Nevada County Picayune and Gurdon Times Newspaper Archive

CCIC Hears Report

Industry, in Kurt Vonnegut's "Player Piano", is fully automated, with only engineers around to make sure the equipment functions properly.

With plants being fully automated, the human workers are given a choice at how they can spend their time either in the army or in the "Reeks and Recks", which amounts to nothing more than busy work.

People's futures are determined almost entirely based on their IQs.

In his novel, the people revolt and destroy the automated machinery, only to turn around and start putting it back in order.

Sally Carder, with Quapaw Technical School, had a similar message for the Clark County Industrial Council, Thursday, Aug. 19.

Only, her message wasn't as dire as Vonnegut's.

Carder, the supervisor of industrial work with workforce education at OTC, said, industry is becoming more and more automated and needs fewer humans to operate it.

This will create a wider gap between skilled and unskilled labor, with almost nothing left in the middle.

The bottom rung of Carder's ladder will, she said, be those working at fast food restaurants.

In the meantime, however, business, industry and education are working together much as the old Soviet Union, the U.S. and Africa all wanting similar goals, but not being able to work together for them.

The biggest problem is business and industry are action-oriented with a need to get things done, reach goals and move on to the next project.

In education, though, theory is king for educators, while time is to be used for reflection and thought.

Business and Industry, she said, want something applicable to their needs and aren't interested in academia.

"I've worked with people in business and industry," she told the CCIC members, "and learned from them. Education, business and industry today is more important than ever and all have to work together.

"We're looking at major changes in the 21st century and need a lot of give and take."

In the book "Workforce 2020", Carder said, different areas of importance are pointed out.

One is the nature of work being done. More and more business and industry will become knowledge based, instead of mechanism and product based as they now are.

The goods being offered today, she said, are based on knowledge as raw materials aren't as important as they once were. In the past, the quality of the materials going in had a direct impact on the quality of product coming out.

Business and industry are paying for ideas, she said, creativity and knowledge. They expect those they hire to be able to do things better.

Business and industry, she continued, compete for employees, so it's important for workers to keep abreast of technological changes and training methods.

There is a drawback to this, though. As workers get better trained, they are bought away by other businesses and industries. This is being done today, she said.

In the past, there was more employee loyalty as workers would spend their entire working lives at one job.

Today, however, this isn't the case. Workers go where they can get the best pay and benefit packages, basically selling their services to the highest bidder.

Additionally, Carder said, the shelf life of many products is shorter than the development stage. She gave Windows '98 as an example, saying Windows 2000 is already on the market, yet the next step in the Windows evolution is already being developed.

This is termed planned obsolescence, where a product is designed to be obsolete almost as soon as it hits the markets.

Manufacturing will continue to dominate U.S. exports, Carder said. At this time, 20 percent of American jobs depend on exports.

But, she added, manufacturing is changing and being done differently than in the past.

Automation is replacing low and unskilled workers, which, she said is scary as these people still need jobs in order to survive.

The typical decision making process, Carder continued, has been slow and antiquated. This, too, is changing as decision making is being replaced by finding solutions.

The old pyramidal organization charts are also being replaced with straight line outsourcing methods. This process gets rid of middle management as the bosses and workers each do the jobs required.

In the 21st century, she said, workers may have no need to physically go to work. With today's technology, especially cell phones and lap top computers, work can be done literally anywhere.

With satellite dishes, fiberoptics and 24-hour-a-day email service being world wide, where a person is in relation to where the job is become irrelevant.

In "Workforce 2020" she said, 45 percent of the workers will be women and minorities. The majority of people 30 and under will be students as people will work more years than before.

More than 80 percent of the jobs will require employees to have more than a high school education, but less than a college degree. The vast majority will require technical knowhow.

The amount of technical training a person has will determine their future.

"There will always be college people and a small number of workers," she said.

Companies, however, will be on the lookout for technical people. This, she said, will widen the gap between the low wage unskilled workers and the rest, as the middle area widens out.

Education in the future, she added, will not be the pursuit of knowledge, but the pursuit of significance. Students will take courses based on their significance to the future instead of general knowledge. They will study particular technologies and not such things as "Plato's Republic."

The average age of students at Quapaw, she said, runs between 27-30, with the students being there for specific reasons, taking courses relevant to their jobs.

The only constant there is in life, Carder said, is change. The workforce will adapt to change, but business and industry will have to make changes in how they manage themselves.

The future, she said, will be a fun time, as there will be all kinds of technology introduced we don't currently understand, but will bring with it more opportunities.

While Arkansas has worked hard at attracting new industry, 80 percent of the new jobs created have come from the expansion of existing industries.

This led to the creation of the Existing Workforce Training Program with the Arkansas Department of Economic Development (ADED).

This program offers training assistance money, with the grant amount based on a formula.

Richard Gray, with ADED, said the program will help set up training, safety and technology programs for business and industry.

The program gives companies access to money to help upgrade their workforce through in-house training.