Interview with PA Labor & Industry Secretary Nancy Walker

Dave Patti, Chairman of Berks Business Education Coalition, hosts a discussion following the BBEC Education & Workforce Summit with Nancy Walker, PA Labor & Industry Secretary.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:16

Hello, I'm David Patty with the Customers Bank and also the Chairman of the Burks Business Education Coalition. We just finished our annual summit at BBEC, and we have with us today in studio one of our keynote speakers, the Secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry, Nancy Walker. Madam Secretary, thanks for being with us. Really appreciate you stopping in.

SPEAKER_00 0:38

Great to be with you today. Thanks so much. Great to be in Reading. What an exciting place.

SPEAKER_01 0:41

Thank you. So labor and industry is a very diverse department. You're a labor attorney, labor and employment attorney, HR, by training. But tell us a little bit about L and I generally, and we'll go down into career development.

SPEAKER_00 0:55

Yeah, so it's so interesting. Labor and industry, the work we do, I think touches people every day in their daily lives. So we have everything from we do elevator and escalator inspections through our safety labor management relations section. We deal with workers' comp, unemployment comp, workforce, our Office of Vocational Rehabilitation, make sure that young and not so young people with disabilities find work. We just do a little bit of everything. It's great to be part of this agency.

SPEAKER_01 1:20

Sure. And and and among your duties, among the many duties and responsibilities, though, is workforce development and chairing the Workforce Investment Board for the Commonwealth.

SPEAKER_00 1:29

That's correct. We do a lot of work in workforce development, both with our through our workforce development uh deputate, through the State Board as well as the Office of Vocational Rehabilitation.

SPEAKER_01 1:39

Sure. It was horrible to see steel mills just idle and and people not knowing really what to do with their lives. And they've come a long way. There's been a real transformation in those 40 years, but it took 40 years. And that story of transformation is not much different from Reading, Bethlehem, Erie, Altoona. You know, we can keep going on Scranton Wilkspire across the state. What does it take and what do we do about the workforce itself? Because we might be looking at transformation again, technology, AI, there's a lot going on. So how do you, as the Secretary, look at this and say, you know, I want to make sure people stay stay working, and I also need to be planning ahead. My team needs to be planning ahead.

SPEAKER_00 2:25

Such great questions. So, you know, the governor talks so often about empowering people to be able to make choices. And the only way to make choices is to have things to choose among, opportunities. So what we're really focused on in this administration is making sure that we're meeting people where they are. So if there are folks that graduate from high school and want to go straight into the workforce, we want to make sure that we're helping them with preparation in high school and that transition into the workforce. If there are folks that want to go into two and four-year degree programs, we want to make sure that we're taking them there. Or folks that want to go into apprenticeship programs or other kinds of career training programs that are perhaps paid as you go, which as apprenticeships are. But not only with young people and keeping them in Pennsylvania. We want to also make sure that we are meeting folks where they are in the workplace. So if they have jobs that may become obsolete, that we're working with them and getting them into a training program so that they're able to transition the skills they need to be able to be relevant in the workforce of tomorrow.

SPEAKER_01 3:18

So when we talk about transformation, the governor is also concerned about transforming the state workforce. And in in 2023, he signed an executive order that looked at the money that was coming in for infrastructure and said, well, we want to make sure people are trained, that our people can do those jobs in infrastructure. But he also, in the executive order, did things about the state workforce, eliminating the need for college degrees when all that was was really certifying that they had soft skills.

SPEAKER_00 3:43

That's right. And that was actually the executive order, I think, that you're talking about is the governor's very first executive order in office. And what he really wanted to do is take away, to your point, the the using the use of a college degree to stand in for soft skills. Certainly there are things that you need a college degree for, nursing, educ engineering, education. But you know, beyond that, in state government, once we really took a careful look, all of us as secretaries at our agencies, to see which jobs really required college degrees, we found out that 92% of state government did not require had jobs that did not require college degrees. And since that executive order, 60% of the workforce that the Commonwealth has hired have been folks that do not have secondary degrees.

