[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 147 (Thursday, December 4, 2014)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6321-S6323]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        MANUFACTURING SKILLS ACT

  Mr. COONS. Madam President, I come to the floor this morning with my 
colleague from New Hampshire, Senator Kelly Ayotte, to talk about what 
we can do together to invest in America's 21st-century manufacturing 
workforce. As the Presiding Officer well knows, manufacturing is one of 
the great areas of opportunity for meaningful bipartisan cooperation 
that will move our country, our economy, and our working families 
forward.
  Although so many issues here these days seem to fall on partisan 
lines, Senator Ayotte and I are here today because we have come 
together on a bipartisan bill called the Manufacturing Skills Act. The 
bill has one simple goal, which we share: to spur reforms in 
manufacturing skills training across our country. That is it. Our bill 
would create a competitive grant program to help local and State 
governments design and implement manufacturing job-training reforms 
that fit their own unique local economic needs. Once proposals come in, 
a Federal interagency partnership would award the five strongest State 
proposals and the five strongest local government proposals with 
funding for 3 years to implement their targeted reforms to improve 
their manufacturing skills training. The funding doesn't all come from 
the Federal Government, either. Something Senator Ayotte and I share 
enthusiasm for is getting leverage for Federal investment. The local 
and State government must match Federal support one-to-one.
  We are focusing on manufacturing specifically because it plays such a 
vital role in building communities and strengthening our middle class. 
Last year, in fact, manufacturing contributed more than $2 trillion to 
our Nation's economy. In many ways manufacturing has long been the 
foundation of our economy. As we know, manufacturing jobs are high-
quality jobs. They pay more in wages and benefits. Manufacturing is 
highly innovative. It is the area that invests the most in R&D of any 
private sector component. Over the last 3 years manufacturing has 
started coming back steadily and rapidly, with more than 700,000 new 
manufacturing jobs created in our country.
  This is all good news, and I am convinced the United States is poised 
to really compete in the manufacturing economy of this century. But we 
still face key challenges in the job market for manufacturing. There 
are manufacturers whom I have visited with up and down my State and 
whom we have

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heard from across the country who are ready to hire but cannot fill 
open positions. The problem is only expected to get worse. By 2020, by 
some estimates, there may be more than 875,000 unfilled manufacturing 
jobs. Yet there remains no focused, targeted Federal workforce 
development program specifically designed to strengthen manufacturing 
skills. I think part of the reason is we often have an outdated view of 
manufacturing. It conjures up outdated images of dirty factories and 
unsafe working conditions and lower skilled labor. That is not the 
manufacturing workplace of today at all.
  I would be curious to hear the thoughts of my colleague from New 
Hampshire on how manufacturing has changed and how we can work together 
to strengthen the skills of manufacturing workers in Delaware, New 
Hampshire, and across our country.
  Ms. AYOTTE. I thank my colleague from Delaware. It has really been an 
honor to work with him on the Manufacturing Skills Act, and we share 
the goal to ensure that manufacturing remains vibrant and a vibrant 
source of jobs in our economy.
  Training our workforce to have the right skills to address today's 
21st-century manufacturing is quite different from yesteryear. Today as 
we look at manufacturing, we see the skills our workers need: critical 
thinking and problem-solving abilities, math and writing skills and the 
ability to communicate, an understanding of the manufacturing process, 
and an ability to engage workers in improving that process. This wasn't 
necessarily the case 20 or 30 years ago, but the United States is 
poised and has an opportunity to be the leader in advanced 
manufacturing.
  We have a talented workforce, but our workers need the type of 
training that is going to address this new type of manufacturing that 
is focused on having the right skills and technology, use of technology 
and problem-solving skills that we know workers in New Hampshire and 
Delaware are quite capable of if we give them the tools they need.
  A reality of today's world is that although our economy is bigger, we 
are more interconnected than ever before. Job training needs to be 
customized to the particular business area--the city, the State, the 
local economy. There is no ``one size fits all'' model. This is 
especially true in manufacturing--and I visited many manufacturers in 
our State--where different companies and places need workers with 
varying skills.
  That is one of the reasons I am so enthusiastic about the 
Manufacturing Skills Act that Senator Coons and I have introduced 
together. Rather than prescribe job-training standards or dictate 
reforms from Washington, our bill allows local officials, business 
leaders, and workers to come together in local communities to build 
training plans that fit their needs and help grow jobs in the community 
because Wilmington and Newark, DE, have very different workforce 
challenges, perhaps, than some areas of New Hampshire, whether it is 
Nashua or Concord or Berlin. We need to ensure that local officials, 
local employers, and the people of our States are using the grants we 
are able to provide under this legislation to design new training 
programs for those localities to really allow those workers to be 
trained for 21st-century manufacturing skills.
  By both targeting manufacturing and giving localities the discretion 
to design the reforms that fit their needs, we have come together on a 
bill that could help our country meet some of its most critical 
economic challenges and opportunities.
  I know Senator Coons has a strong background in manufacturing and has 
worked very closely with employers and workers in Delaware to hear from 
them about what job-training needs they have to ensure Delaware can 
have that 21st-century workforce. I would love to hear more about some 
of the challenges he has heard about from employers and workers in 
Delaware.
  Mr. COONS. Madam President, I would like to thank my colleague from 
New Hampshire. We are both from small States that are not nationally 
thought of as being leaders in manufacturing, but both New Hampshire 
and Delaware have deep, rich, broad manufacturing histories. 
Manufacturing is commonly thought of by America as being associated 
with Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan or Indiana, but there are dozens of 
companies I have visited in Delaware that are small or medium-sized, 
with 50 or 100 or 150 employees. Many companies are family owned, many 
working in particular niches of processing or manufacturing. They are 
profitable, growing, and looking to hire. Having visited New Hampshire 
as well, it also has a proud and strong history of manufacturing. Given 
the regional experience and the base of knowledge and expertise of 
Members of this body, it is my hope that we can come together with 
other bipartisan cosponsors to strengthen and build this bill going 
forward.
  Before I got into public service, I spent 8 years working for a 
manufacturing company in Delaware, a materials-based science company 
that manufactures over 1,000 different products, all off the same 
chemical platform. One of the things I did in my work area was I 
visited the dozens of manufacturing facilities that either the company 
for which I worked directly operated or many of our partner companies 
that were licensees or distributors or part of our supply chain.
  The plant of today, the shop floor of today bears very little 
resemblance to that of previous generations. They are the location of 
rich innovation, an amazing amount of collaboration and teamwork where 
world-class, cutting-edge quality control and continuous innovation are 
expected, needed from our workforce, and thus investment in wages and 
in skills is also a critical part of our continuing to be globally 
competitive, as Senator Ayotte has explained.
  As the skills needed for workers vary depending on the product and 
market segment in the region, we also need training programs that are 
flexible and meet the exact needs of the region. I will give two 
examples. I have visited SPI Pharma in Lewes, DE, which manufactures 
the key component of Maalox and many other antacids, and BASF in 
Newport, which manufactures pigments. I hear similar challenges even 
though they are in different areas of manufacturing. Their specific 
needs are for process operators who are skilled at working at a factory 
where large amounts of complex suspensions--liquids--are being mixed, 
moved around, and fashioned into finished products. They need workers 
who understand programmable logic control systems and can ensure that 
continuous improvement in quality control is in place. They know that 
in order to continue to grow, to export and be globally competitive, 
they need to stay at the top of their game, which means investing in 
workers and their skills. They are struggling to find young people to 
replace those who are aging out of their workforces.
  Our community college, Delaware Technical Community College, a 
national leader, is helping and is actively engaged. But as the 
equipment and processes of today's manufacturing plants become more 
advanced and computerized, they will need help in keeping up with 
changing technologies so the skills they train for today are the actual 
skills that companies, such as SPI Pharma and BASF in Delaware, need in 
this century.
  The Manufacturing Skills Act could be a real help in Delaware to many 
of the manufacturers I visited, and it will allow local and State 
officials partnering with our schools, our Chamber leadership, and our 
manufacturers to build a system that fits our real needs at the local 
level.
  I think it is exciting--whether someone is from New Hampshire, 
Wisconsin, Delaware or Indiana--to know we are willing to come together 
in a strong and bipartisan way to lay a pathway forward for America's 
manufacturing workforce. It gives me some reason for optimism as we 
begin to conclude this session of Congress and as we look forward.
  I wish to close by specifically thanking Senator Ayotte for being 
such a positive, forward-looking partner, not only on this bill but on 
many other issues we have worked on together in the years we have 
served so far in this body.
  I would love to hear more from my colleague from New Hampshire about 
the manufacturing challenges New Hampshire faces and how this bill 
might address them and what our path forward is for this piece of 
legislation.

