Businesses have a continuing need for employees who will arrive at work every day free of the influence of drugs or alcohol; be able to work in a group environment; read and give written instructions; make effective use of oral communication skills; perform basic math functions necessary for the job; and operate a piece of technology or equipment. The Commonwealth should regularly review existing education and workforce development programs to ensure that each is achieving high quality results at an acceptable cost-per-student. PMA supports school choice, coordinating and consolidating best-practice workforce development programs, and expansions of Educational Improvement Tax Credit program.
State Rep. Barb Gleim (R-Cumberland) was delayed from her initial phone interview for this publication because of a meeting with a constituent, a concrete contractor, with a problem all too common in Pennsylvania. The contractor was a down-the-line victim of a holdup in state permits. “He wasn’t getting paid because the business he did the ...
Left behind in last week’s approval of the state budget are needed reforms to the business tax and regulatory structure that would help Pennsylvania take full advantage of an unrelenting surge in the nation’s economy. America just broke the record of 120 months of sustained growth thanks to the federal Tax Cuts and Jobs Act ...
As expected, Governor Tom Wolf catered to the powerful teachers’ union by vetoing legislation that would have rescued additional thousands of kids trapped in underperforming public schools. HB 800 would have doubled the size of an indisputably successful program, the Educational Improvement Tax Credit (EITC), that grants tax credits to businesses that provide scholarship money ...
Pennsylvania manufacturers face a heartrending problem. Many of their job openings — 71,000 in 2018 by The Manufacturing Institute’s reckoning — are squandered. Manufacturers can’t meet demand without skilled workers; thousands of (potential) workers are left without a family-sustaining paycheck. In mid-February, there were more than 6,000 manufacturing jobs currently vacant in Pennsylvania according to ...
In preparing his budget proposal, Governor Tom Wolf apparently missed, or conveniently ignored, news reports of the January U.S. job totals. A CNBC headline will suffice as a reminder: “Payrolls surge by 304,000, smashing estimates despite government shutdown.” Economists discussing the record job numbers did not credit higher taxes, (energy taxes included), a higher minimum ...
On November 16, State Rep. Becky Corbin (R-Chester) will speak in Uwchlan Township, Chester County at the grand opening of a new facility for a high-tech seat manufacturer whose products protect kids from fires on school buses and defend soldiers from roadside bomb blasts. The scene at the 300,000 square foot plant of the United ...
What’s going on with the Tresco Paving Company, an open shop contractor in Westmoreland County, is sadly emblematic of a culture in Pennsylvania that has us languishing near the bottom in an annual economic competitiveness ranking, Rich States, Poor States, by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). Westmoreland County froze Tresco out of two paving ...
“The society which scorns excellence in plumbing as a humble activity and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted activity will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy: neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water.” –John W. Gardner, Secretary of Health Education and Welfare under JFK and author of “Excellence.” Michelle ...
PMA Partners With BIPAC for Grassroots Education Effort
October 19, 2016 | Workforce/Education
It’s no small or narrow consequence that Facebook filters its “Newsfeed” to block stories that would appeal to conservative readers. The impact that Facebook and other internet sites have on what people believe, and ultimately how they vote, is profound. Studies show that people look to internet-based news now more than to newspapers, television or ...
The U.S. Supreme Court is poised to deliver a crippling blow to public sector unions and their artificially inflated presence in the political arena. The anticipated ruling in Friedrichs v. CTA argued last week before the High Court would end forced unionism: the law of the land in Pennsylvania and 22 other states that require ...