In the market for labor, “Workforce Development” is a supply-side concept. Labor is the product. Employers are the buyers. Without enough employers, there aren’t going to be enough jobs, however well-trained the workforce may be.
In Baltimore, the idea is that tens of thousands of unskilled and low-skilled unemployed and under-employed workers will spend months, or longer, training for work, acquiring knowledge and skills for certain job descriptions, but not for specific jobs with specific employers. And therein lies the problem. You go through whatever program you think makes sense and one day you graduate. Now what?
Meet David Warnock. That’s him on the left, the Black and White candidate for Mayor, figuratively speaking of course, whose commercials are everywhere.
In case you’re having problems understanding what this or that candidate for Mayor is all about and picking one that you’ll support, you’re not alone.
Sometime in the next 2 or 3 weeks, all but 1 or 2 of the 15 Democratic candidates for Mayor running against Sheila Dixon need to drop out. If they don’t, the ones who don’t drop out – and who have no real chance of winning – are seriously and selfishly jeopardizing the future of the city they are running to protect.
Free land. No property taxes. Abundant, affordable labor. Customers who spend just about every dollar they make. Financing, if you need it. In the perfect location to do business across the country and around the world. Baltimore’s disadvantaged neighborhoods are every entrepreneur’s teenage dream.
Hey. Roughly a quarter of the city’s population – round numbers, more than 150,000 parents and their children and a good number of older folks too – are in families making less than the official poverty level. If that isn’t the city’s highest priority, we don’t know what is.
As you may have heard, the state and city will be spending substantial millions of dollars over the next few years to demolish vacant houses in the sections of the city that suffer from urban blight.
A hundred thousand dollars here, a hundred thousand dollars there. Pretty soon, you’re talking serious money.
Ask yourself… Are you willing to bet the future of your family and your city on a candidate who is a convicted criminal, who pled guilty to perjury, who betrayed the trust of her constituents and was then forced out of the Mayor’s office? Is that really your image of a Mayor who can reach out around the country to attract employers to Baltimore?
Our city’s disadvantaged neighborhoods need thousands of jobs for the unemployed.
As if you needed hard evidence of the failure of Baltimore’s public schools, here it is.