Norton to Offer Amendment to Surface Transportation Bill to Help Put People to Work, Combat Shortage of Skilled Highway Workers

WASHINGTON, DC – The Office of Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) today said that among the amendments she will offer at the surface transportation bill markup is a workforce training amendment to require states to use one-half of one percent of highway funds for federal highway construction training. Under current law, states may, but are not required to, use one-half of one percent of highway funds to administer highway construction training, but states have almost always failed to carry out the intent of the law.

"The committee saw the developing shortages of skilled craft workers and tried to get ahead of it," Norton said. "Now, the large cohort of baby-boom construction workers is retiring while a new generation of workers of every race and background, including women and minorities, has no systematic or rapid route to get the training necessary to become electricians, plumbers, sheet metal workers, and other skilled journeymen and women." Most of the crafts require three or four years of apprentice training to become journeymen.

The Congresswoman said that the committee's permissive training provision failed. "The committee must now give the states the responsibility to use a very small amount of their federal funds to help train the workforce of the future, which they will need to build the nation's roads and sophisticated transportation infrastructure," Norton said.

Norton said the committee has already set an important precedent for her amendment by specifically including training funds, at her request, in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, with $3 million specifically targeted for training in the General Services Administration section of that bill. Also included in the Act was $20 million for federal highway training programs.

Norton will also offer an amendment to require an audit every two years of the Union Station Redevelopment Corporation (USRC), the federal coordinator of Union Station and of the modes of transportation and retail housed there. Norton said a thoroughgoing and definitive audit of the financial viability and management of USRC is necessary in light of an unprecedented and simultaneous transformation of all aspects of Union Station, some of which is already in progress. The Congresswoman and House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Ranking Member Nick Rahall (D-WV) last month wrote to the Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Transportation to request an audit.

Published: February 2, 2012