In the fractured world of B.C. politics, there’s one economic issue all parties seem to agree on: B.C. faces a serious skills shortage that threatens to undermine potential economic growth.
Yet ideological dogma, not partisan politics, may constitute the biggest obstacle to filling the one million job vacancies Work BC says will open up by 2022.
Analysts are thus far unable to figure out where between 60,000 and 100,000 of those workers, many needing serious post-secondary education and training, will come from.
Solving this problem will require a team effort, but some key players are not even invited to try out under the existing system and others get a free ride.
Until everyone concerned is pulling in the same direction, the problem will worsen.
The major upheavals in skills training in B.C. during the last 10 years were marked by a determination, driven from Victoria, to exclude B.C.’s labour movement from the skills training sector.
This, combined with tight funding and a refusal to insist that employers carry their share of the load, has put B.C. well behind where it needs to be on the training front.
Premier Christy Clark has spent the past several months scattering money around B.C. to show her government’s resolve, and NDP leader Adrian Dix has made solutions to the skills shortage a centrepiece of his economic strategy.
It’s clear, however, that success will require a new commitment to collaboration among stakeholders.
Union leaders are not seeking some new revolution in skills training or a return to the NDP’s old Industry Training and Apprenticeship Commission.
“We’re in a terrible mess,” said BC Building Trades executive director Tom Sigurdson.
However, he believes progress could come by “tweaking” the Liberals’ Industry Training Authority (ITA) to end the near-ban on union participation and increase accountability of the Industry Training Organizations.
Sigurdson would go a step further and compel employers to facilitate completion of trades training by guaranteeing openings to apprentices who return to school to become journeymen. Completion rates in union programs are double or triple those in the voluntary ITA system, he said, where only 30% of apprentices complete their training.
Kevin Evans, CEO of the ITA, recently slammed “free rider” employers, who refuse to sponsor apprentices and “poach” the apprentices of responsible employers.
All the ITA can do, in the absence of stronger rules, is complain and wring its hands.
Better regulation might be needed in the construction sector, but other skills training institutions are struggling financially.
Paul Reniers, executive director of the BCIT Faculty Association, said years of below inflation budgets and zero wage mandates have exacted a toll.
He pointed out that BCIT’s broadcast technology instructors try to deliver skilled employees on equipment that’s two or three generations out of date and often cast-off technology donated by industry leaders. Student enrolments, Reniers said, have been increasing at 3% to 4% a year above funded capacity.
Even more worrisome is the inability of post-secondary institutions to attract qualified instructors from key sectors where skilled, experienced workers earn far superior wages and benefits.
A nursing instructor, for example, would have to give up conditions like four weeks of annual vacation, excellent benefits, top pay and years of seniority to work in post-secondary education. It’s even more difficult to meet private-sector standards in many departments.
Reniers’ union, the Federation of Post-Secondary Educators, is still seeking to settle an agreement that expired in 2010.
“A huge issue,” said Reniers, “is that various departments are unable to compete with industry to get the instructors we need to teach future generations of technologists.”
More inclusive leadership, more money, more power over immigration policy – all of these strategies will no doubt be required.
None will be successful without a decisive break with the ideological attitudes of the past.
