Barfield: Changes in labor critical

• By GARY PERILLOUX
• Advocate business writer
• Published: Jul 12, 2008 - Page: 1D - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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Tim Barfield isn’t halfway through his first month at the helm of Louisiana’s revamped job matchmaking machine, the Louisiana Workforce Commission. But he’s already gripping the throttle for a white-knuckle ride through the next two years.

That’s about how long he estimates it will take the former Labor Department to reinvent itself and partner with other job, education and training agencies to deliver a seamless employment system for the 21st century.

The work-force changes collectively ranked atop Gov. Bobby Jindal’s legislative agenda this past session, with the major bills that renamed and retooled the old Labor Department meeting no resistance from lawmakers.

That was the easy part. Turbocharging the state’s work-force development system in the next two years will be considered successful if Jindal, Barfield and the leaders of economic development, social services, community and technical education, elementary and secondary education and higher education put a serious dent in the 100,000 Louisiana residents who are considered employable but who remain jobless.

Louisiana also wants to retain and attract top talent and take the best ideas from other states, Barfield told the Baton Rouge Black Chamber of Commerce in a state-of-the-work-force-system speech Friday.

“It’s an exciting time,” he said. “But we really haven’t achieved anything yet.”

The new template for work-force development will be rolled out formally in September and October, when eight regional summits across the state bring in the work-force partners in state and local government with businesses who will tap the system for talent.

Among the cornerstones of work-force change are a $10 million rapid response fund that allows the state to design training programs quickly and put them in place immediately to meet the job needs of expanding or new businesses in the state.

A Louisiana Workforce Investment Council will carry out occupational forecasting studies to get ahead of the curve in gauging future job needs. Many changes will be small revolutions in themselves. For example:

n In Massachusetts, unemployment insurance payments are coupled with small business grants to stake out-of-work residents into opening their own small businesses. “We’ve already got legislation under way for next session to do this,” Barfield said.

n In Georgia, youths in the juvenile justice system are graded for weeks on soft skills before entering the work force, things such as punctuality, dress and manners. And they are drug-tested, in addition to being mentored by volunteers from nongovernmental and faith-based organizations. “All of those things that will happen to them in the real world, they get graded on,” Barfield said, greatly enhancing their odds of success.

n In Louisiana, a pilot program will attempt to supply a staggering 7,000 people needed in the next decade to work clinical trials at Pennington Biomedical Research Center and the medical schools at Tulane University and LSU. “Right now,” said Barfield, “they’re using (registered nurses). You don’t have to be an RN but you do need some specialized training.”

Other pilot programs will harness fundamental public aid programs — housing assistance, food stamps, child care — and combine them more effectively to get residents through training regimens and into jobs.