Month: March 2006

West Memphis was in high spirits during last week’s dedication of Mid-South Community College’s Workforce Technology Center. The new $7 million center, part of a four-school consortium that includes Mid-South, Arkansas Northeastern College, East Arkansas Community College, and Phillips Community College, includes multimedia classrooms, automotive manufacturing training areas, and diesel maintenance technology equipment. The schools have joined forces to stimulate large-scale growth in Arkansas’ manufacturing sector, as well as the more immediate goal of training workers for the Hino Motors plant in Marion. We asked Mid-South president Glen Fenter why the group, known as ADTEC (Arkansas Delta Training and Education Consortium), is so important.

— By Ben Popper

Flyer: How did this consortium of colleges begin?

Fenter: Necessity is the mother of invention. When we started having conversations locally with the Hino Motors officials, we came to understand very rapidly that in order to maximize the opportunities of Hino and other foreign investors, one community college would not be enough to provide the wealth of workforce programs we would need for the region. So we began to communicate with our other members as to the rationale of commingling our efforts. The formalization of that effort really was a large part of the Department of Labor’s recent decision to give us a $5.9 million grant. Automotive manufacturing represents a huge opportunity for growth in our region, and we want to make sure we’re prepared for that.

At the dedication, Mike Beebe, the attorney general of Arkansas, spoke about adapting the curriculum to the needs of industry. Does tailoring yourself to one company limit your ability to grow in the future?

As we develop our school, we are allowing dozens of different kinds of industry to have input, not just automotive. The end result of this curriculum is to be prepared for all manufacturing areas.

What is the central goal of your facility?

To be successful in creating a workforce. That is our only true goal. This isn’t about growing enrollment; our goal is to make eastern Arkansas the absolute best location for industry to choose in North America. The equation that we use is “world-class geography plus world-class infrastructure plus world-class education equals world-class economy.” We have the interstates, airports, and intermodal facilities. We have the river, flat, cheap land, and are located in the center of the country. We have a population that, when educated, could meet any workforce demand.

What does your student body look like?

There are several populations. The first is the unemployed, and we have everything from literacy to adult education and work-based learning for those who may have missed some of their educational background. Then you start targeting the underemployed, those who want better jobs, so we will have night and weekend programs. The group missing from that is our kids. How do we capture and excite them? We are going to aggressively add programs to the public schools here to encourage our kids to consider this opportunity.

When and how did you make connections with industry in Japan?

The first model we had for creating this training consortium was based on distribution, warehousing, and logistics. We knew that was a big part of our economy and all those geographic variables are important to us. When a Hino location appeared here, we knew we would be shifting our focus from distribution and logistics into the manufacturing arena. We went to Japan in September of 2005 and began to establish relations with the Hino training models so we would be able to make as much progress as possible in terms of making them comfortable. While there, we saw the Hino High School, which is a great opportunity to see how they handle education. We saw their factories and the level of technological intensity there. A lot of what we saw in Japan reinforced what we already had in play.

Has there been any formal study of the center’s economic impact on the region?

There have been a number of projections. We’ve seen some estimates for the initial hiring at the new plants. The cumulative estimates are 1,000 new jobs, and that’s conservative. More aggressive estimates look to see that number grow many times over if these companies are as successful as we want to make them.

At one point, the Japanese auto industry was considered a threat to American jobs. Was there any negative reaction to foreign investors in Arkansas?

I think people are happy to see great education, job opportunity, and economy. It is something our citizens have longed for. I don’t think it matters to them who the company is. If they are willing to invest, we want to support them and grow them, as long as they are putting people in eastern Arkansas to work. We are offering classes today and have been training workers for the Hino plant for months.

Once crumbling and forgotten, the South Main Arts District has come a long way in recent years.

Art galleries, shops, and restaurants now dominate the area, and in keeping with the district’s overall improvement, the South Main Association (SMA) is hosting a series of neighborhood cleanups this spring. To start, four volunteers painted the railroad trestle near Front and Butler streets red last week.