SPEAKER_01 4:28

So it's working to look beyond the degree. And and I think about you know when when we take our car in for inspection and and emissions, you know, if you walk into the bay where where the and and now they're techs and they're wearing lab coats, they are not you know grease monkeys anymore by any stretch of the imagination. But you look at those credentials, those certificates, you know, the the person's name tag that has, you know, I'm certified in breaks, I'm certified in emissions, I'm certified in in in in transmissions, you know, there were industries that figured that out where a lot of, you know, I'm in I'm in banking. So banking, insurance, other financial services, marketing people, we didn't really figure that out. We just said, well, go get a four-year degree, and we almost didn't care what it was in.

SPEAKER_00 5:08

That's right. That's right. And you know, one of the things that I'm proud of is our we have an industry partnership grant program uh through our State Workforce Board where we're really taking industries that are looking at potential workforce problems, such as how do we get people certified, what kind of certification, can we offer programs, supports for for uh the cost of these kinds of programs, and uh doing study guides and things like that. So really finding ways, whatever the uh whatever the sector to really streamline credentialing is really important to this industry.

SPEAKER_01 5:38

And the industry partnerships have been such a success. I mean, relatively small amount of state resources going into them.

SPEAKER_00 5:43

That's exactly right. A lot of bang for those bucks, for sure.

SPEAKER_01 5:46

But helping bring employers together. And I think fascinating about that is I think of this with the power companies that all recognized they needed, I'll say line men, I don't know if line people is the is the proper word. But that that that they knew that the wave of retirements was about to hit them threatening them and realized why don't we work together? Why don't we put the training programs together? We'll worry about competing later on, but let's develop talent.

SPEAKER_00 6:06

That's exactly right. And we see the same thing in the healthcare sector and advanced manufacturing trying to find ways to solve problems and also taking in the industry partnerships to look at sort of barrier remediation as well in certain areas, what transportation or child care barriers, for example, might be remediated when businesses band together to find solutions. So this whole notion of us all working together to create Venn diagrams or the shaded areas of the magic happens, I think is just such a smart uh use of state resources and company time.

SPEAKER_01 6:34

And you talk about barriers that that you know once you are ready for a job, but those are some of those the same barriers we have for the education, the training for a job.

SPEAKER_00 6:43

Absolutely. And and we have the same barriers, honestly, everywhere in the state. I mean, they they may look different, but it's a transportation barrier whether you're in a city that has uh public transportation or not, because there's always that getting your heavy tools to that commercial work site that is, you know, three miles off the end of the transportation line. Or certain areas of the state where there is no where you know there just are no public transportation options. Um child care, access to the Internet, sometimes language barriers. There we just are seeing the same consistent barriers throughout the state. And trying to be smart and thoughtful about how we remediate those to get people into the workforce is really something that we uh need to stay continued, uh keep our focus continued on.

SPEAKER_01 7:22

And and and the State Workforce Investment Board that you chair is, if I recall, five cabinet secretaries, uh and maybe some other other agencies, members of the General Assembly, and then people from the private sector and from universities. That's right. Where you can kind of talk about that thing. You can talk about those barriers and how do we all band together to that's exactly right.

SPEAKER_00 7:39

And this uh and James Martini is the head of our State Workforce investing, he's the executive director, and he's just been really smart in working with a diverse group of people to create subcommittees that are really focused on how do we make recommendations outside of the of the committees to the board and to the secretaries to really find ways to direct dollars to get work done. Sure.

SPEAKER_01 8:00

And and and and speaking of listening to people and then directing dollars, the Shapiro administration has been great about also looking at career technology education or other technical schools and making sure, yes, we want to fund K-12, yes, we want to fund pre-K, yes, you know, post-second secondary and post-secondary uh uh schools. But career technology has been been a real success story in recent years.

