STATEMENT OF THOMAS J. WHITE
PRESIDENT AND CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER
DURHAM, NORTH CAROLIA CHAMBER OF COMMERCE
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON 21^st CENTURY COMPETITIVENESS
HOUSE COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION AND THE WORKFORCE

March 11, 2003

Chairman McKeon and Members of the Subcommittee:

Thank you very much for the opportunity to testify this afternoon. My name is Thomas White, and I serve as the president and ceo of the Durham, North Carolina Chamber of Commerce. I also have the pleasure and privilege of serving on our local Workforce Development Board and its Executive Committee. For most of my 25-year career with our Chamber I have been involved in economic development, recruiting companies to our community and helping existing enterprise expand. I also enjoyed serving for four years as the Chamber’s director of our local private sector initiative program, a partnership between the City of Durham and our Chamber that sought to promote more extensive business involvement in our CETA and JTPA job training programs. Very briefly I would like to cite a few specific examples of how the workforce development system is critically important to economic development.

We were recognized by President Ronald Reagan in 1985 for our role in the implementation of a Ford Foundation initiative entitled "Women in Electronics", a public/private collaboration under the JTPA Private Industry Council that helped welfare recipients develop the academic competencies and occupational skills to secure good-paying jobs with outstanding companies such as IBM, General Electric and Northern Telecom, anchor tenants in our Research Triangle Park. That unique, effective partnership reinforced our organization’s firmly held conviction that business can and should play a key role in the operation of our employment and training system. We were able to forge an effective partnership comprised of public welfare agency officials and private human resource representatives that led to hundreds of economically disadvantaged citizens securing good jobs at good wages.

In late 1998, our Chamber announced that Aisin AW, a Japanese transmission manufacturing firm serving Toyota, had selected Durham for a $100 millon investment comprised of a 125-acre land purchase, the construction of a 300,000 square foot production facility and most importantly the creation of 300 good-paying jobs. Last June the company broke ground on Phase 2 of their project adding another $160 million worth of capital investment and 450 additional jobs. The company has a sole source agreement with our Employment Security Commission (our One Stop Center operator) for employee recruitment, and our Community College will conduct all of the company’s pre-employment classroom training at a satellite campus near Aisin AW’s facility. And here is the essential point of this mini-case study: both the site selection consultants and corporate human resource managers indicated that workforce development resource provision was the key factor in their determination to both locate in Durham initially in 1998 and to expand operations in 2002.

We have been most fortunate to have been selected by the US Chamber of Commerce Center for Workforce Preparation for participation in the Workforce Innovation Networks demonstration project. The superior technical assistance and professional support services offered us by the Center staff have enabled us to establish and enhance this economic development/employment and training linkage to the maximum benefit of not only our corporate prospects and our Chamber members, but also our WIA public constituencies, including dislocated workers, TANF recipients, at-risk youth, and other workforce participants who stand to benefit from a truly effective public private partnership.

That it what is so commendable about the Center’s WINs demonstration that is reminiscent of the underlying principles of our success in that "Women in Electronics" demonstration under JTPA—when the US Chamber and the National Association of Manufacturers partners with the Ford Foundation, the Annie Casey Foundation and Jobs for the Future in a spirit of common cause, the coalescence of those organizations and institutions has the capacity to produce some very impressive outcomes, in this instance, helping low-income workers gain access to the new jobs being created as a result of effective Chamber-driven economic development.

The lesson in these demonstration projects is that our communities, our states and our nation are far more competitive and productive when we design and operate a workforce system that includes business and government as full-fledged partners. We stand a far better chance of achieving success, as measured by tax base expansion, capital investment, job creation and poverty reduction, when our nation’s workforce system is fully integrated with our economic development system so that all our citizens can take advantage of and reap the benefit from the economic opportunities created by new and expanding industry. 

Thank you very much for the opportunity to submit this testimony.