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GAO: Dislocated Workers Need Training
by William New
A senior General Accounting Office (GAO) official said last week that the government's program to retrain U.S. workers who lose jobs because of free-trade agreements not only needs functional improvements but also must address deeper problems in affected communities.
In July 20 testimony before the Senate Finance International Trade Subcommittee, Loren Yager, GAO's director of international affairs and trade, said the profile of displaced workers reveals problems in retraining them for the higher skilled jobs of today. A high percentage of people who lose jobs because of trade deals had low education levels and were older than 40, she said. More than half were women.
"Given these factors and the maximum two years of training available, earning an associate of arts degree would represent a considerable achievement yet may still leave these participants short of the skills required for many technology and service-sector jobs," Yager said.
The Trade Adjustment Assistance program was created under the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement to help squelch fears of lost jobs. According to GAO figures, about 163,000 workers per year were covered under the program from 1995 to 2000.
G8 Summit Highlights Digital Opportunities
The Bush administration's report from last week's Group of Eight summit of the leaders of industrialized nations said the group's Digital Opportunities Task Force (DOT Force) action plan to tackle the so-called digital divide "includes [information technology] initiatives that correspond to a number of the president's and the G8's priorities."
The DOT Force plan, for instance, calls for the establishment of IT teacher-training centers in developing countries containing Internet portals to allow access to the best practices worldwide. It also proposes IT-based programs to provide health officials with access to up-to-date medical information and to share strategies against HIV-AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis. And the DOT Force created a public-private partnership to help developing countries take the necessary steps to apply information technology to health and education problems.
"These policies will assist developing-country economies to become more attractive to private investment," the July 21 White House statement said.
"It is a tough issue that both sides struggle with, trying to figure out how to integrate information technology into our ... development assistance," a senior administration official said, "and at one point, the discussions can tend to get untethered in some ways from the reality of actually how you get things that we can do."
The G8 leaders also asked the DOT Force to formulate another action plan on e-government, with an eye toward building democracy and improving the administrative efficiency of governments.
Rushin' To Trade Tech With Russia
Commerce Secretary Donald Evans and Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill will be in Russia Thursday and Friday to talk about a U.S.-Russia Business Dialogue that will heavily emphasize technology.
"The Dialogue will be open to interested American and Russian companies and business associations," Presidents Bush and Vladimir Putin said July 22 in a joint statement from the G8 summit. "We hope thereby to encourage participation by large, medium and especially small enterprises from a broad cross-section of industry sectors, including, in particular, technology businesses."
The two governments have pledged Cabinet-level participation to receive a first formal report at a meeting early in 2002, according to a fact sheet.
Zoellick Focuses On India
U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick last week met with his counterpart from India, Commerce Minister Murasoli Maran, and information technology was among the hot topics they discussed.
"Minister Maran and I discussed the changing nature of India's economy, including the important information- and service-industry network developing between our two countries," he said. Zoellick agreed to travel to India on Aug. 5 to continue discussions with government and private-sector leaders.
Rick Rossow, the director of the U.S.-India Business Council at the Chamber of Commerce, this week noted that the bilateral relationship appears to be changing with the slowdown of the U.S. economy. "Some believe India's importance will grow due to lower costs, [while] other pundits believe India's importance in the eyes of U.S. IT companies will decline due to smaller discretionary budgets to try 'new things,'" in India, such as IT outsourcing and back-office work.
"U.S. companies were also desperate last year to get more high-tech workers from India into the [United States]," Rossow said. "That need has decreased significantly."
Meanwhile, a critique of India's Information Technology Act of 2000 published in the Journal of Internet Law this month argues that the law creates binding obligations on businesses that could be problematic and need to be updated.
For instance, it specifically ties e-commerce transactions to the asymmetric public-key encryption system, but that system is being replaced by a more secure system, according to authors Akil Hirani and Naoshir Vachha, attorneys at Majmudar and Co. in Bombay.
Haben Sie Internet Opportunities?
The Commerce Department will lead a group of U.S. firms specializing in products and services for the Internet and telecommunications to Germany to seek business opportunities. The International Trade Administration's Office of Information Technologies is organizing the Nov. 4-9 trip.
Germany has Europe's largest telecommunications market, and the third-largest worldwide, with an estimated value of $53 billion in telecom services and $13 billion in telecom equipment in 2000. Its market is expected to continue to grow 5 percent to 10 percent annually, driven by the effects of its liberalization, more mobile communications and high-speed Internet access, and "the convergence of information and communication technologies," the Commerce Department reported.
Germany also has the most Internet users in Europe, with the world's eighth-highest Internet penetration rate. As of April 2001, some 25 million Germans were using the Internet, with that number projected to increase to 47 million by 2004.
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