Title:4 - Big Name Companies Join Effort to Train Veterans
Date:October 2012
Source:Manufacturing Institute
4 - Big Name Companies Join Effort to Train Veterans
Get Skills to Work goal is 100,000 veterans jobs by 2015
GE, Boeing, Alcoa, and Lockheed-Martin are putting money and jobs behind a new program targeting veterans. The Get Skills to Work coalition will focus on accelerating skills training for U.S. veterans; helping veterans and employers translate military skills to in-demand advanced manufacturing positions; and, empowering employers with tools to recruit, onboard and mentor veterans.
The Manufacturing Institute is a Washington, DC-based organization dedicated to improving and expanding manufacturing in the United States, will manage several elements of the initiative.
The "Get Skills to Work" program, according to GE chairman and CEO Jeff Immelt, seeks to match veterans with some of the more than half-million unfilled high-tech manufacturing jobs in the United States. Veterans, a million of whom are expected to leave service in the next four years, have the teamwork skills and personal values to make them successful in manufacturing, he said.
The program will offer veterans an online skills assessment and badging system for those who are already qualified for high-tech manufacturing jobs, and will train other veterans through partnerships with community colleges and technical training schools in 10 states, Immelt noted.
GE officials said the first class of veterans will enroll in January at Cincinnati State Technical and Community College in Ohio, near GE Aviation's manufacturing hub.
Additional training sites will open throughout 2013, officials said, in Fort Worth and Houston in Texas; Schenectady, N.Y.; Greenville, S.C.; Durham, N.C.; greater Los Angeles; and Evansville, Ind. Program details are available online at http://www.getskillstowork.org.
