Tierney sponsors bill to modernize workforce

LYNN – U.S. Rep. John Tierney is among three congressional Democrats sponsoring a bill that aims to better train workers for jobs in the 21st century.The 6th District congressman’s office announced Friday he partnered with a Texas congressman and a California congressman to create a bill that modernizes federal workforce development programs by creating partnerships with in-demand sector employees, community colleges, labor organizations and nonprofits.The bill builds off a 1998 workforce investment act that created local workforce development boards, like one on the North Shore, to promote job creation.But the economic environment has changed since then, Tierney said Friday.Tierney said the 2013 bill responds to a changing work environment in which high-tech manufacturing and energy technology are replacing industries like insurance and law as top employers in America.”The whole nature of jobs has changed and where jobs will be have really moved,” he said.Tierney pointed to a partnership between North Shore Community College and Lynn’s General Electric aviations plant as an example of what he hopes the bill will do for workers nationwide.The pilot program trains Lynn residents like Patrick Cole, a Marine Corps and Massachusetts National Guard veteran, how to repair and run complex machinery at GE – jobs that GE previously had trouble filling.Tierney said he has spoken to more businesses on the North Shore that said they would be willing to partner with colleges and local workforce development boards to host paid internships or apprenticeships for emerging jobs.Technology companies in Burlington, Tierney said, expressed interest in creating a curriculum with the University of Massachusetts-Lowell or another higher-education program to train workers of all ages for jobs.Tierney said that can lead to lifelong careers.”They almost always invariably hire the people who come in that way,” he said.He said the bill also aims to create more opportunities for adult-English education, which in Massachusetts has 19,000 people waiting for local classes to open up.He said the bill has some opposition from Republicans on the House Education and the Workforce Committee, which Tierney serves on, who say the expansion of the workforce investment act costs too much.But he said his bill provides enough flexibility to allow people to cut programs that aren’t working and stick with ones that are.”We want to adequately fund this because we hear companies say that they need this,” he said.Amber Parcher can be reached at [email protected].