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Show Help wanted: basic skills for the 90's workplace formed - a need that Utah emphasized em-phasized in the Workforce 2000 study. My workforce readiness agenda seeks to encourage these ties in a number of ways: I will soon appoint a blue-ribbon panel which will include top leaders from business, labor and education. I will charge mem with the mission of hammering out national competency com-petency guidelines that reflect work readiness. I also will advance a number of programs to deal with the 40 percent per-cent of our high school graduates who go directly to work. The United States is one of the few western nations without a formalized formaliz-ed school-to-work transition. Mobilizing the business community com-munity and the public in general to become involved in local volunteer networks to work hand-in-hand with parents and school personnel to tutor students, will help us assist disadvantaged youth. Since two-thirds of America's workforce in the year 2000 is working work-ing today, we must devote needed attention to upgrading the skills of our current workforce. The actions we take now to improve im-prove the quality of our workforce will determine if the American dream endures. By ELIZABETH DOLE SECRETARY OF LABOR As America enters a new decade, we are in danger of losing a dream that has been etched in our national consciousness for over 200 years: A dream that any American could, through hard work and dedication, rise to the top, and succeed in building a better life and a brighter future for the next generation. The battle for survival of this dream is being waged in America's workplaces. And it is being lost because the American workforce is in a state of unreadiness: Unready for the new jobs, the new realities and the new challenges of the 1990's. Today's jobs demand better reading, writing, and reasoning skills, and much more math and science, yet 25 percent of our young people drop out of high school. Though Utah had only a 1.8 percent per-cent dropout rate (2,800 students) in 1985-86 and the state is recognized for its high literacy rate, your Workforce 2000 study was so right to emphasize "education, training and re-training' to keep up with future trends. The skills of a large number of current workers are now obsolete, or soon will be made obsolete by changes in technology. Utah's Workforce 2000 study also emphasized the shift from a goods-producing state to a service-based service-based economy with technological, service, professional, sales and management jobs growing fastest The jobs with the least education required will grow slowly or decline and those with the most education required will grow fastest in Utah. The danger of a "skills gap" nationally is heightened by the fact that our workforce is growing at only one percent annually its slowest rate in 40 years. A growing number of businesses are finding themselves facing a severe shortage of skilled workers. Utah's projected experience will be a million workersup one-third since 1986 and a need to retrain your relatively young workforce in the state. The demand will double for high tech skilled workers through 1995. Your challenge includes in-cludes supplying engineers, scientists, scien-tists, mathemeticians specialists, technicians and computer operators. For individuals, the simple fact is that if you do not possess certain basic skills required to survive in the workplace, then you can't get a job, you won't move up the ladder, and you will spend a lifetime on the outside looking in. For businesses and our economy, the costs are every bit as high. A lack of a skilled workforce leads to an inability to expand, to succeed, and to compete. As Secretary of Labor, I refuse to concede that American workers cannot meet the levels of skills and training necessary to compete in the world marketplace. I refuse to concede con-cede that the American dream is over. Taking the high road involves some innovative and revolutionary changes in the way we think about business and education. I recently proposed these changes in a seven-point seven-point agenda, which I believe will help set America on the road to readiness. My agenda recognizes that some reforms are needed in our schools. There is something disturbingly wrong with a system where students can pass tests to graduate from high school, but can't even pass the most basic of entry-level employment exams. The President's recent "Education Summit" in Charlottesville, Char-lottesville, Va., marked ah important impor-tant milestone on the road to building a quality workforce through a national education strategy. If we are to build on the momentum of the summit, then we first need to understand that the connection between educational excellence and business success is fundamental. Closer ties between business and education must be |