“We’re painting the bridge to add to the artsy quality of the neighborhood,” said Becky Beaton, a member of the SMA. “A group of artists had a meeting, and red was the color they chose.”

But red entered into the project another way too. Beaton says the association feared there would be too much red tape if they asked for the city’s permission to paint the bridge.

“We thought it’d be best to do it first and apologize later,” she said.

Last year, the trestle over G.E. Patterson was painted red, and on April 29th, the trestle on Butler near South Main will be painted as well.

The April 29th event will also be a neighborhood-wide cleanup and planting in conjunction with the Hands On Memphis Servathon.

Three weeks ago, Memphis City Beautiful helped the South Main Association organize an event to pick up litter.

“We cleaned up some eyesores [and trash] that businesses had accumulated in their alleys,” said Beaton. “We cut down tall weeds, trimmed some trees, and picked up some garbage. We just want the neighborhood to have an overall cared-for feeling.”

The association is also organizing an effort to have artists paint their work on parking meters along South Main.

“When I used to come down here in 1996 for the Blues Music Awards, this area was a ghost town,” said SMA member Priscilla Hernandez as she painted. “With all the galleries and residential construction, the neighborhood’s made a phenomenal change for the better.”

Talk about a war of the sexes.

A recent proposal to protect women’s rights to equal pay in Tennessee has divided legislators between those protecting the interests of women and those protecting the interests of business. And so far, outspoken combatants on both sides have been female.

“I was in the government operations committee the other day, and one of the young Republican women just picked the bill to pieces,” says Representative Beverly Marrero from Memphis. “She seemed to be more concerned with how it might affect business and whether they were going to be happy with it. I guess that’s why I’m a Democrat and she’s a Republican.”

The bill was introduced by state senator Kim McMillan and is opposed by the Tennessee Chamber of Commerce and Industry, headed by President Deb Wooley. Both women acknowledge the existence of a wage gap — women earn about 75 cents on the dollar in the same job as men — but are split over the effects of the new bill.

The law currently protects against wage differences based on factors other than education, training, and experience. A 2004 law dictates that employers found to have knowingly violated equal pay statutes must make up the difference to their employee. The second time, employers must pay double; the third time, triple. But the proposed legislation would allow women to sue for punitive damages beyond the wage difference.

“The current legislation, in my opinion, doesn’t have this kind of teeth in it,” McMillan says. “I think this bill will encourage individuals who feel they have been the victims of wage discrimination to seek redress.”

For Tennessee chamber president Wooley, the bill’s punitive damages are part of the problem.

“This bill creates a new cause for class-action lawsuits,” says Wooley. “At the same time, we’re really trying to get court reform under control because we recognize that it is not good for the economy. While it sounds good in an election year to talk about doing something for gender equality, it’s a disguise for what this bill will really do. What it will end up doing is being counterproductive.”

McMillan argues that the bill does more than increase the punishment for wage discrimination. “The bill deals with the issue of retaliation,” she says. “You want people to be able to find out if they are being discriminated against without worrying that they might be fired.”

She says the bill also discourages litigation by creating an amnesty program for companies.

“We have a part of the bill which gives companies the chance to step up voluntarily and say audit my business and make sure I’m not doing anything wrong, intentionally or otherwise. If they do that, they cannot be held liable, so long as they volunteer for the audit and make the requisite changes.”

But Wooley contends that the current legislation, if employed forcefully, is enough. “I think the bill would dramatically expand and alter the government’s power in terms of defining the market. I don’t want to sound like I’m ignoring it [the wage gap], but it takes time,” says Wooley.

Marrero sees things differently.

“This is kind of the carrot and the stick approach.” And as for waiting for the wage gap to close naturally, she says, “It’s 2006. I’m 67 years old. And I’ve been waiting my whole lifetime to get fair and equal treatment. I just hope it happens before I die.”

The bill still has to go through several legislative committees. The final vote is expected within four or five weeks.