SPEAKER_00 8:22

It sure has. And the governor really has focused uh so many dollars behind these initiatives. So whether it's VOTEC, career and technical education, or apprenticeship programs. We've put $25.6 million into that space. That's a 56 50 percent increase from the last administration. Um, and it's really given us the ability in in my area, because apprenticeships lie uh within the workforce deputate at the Department of Labor and Industry. We've been able to work with uh programs to get 170 registered during this administration, uh pre-and uh uh straight apprenticeship programs, um, and which is just an extraordinary number. And not just in the building and construction trades and manufacturing, where you think of traditional uh apprenticeship programs, but really in IT and health care and agriculture and just all of these new areas that are really exciting and are trying to get to your earlier point, to meet people where they are, to give them opportunities uh to find new and exciting career paths. So it's very exciting.

SPEAKER_01 9:19

And I think I think for a lot of people we equate apprenticeship with, oh, it's part of a union program. But it doesn't have to be, correct?

SPEAKER_00 9:27

It doesn't have to be. And you know, and certainly uh, you know, the the um top shelf programs have been consistently, those those union programs uh that just have fabulous training uh training programs and have done those well for decades. But being able to look at things like, for example, a dairy herd manager working with our colleagues at the Department of Agriculture to feel to see where their gaps are and to work with the farming community and agribusinesses to find ways to meet their needs. It's it's the ability of part of apprenticeship programs to meet the needs of businesses and to catch the the uh inspiration and sort of the passion of people who want to participate that really makes them so successful.

SPEAKER_01 10:05

And in the spirit of partnerships, I uh I can tell you, you know, this is some some years ago, but IBEW and and I would work together when I was an advocate for for the employment, for the employers and for big businesses, because if we want them into the young people to come out ready for career, we all need to be able to read, write, do the math. In fact, often the math is more difficult for an apprenticeship program as an electrician or a plumber or a carpenter than it is for a liberal arts degree.

SPEAKER_00 10:30

Absolutely. And that's why the pre-apprenticeship programs and our schools to work programs are so important, exactly to that point. If we can let an 11 or 12-year-old who thinks it's really cool to work with their hands and and to do something with the electrical workers union, for example, if we can get there, them excited in it when they're 11 years old about learning trigonometry and algebra and and making sure that they can read, then it's exciting to take those classes in high school. By the if you're waiting until you're you're dealing with uh high school graduates, you may have people uh young people who've not taken advantage of the opportunity to learn the certain sciences and math classes and reading classes that may have been helpful. So making sure that we are having schools to work programs that work with young people and expose them to career opportunities so that they can take the necessary classes, as well as pre-apprenticeship programs that are in fact training for those kinds of skill sets to roll into apprenticeship programs. These are these are really great opportunities.

SPEAKER_01 11:22

At the Burks Business Education Coalition, we work a lot on career awareness. Because to your point, if a young person doesn't know soon enough and doesn't take the requisites, the prerequisites, they're not ready. You know, they you can you can't go into the training program, whether it be at at Reading Area Community College or Alberta University or Union Apprenticeship Program, you you you need to have picked up on that early.

SPEAKER_00 11:46

Right, you need to get that exposure. I mean, like when we were kids, uh you know what we we knew about the world of the of of opportunities for careers were what our parents did and what our friends' parents did. Like that was that was the world as we knew it. And now being able to have these career fairs and getting kids to be able to go to companies and do job shadowings and internships, externships, giving them the ability to see what it's like to do something. And almost as important to see what the world has to offer is to maybe know what isn't your thing, right? To be able to spend some time in an area where you think you might want to study and know that that maybe is not the choice for you before you start to expend tons of money, because we both know that there are young people who are coming out of college degree programs that are saddled with debts those sides of mortgages. And you know, it's just i i it's just such a it's such a a burden to put on our young people.

SPEAKER_01 12:35

Right. I mean that's uh that it's not just time, but it's a great expense. Huge expense wasted as well if if you don't know what what you're getting into, what you might like. Uh so getting people out. Um I I I will I will sort of tip next year or one of the themes for next year's uh summit for BBC. We're actually commissioning a study right now, hiring some researchers to do some work for us to learn where the young people in Brooks County are getting their influences. So exactly to your point, we knew it used to be your parents, your aunt, your uncle, you know, people around you in the community. But with the advent of TikTok and the phones and everything else, the influencers that they're exposed to, um and and and and doesn't I think one out of three kids now wants to be an influencer. Right. But you know but I think we need to understand as adults where how are those perceptions of a good job being shaped and what and what defines a good job today. You know, it used to be a salary to to take care of your family. You know, your your your your parents came out of out of education and out of the steel mills, uh mine the same. Um and and it was really about how how could you take care of the family. Now that's also, well, you know, what's what's the work-life balance? What's you know, what's the environment in which I work? What city am I going to work in? That kind of thing.