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  Ms. AYOTTE. I thank my colleague from Delaware.
  As I look at the new Congress coming in, I view our bill--the 
Manufacturing Skills Act--as an opportunity where we can all work 
together to help workers and employers across the country meet the 
challenges of ensuring that manufacturing continues to thrive and grow 
in this country. These are good-paying jobs where the workers--who are 
excellent and want the opportunity but just need the skills--need the 
type of technology training and understanding of process, such as the 
lean process, and how we can improve our manufacturing.
  The bill Senator Coons and I worked on together will allow the local 
decisionmakers to put together the best training that will help create 
good-paying jobs, not only in Delaware, New Hampshire, and Wisconsin 
but across this country.
  I hope we can take up this bill very early on in the next session and 
get behind it.
  In New Hampshire, there are 66,000 jobs that are directly connected 
and related to manufacturing. As I have traveled to visit manufacturing 
employers throughout our State, I have been hearing about the same 
issues that my colleague from Delaware has heard; that is, that they 
are challenged in actually finding the right workforce for excellent-
paying jobs and opportunities, but they need partnerships and help to 
get that trained workforce in place.
  New Hampshire, similar to Delaware, has had some strong partnerships 
among the private sector and community colleges in my State, and we 
need to do more of that in the future. I believe our bill will allow 
those local education institutions to partner with private employers 
and State and local officials so the training is valuable and will 
ensure that everyone has a stake in the right workforce going forward.
  I wish to thank some of the businesses I have had the privilege of 
visiting in our State. So many businesses have told me--whether it is 
Burndy in Littleton or Velcro in Manchester or Codet in Colebrook or 
Hypertherm in the Upper Valley--that our private sector is focusing on 
this issue, and our Manufacturing Skills Act can help companies move 
forward and ensure that our workers have the right skills so we can 
grow jobs in this country.
  I thank Senator Coons for his leadership on this issue and the work 
he has done every single day in this body to ensure that the people of 
Delaware have good-paying jobs and the right workforce training. This 
is a goal I share with the Senator from Delaware.
  I wish to also thank him for his leadership on other issues, 
including the protection of this Nation and many other issues he has 
become an expert on in this body.
  I hope we can all get behind bipartisan solutions, such as that 
offered by my colleague from Delaware, and I hope many of our 
colleagues will think about joining us on this Manufacturing Skills 
Act. As we go into the new Congress, I hope this will be a priority for 
our leadership so we can bring this bill to the floor for a vote right 
away.
  I thank the Presiding Officer, and I thank my colleague from Delaware 
for his leadership and work on this important issue. I look forward to 
continuing to work on this until we get it passed.
  Mr. COONS. I yield the floor.
  Mr. TESTER. Are we in a quorum call?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. We are not.

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