A Kernel of Truth
By Albert B. Kelly
As the mayor of a community that regardless of its shortcomings
is one that I love and feel protective of, I can easily spot that same love and
protectiveness in other mayors toward their own communities. That is why I
instinctively understood the anger felt by Camden Mayor Frank Moran in response
to comments made by Holtec CEO Krishna Singh about the challenges Holtec faces
in making the Camden facility more productive and profitable.
By way of background, the Christie administration granted
Holtec some $260 million in tax breaks to locate their 600,000 square foot
manufacturing facility in Camden. This was part of revitalizing that city.
Apparently things, at least from a “bottom line” standpoint, have not gone well
for Holtec’s Camden facility since then and Mr. Singh sounded off about it in a
recent interview with ROI-NJ.
In that interview, Mr. Singh said Holtec’s problem is that
they can’t find and keep enough good employees. As for why, Mr. Singh speculated
that in addition to not showing up for work, “They can’t stand getting up in
the morning and coming to work every single day. They haven’t done it, and they
didn’t see their parents do it. Of course, some of them get into drugs and
things. So, it’s difficult.” Mr. Singh also speculated that “There is no
tradition of work in families” and that “People don’t have the skills.”
I can understand Mayor Moran’s outrage because in a matter
of a few sentences, Mr. Singh basically stereotypes the entire community as a
bunch of lazy drug abusers. I assume Mr. Singh would take similar offense if
the people and places that marked his heritage and past, like Bihar, India or
Ranchi, India were dismissed with equivalent stereotypes. But then again there’s
a reason Holtec has their facilities in the U.S.
But setting aside stereotypes, insensitive remarks, and
protective mayors, there is a kernel of truth in the point Mr. Singh was trying
to make about recruiting and retaining a workforce and I think that we,
especially those trying to revitalize resource-poor communities, need to pay
attention. I say that because if there is one thing I hear often from business
owners, it’s the difficult time they have finding ready workers.
In revitalizing urban communities, it may not be enough to
dangle a hefty package of tax breaks or tax abatements on new construction.
Today we live in a world that is getting more technical and more specialized
every year in every sector and the gap between those with marketable skills and
those without is growing wider as we speak. So maybe it’s in the workforce
training space that we need to make our biggest investments.
Along these lines here in our immediate region I think we
have a unique opportunity in the next couple of years to take big strides in
the area of workforce training. For one thing, Cumberland County College is in
the process of merging with Rowan College and this presents us with a real
chance to rethink how the new “Rowan College of South Jersey” can address this
issue and craft a framework and the programs to support both our workforce and our
employers.
Locally Bridgeton, teaming up with the Rutgers Food
Innovation Center, Workforce Development Board, and several supporting partners
including: Cumberland Empowerment Zone,, Cumberland County Improvement
Authority, Bridgeton Area Chamber of Commerce, Cumberland Development Corp,
Cumberland County College, Buona Vita Foods, Cumberland Dairy, Lassonde Pappas,
and White Wave, Inc., just received a $100,000 Innovation Challenge planning
grant from NJEDA to address these very issues.
In rising to this Innovation Challenge, the project partners
will be concentrating on the food industry and because today’s industry is not
your father’s food industry, we’ll be focused on creating a facility dedicated to development,
testing, and training on the latest cutting-edge technology to make food
production, processing, and packaging safer and more efficient. This effort
also seeks to include tech giants such as Siemens and Emerson to ensure that
we’re on that cutting edge in terms of the technology and industry needs.
So yes, Mr. Singh was offensive in dismissing the entire community;
especially since he knew the challenges going in and talked about “social
responsibility” in 2014. Now in2018, there was no mention of social
responsibility or seeking possible solutions with community stakeholders. Yet beyond
the whining there is a kernel of truth in what he is trying to express about
workforce readiness.