SPEAKER_00 13:47

That's right. And I I do think that if employers want to cut down on nutrition and be able to really have a workforce that isn't churning and turning over, making sure that they're listening, right? And making sure that they are providing that work-life balance, that they are making sure that if if there are barriers that need to be remediated, something as simple as a credit for child care could potentially make the difference. And I do think that employees are more likely, and I think the statistics show us, that employees are more likely to stay with employers that are able to help remediate those kinds of barriers. So catching their imagination and giving them ability to stay in a job, I think, is so important.

SPEAKER_01 14:23

And ensuring that there are other fun opportunities. I used to joke, you know, if you're poly science or communications major like I was, you know, I can get you $30,000 a year to start. 35 if you say, do you want fries with that?

SPEAKER_00 14:33

That's right.

SPEAKER_01 14:34

But if you're a welder, you know, you're starting, and and this years ago I was in 65, now 90%.

SPEAKER_00 14:39

Everybody needs welders.

SPEAKER_01 14:40

Everybody needs welders. Um and and and and welding can be fun, interesting, there's different kinds of welding, but teaching about those skills. I I I think we must be doing well because I know that just here in Berks County, our enrollment in career technology education is up five or six percent in just the past year.

SPEAKER_00 14:57

That's incredible.

SPEAKER_01 14:58

So now we have a problem that that is the right problem to have, but we have capacity issues in our career technology education programs where both physical capacity and the number of teachers uh, you know, can we handle more? Um and then is is the state looking at that, looking at ways that we can help with with career technical education or the post-secondary technical education?

SPEAKER_00 15:19

Well, these are the kinds of investments that the governor has been so committed to over the last, you know, the last two budgets. We're certainly hopeful that this third budget now is going to give us those same kinds of resources in career and technical education, um, do vote in schools, being able to continue to seed apprenticeship and pre-apprentip programs, school-to-work programs. These are all just critically necessary to really meet the needs and challenges of now. And what we do not want to have happen is our young people who do want to be welders, who do want to be plumbers, who want to be in advanced manufacturing. We do not want them to go to Ohio or New York or New Jersey or Delaware looking for opportunities. We want to make sure that we are giving them opportunities, not just for jobs today, but for career pathways and a reason to raise a family and stay in Pennsylvania and continue their careers here.

unknown 16:05

Sure.

SPEAKER_01 16:05

And and to know the kinds of things they can do. I I think of uh Pentec up in Williamsport. You know, again, a couple of years ago. But I happened to be up there one day when uh you towards the end of the school year, when the aircraft companies were coming in for the avionics program. Um and they were, you know, lined up. I think there were sixty-five students who were going to graduate that year in the program, which is a pretty decent number. Yeah. Every one of them had multiple job opportunities. Thaddeus Stevens can tell the same story. Every graduate has four or five offers. Um there are jobs out there and and jobs that you can stay in Pennsylvania. Uh, you know, two of the biggest uh helicopter manufacturers, for instance, in the world are once in Philadelphia, ones in Chester County. So you can do that here. You don't have to move away, to your point.

SPEAKER_00 16:50

That's exactly right. And and to your point about like particularly like homing engines in Pentac up in the Williamsport area, you know, that is another marriage between a program, an educational program that is teaching and working to make sure that their graduates are rolling into programs, working with the employer to make sure that the skills that are necessary for the job are being taught. That is just, you know, that's the way I think that education, our secondary educational programs and our employers really need to be thinking about the future, working together in exactly that manner.

