Technical Education, Work Force Training, and U.S. Competitiveness: Hearing Before the Subcommittee on Technology and Competitiveness of the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives, One Hundred Second Congress, First Session, September 17, 1991This document records the oral and written testimony given at a U.S. House of Representatives subcommittee hearing on technical training and productivity. Witnesses who provided testimony included an official of the National Science Foundation, several administrators of manufacturing companies, a representative of community colleges, and representatives of the U.S. Departments of Commerce, Labor, and Education. Witnesses testified about the need for better educated workers now and in the future, and they described programs in community colleges and manufacturing that have been training employees successfully and raising productivity. In general, most witnesses supported H.R. 2936 and H.R. 3507, which would create technical education centers and improve the technical training of youths and adult employees. Many of those who testified stressed the need to educate and train those youths who do not go to a four-year college so that they will have the flexibility and the skills to compete in the work force of the future. Most of the discussion focused on technical skills and higher-level reading skills, rather than on basic literacy education. (KC) |
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AMENDMENT OFFERED American Industrial Quality American workforce quality appropriate associate-degree-granting colleges Award Baldrige bill Chair Chairman Chevrolet Nova Committee community colleges concept cost Department of Labor economy education and training employees establish Federal Fremont funds gentleman Geo Prizm global goal going grants high school improve Incorporated into Valentine insert in lieu Jidoka Joint Venture Kaizen learning legislation lieu thereof manufacturing mathematics ment National Science Foundation NUMMI operation organizations percent plant problem QUESADA recognize SCHWARZ Secretary of Labor sector skills strategies Subcommittee subsection suppliers team members technical apprenticeship program technical education technician Thank things TIM VALENTINE tion total quality management Toyota Toyota Corolla Toyota Motor Corporation Toyota production system Training Act training programs two-year colleges United Auto Workers United Motor WALKER TO H.R. worker training workforce quality partnership workplace youth technical apprenticeship
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Page 132 - By the year 2000, US students will be first in the world in science and mathematics achievement; 5 By the year 2000, every adult American will be literate and will possess the knowledge and skills necessary to compete in a global economy and exercise the rights and responsibilities of citizenship...
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Page 222 - If not, the Chair will put the question. All those in favor, signify by saying aye.
Page 78 - New United Motor Manufacturing, Inc. and the United Automobile Workers: Partners in Training INTRODUCTION In the city of Fremont, California, some 35 miles southeast of San Francisco, sits a 3- million square foot automobile assembly facility. Closed by General Motors in 1982, it was, at one lime, a vibrant, state-of-the-art plant, employing over 6,500 people and producing over 300,000 cars and trucks annually.
Page 110 - Providing convenience is good business. First there was fast food and now there is food delivered fast. Financial services companies have embedded convenience in new technologies with the ATM machines and electronic banking. Good customer service pays off. It costs five times as much to get a new customer as it does to keep the one you already have.
Page 81 - AW fought for the more than 100 job classifications in traditional auto assembly plants precisely because workers had no control over job content on the shop floor. At NUMMI they do. If the lone job classification is a concession to Toyota, it is even more emphatically a concession to the ageold thirst of American workers for creativity, flexibility, and a degree of job control...
Page 80 - Both parties are undertaking this new proposed relationship with the full intention of fostering an innovative labor relations structure, minimizing the traditional adversaria] roles, and emphasizing mutual trust and good faith. Indeed, both parties recognize this as essential in order to facilitate the efficient production of a quality automobile at the lowest possible cost to the American consumer while at the same time providing much needed jobs at fair wages...
Page 80 - The fact that the Joint Venture sought to use Japanese management techniques with the Fremont work force caused Fortune magazine to remark: 'As a cooperative endeavor between a symbol of Japanese efficiency and a powerful US union, New United Motor is the most important labor relations experiment in the US today.
Page 79 - a model of industrial tranquility ".3 Dale Buss, a Wall Street Journal reporter who covers the auto industry, remarks that New United Motor "has managed to convert a crew of largely middle-aged, rabble-rousing former GM workers into a crack force that is beating the bumpers off Big Three plants in efficiency and product quality".
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