Luzerne County Jobs Summit Leads to PAJobsNow Bill Package

Last March, my Luzerne County House Democratic colleagues and I held a Jobs Summit at the Luzerne County Community College. The purpose of the summit was to hear from Luzerne County businesses and community leaders about what they believe we need to do at the state level to help pull our economy out of this recession.

At the Jobs Summit, we discussed the job climate in Luzerne County and ways to reduce the county unemployment rate – which continues to hover around 10 percent. The summit sparked a dialogue on how to arm our businesses with the tools they need to compete and grow, so they can hire more workers and improve our local economy.

What I heard from our local businesses is that they’re struggling to stay afloat in this economy, and they’re finding it extremely difficult to get loans to sustain or improve their operations and hire more workers. Banks just aren’t lending, which is making it very tough on our small businesses. Employers and community leaders also expressed concerns about the lack of qualified employees for jobs that ARE available. They expressed a real need to get skilled, educated employees into the workforce.

We took the concerns we received from the Jobs Summit and came back to Harrisburg to develop a plan that would address them. The result is PAJobsNow – a comprehensive legislative package aimed at putting more Pennsylvanians back to work. PAJobsNow focuses on three major areas of economic investment:

• Job creation and retention – to keep the jobs we currently have and create new employment opportunities for those seeking work.
• Business development – to help our small businesses and corporations succeed and grow in a difficult economy, and offer more jobs for Pennsylvania workers.
• Workforce development – to continue to build an educated, skilled workforce and attract business development in Pennsylvania.

PAJobsNow combines new initiatives with strategic investments in programs that are already in place to help move Pennsylvania forward. We need to be proactive in finding solutions to help businesses keep the employees they have, while also spurring new job opportunities and investing in programs that help build a strong, competitive workforce.

The bottom line is that state government can’t create jobs. But it CAN help Pennsylvania businesses invest in themselves and their employees. That’s why PAJobsNow includes a new work-sharing program that would enable participating employers to reduce work hours as an alternative to layoffs. PAJobsNow would also improve and expand several small business loan programs, allowing businesses to access capital that they may not otherwise have been able to access in the private lending market.

And we heard the concerns of local businesses and community leaders who said they need well-trained, highly-skilled employees. That’s why we included a bill that guarantees ongoing support for the successful Industry Partnership program.

We have some wonderful Industry Partnerships in Luzerne County that have been helping our local businesses and workers come together with local colleges to develop training programs that are in high demand in their specific industry. Whether it’s job training, workforce development, business loan programs or other incentives – House Democrats are working hard to find ways to get Pennsylvania’s economy back on track.

We’ve already passed many of the bills in our PAJobsNow package, and we hope to move more of these critical bills over the next couple of months.

This is the way our state government is supposed to work – We listen to our constituents, businesses and workers back home, and we take that feedback back to Harrisburg to help improve people’s lives.