SPEAKER_01 17:20

And and and evolving as products evolve. I mean, like I mean, you know, start out making sewing machine parts of it, remember, right? That's right, yeah. And then a little like motorized bicycles before they called motorcycles and updated the engines and now they're making drones for the military and everything. So yeah. And and and it's it's great that the companies are evolving. Our workforce has to evolve with to our point about Pittsburgh. That's exactly right. That's right. So you you know, to to to go to Bakery Square now in Pittsburgh and realize, you know, that that's not our parents' grandparents' Pittsburgh.

SPEAKER_00 17:50

Not at all. It's so interesting to see, and to your point, with Pittsburgh, you know, having seen lines, blocks, you know, blocks of people waiting in line for jobs at McDonald's back in the 80s. And to see Pittsburgh now sort of evolving as this really tech hub and seeing Bakery Squares, you say, uh no longer are they making saltines. They have you know Google and they have so many uh the tech companies that are really in Pittsburgh because there's so many great programs that are feeding uh those jobs in the Pittsburgh area.

SPEAKER_01 18:20

Well uh Reading was was very much at the same time period in front from the late 19th century to you know 1970s, 80s, a manufacturing town. So Carpenter Technology that's been here over a hundred years still still going strong, a couple of our battery companies still still going strong. Um but we lost Dana Corporation in the 70s. We lost Western Electric through its transformations and and and different things. We lost a lot of that manufacturing uh that is not frankly going to come back. Some has evolved, like like now EnercyS, which came out of a previous battery company and is doing batteries for electronic vehicles or electric vehicles and doing all kinds of state-of-the-art work based here in Reading, Pennsylvania, and the RD. Not so much the manufacturing, but the RD being being done here. If we can find engineers and and and attract them, you know, not not just educate them, but attract them and get them to stay in Pennsylvania to your right.

SPEAKER_00 19:09

That's exactly right. And doing doing some robust outreach to other states about these wonderful opportunities that exist in Pennsylvania, I think is key to our future as well.

SPEAKER_01 19:17

Healthcare too. I mean a lot of our a lot of our cities became eds and meds, as we say. But uh Drexel has a has uh the new med school here in Reading, Pennsylvania. Uh but really great opportunities for people, whether there be you know sort of phlebotomists at entry level on up through not just being a doctor, but but PA programs and and and of course the RN programs and everything.

SPEAKER_00 19:40

You know, it's interesting in in the medical space. I was at a uh job fair in the Pittsburgh area about a year and a half ago. And it was really interesting. Not only were the EMT and sort of all the traditional medical things there, they were bringing kids in, not just kids that were interested from high school programs that were interested not just in nursing programs, but all the tech and art people, because there's so much now in imaging and so many really cool techie kinds of jobs where you know you don't have to be somebody who wants to treat patients. You could be focused on you know the electronics of it. And it's just really interesting uh to your point earlier, uh you don't know what you don't know. And being able to see these amazing new technologies that are opening up in the medical space in particular are just incredible.

SPEAKER_01 20:22

Well, and and across industry, we we try and when we do career events for students to come into the bank, we try and explain, you know, you're not gonna be standing behind a screen handing out cash anymore. Frankly, none of these people have been in a bank so that in in 20 years, so they don't need uh you know, because they they b they see their mom and dad and they bank on a phone, you know, and everything. But to that point, what we're competing not against necessarily other banks, we're competing against Meta and Google for people who can develop those apps, help with our cybersecurity, which is is is is one of our greatest burdens and greatest expenses. Um you know, do all the electronics work and then the marketing of the electronics work and the and the graphics for the electronics work that that runs a modern financial industry uh uh provider. You know, it's it's it's the the world has transformed, which kind of goes to career shortages. I mean, there's you know, for a couple of years there we were we were really at full employment, we talked about career shortages, maybe a little softening now in the labor markets, but but what what on behalf of the governor, what do you like to brag about? What are we how are we doing on unemployment in in in in the state and and where are we going and how do we keep the good news?

