BATON ROUGE, La.
An overhaul of the way Louisiana trains its workers that would revamp the state labor department and rework community and technical college spending was proposed earlier in the week by Gov. Bobby Jindal.
The governor said work force development changes were needed to better match state training to meet the needs of companies that complain about a lack of skilled employees.
Though the state labor department can make some changes internally, most of the ideas would involve restructuring of spending and programs that will need approval of state lawmakers in the upcoming legislative session and from higher education boards.
“For us, the single most important issue in this regular session will be work force development, will be remaking Louisiana’s efforts to ensure our employers have the skilled workers they need and our people have the skills they need to hit the ground running,” Jindal said at a news conference.
Louisiana Economic Development Secretary Stephen Moret said the state has as many as 100,000 job vacancies, but not enough skilled workers to fill the openings. He said training programs in place weren’t coordinated enough to meet the demand of businesses.
“We believe the system we have today is essentially designed to fail,” Moret said.
