said he came to Elkhart County because of the "surge in applications" at the unemployment office. He then pointed to officials from the Indiana Department of Workforce Development who joined him at the press conference and told Gambill to tell them her experience so it would not happen again.
State Rep. Jackie Walorski, R-Jimtown, applauded the efforts by the governor and the DWD to help local workers. Already the number of complaints her office has received from displaced workers who are frustrated by the state's unemployment system has dropped from 50 calls a day to about two each day.
Also she wants the state to provide some assistance, whether dropping the sale tax on units sold in Indiana or tapping into low-interest loans, to the RV makers to help stabilize the industry. Indiana must embrace the RV industry, she said, because other states want those businesses.
"The options for cluster companies are extremely mind-boggling," Walorski said. "I think we need to send a signal that we want them to stay here."