Group Aims to Retain Naval Workers’ Talent

While Naval Base Ventura County boosters fight the proposed transfer of jobs to China Lake, another group is drawing up plans for keeping highly skilled workers in the area should the restructuring take place.

Job placement, retraining and other support would be offered to 2,250 base scientists, engineers and other workers under a program just getting underway by the Workforce Investment Board of Ventura County, a job development group with federal, state and local job-training funding. The base supports about 17,000 government and civilian jobs.

After an analysis of the county’s labor market, Workforce Investment will tap colleges, local governments and major businesses to assist in offering jobs and retraining displaced workers such as teachers, biotech workers, computer analysts and healthcare workers.

In a recent base survey, up to 80% of those slated for transfer said they would quit or retire rather than leave the area, said Elaine Crandall, executive director of Workforce Investment.

The goal is to help those people move into high-growth, high-wage jobs in Ventura County, she said.

“There may be folks taking this opportunity to reassess their lives,” Crandall said: “Start their own businesses, retrain as teachers, take a new track.

“We want to keep them here while minimizing the potential negative effect of leaving those jobs,” she said.

Crandall acknowledged that Workforce Investment’s plan might be viewed as premature given that base advocates are still trying to reverse the Aug. 25 vote by the Base Realignment and Closure Commission to transfer the jobs.

After review by President Bush, who can send it back to the commission for adjustment, the reorganization plan must go to Congress by Nov. 7.

But it is prudent to move forward with developing a plan just in case, Crandall said. Military officials say the jobs won’t be transferred for four to six years.

“It’s never to early to work on planning,” she said. “If this restructuring really does happen, the effects on the community would be devastating.”

Bill Simmons, campaign manager for the county’s base closure task force, which opposed the transfer of jobs, said it did not see the job-training program as a threat. Now that the base closure panel has voted to move the jobs, defense downsizing is a reality, Simmons said.

“Those jobs are going through a continuous state of change,” he said. Any time money becomes available for job training, he said, “it’s a good thing.”

Still, Simmons said, the local task force is continuing its effort to ease the effect of the base closure panel’s decision, and in the months ahead, task force members will press legislators to persuade the Pentagon to “interpret” the decision in a way that will not cut so deeply into Ventura County’s military work force.

“The fight now is to fight for every job,” he said.

Much of the funding for the job-training programs will come from the state’s employment division, Crandell said. But Workforce Investment hopes also to form partnerships with employers, cities and colleges for training and placement.

A major emphasis will be on moving skilled workers into jobs along the so-called biotech corridor straddling the Ventura Freeway in Thousand Oaks.

Biotechnology giant Amgen is based there and often needs scientists and engineers, she said. Attracting qualified candidates is difficult because of the region’s housing costs. Home prices in July averaged $579,000.

“We have some homegrown talent right here at the ready,” Crandall said.

Though the specifics have yet to be drawn, retraining for people in 2,760 private-sector jobs linked to the base would also be offered, she said.

The proposal includes paid and unpaid internships at local medical centers and a pre-apprenticeship program to teach construction skills.