SPEAKER_00 21:31

Yeah, so you know, we've had historically low levels of unemployment now for almost three years. We've been under four percent, which is really incredible. And you know, that's been great in some respects, but it's been challenges in others because we still have a you know, we still have a lot of job openings, we still have a lot of opportunities for folks to to work in Pennsylvania. So making sure that we are giving anyone who wants to work but has a but, right? So they want to work but for the fact that they're having trouble with childcare or transportation, trying to make sure that We are remediating remediating barriers wherever we can is really important. Also, you know, taking advantage of upskilling people, making sure that they realize that they they do have career trajectories, people who are in jobs and want to do something that's really more career-facing, with m better financial opportunities for their families, focusing on those kinds of opportunities are really important as well. Sure.

SPEAKER_01 22:21

So upskilling and and and and and removing barriers also matters very, very much when, God forbid, someone loses a job. That's right. And if we are getting to the softening of the economy, which is cyclical, that it is good years or is bad years that can happen. What do we have in place? How does the Department of Labor and Industry respond and what does it provide? Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_00 22:42

That is such a great question. So if you if you think back when we came into office in January of 2023, the only thing anyone ever thought of when they thought of labor and industry was unemployment and this perception that we were not doing it well. Now that's despite the fact that there were thousands of hardworking people at the Department of Labor and Industry day in and day out processing claims. But the reality was the pandemic was huge. And there were federal programs that were changing, and the result of that was that we had about 75,000 backlog claims. People would try over and over and over again and get a busy signal when they called us. When they did get through, they waited an hour and a half for someone to help them. So it was really priority to the governors to do whatever needed to be done to fix what we could fix within six months. So when we came in, we hired an additional 380 people to take claims. We made sure that we had folks focused on getting rid of those backlog 75,000 claims, which we had out by had completely cleared by the end of July. But we also wanted to make sure that we were meeting people where they were. So for folks that were were good on their computers, we wanted to make sure that we were making their experience online, whether it was chat or email work, people who wanted to talk online, we wanted to make sure that there were enough people answering calls. But it was also important for us to work on a program that we call UC Connect. And that gave it our career links, the opportunities for folks to come in in person to meet with and take interviewers from our from our program. So if there was a language barrier, we'd be able to remediate that. Even with somebody who just didn't have internet availability or didn't know how to use the smartphone, had you know we had someone who could help with that, or just because you know sometimes it's confusing to file a claim, or the answers aren't obvious given sort of the the you know personal experiences you're having. So having someone help you with those claims. So making sure that we were able to get that system as finely oiled as we possibly can was so important to the governor, is important to me because to your point, unemployment is cyclical, and we want to make sure that we are meeting people's needs where they are, and we are in the position now where we can add to our complement when necessary to make sure that we are functioning at at full capacity. That's great.

SPEAKER_01 24:44

That's good. We we've covered a lot of ground, but is there anything we didn't cover that you'd like to talk about while you're in Berks County today? Because you can share with us?

SPEAKER_00 24:51

Yeah, you know, there's one thing I would like to shout out. Um, our Office of Vocational Rehabilitation is such a jewel. We have so many opportunities for folks with any kind of a disability. So, you know, folks that may have hearing challenges or mobility challenges or site challenges, if you are looking for work and you're hearing this podcast, uh please reach out to the Department of Labor and Industry. We want to work with you. We want to assess what your what your interests are and what your abilities are, and we want to make sure that we are getting you into the perfect job for you. Um and if you're an employer that's looking to have a more diverse workforce, please reach out to us. We can absolutely help with that. So thank you for giving me a chance to shout out OVR.

SPEAKER_01 25:31

And can find you certainly on on the web and uh social media number. That's exactly right.

SPEAKER_00 25:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:36

Well, we could be doing this all day, but I I do know we need to get you back to Harrisburg. Want to thank you for coming to Redding and Burks and being with us today. It's been such a pleasure. Thank you. Thank you for being a speaker at the conference. So for on behalf of the Burks Business Education Coalition and Customers Bank, I'm Dave Patty. We want to say thank you to Secretary Nancy Walker from the Department of Labor and Industry for sharing her time with us today. Thank you. And thank you for joining us.