Part 1: Jobs Now.
1. Make the GED free to those who enter an approved adult education program in South Carolina. Education and training are critical to success in today’s job market. Every year, countless South Carolinians don't take the GED exam because they cannot afford the $80.00 fee to take the test, keeping many of them from being able to find work or serve our country in the armed services. It's time for South Carolina to provide state funds to cover the cost of the test for those who cannot afford it and who are in approved SC adult education programs.
2. Extend unemployment benefits for those getting retrained in high-demand fields. Right now people who have lost their jobs often can’t get the training they need to secure a new one without losing their unemployment benefits. Yet we have employers in certain industries, like health care, nuclear, welding and automotive engineering, who are actively looking to recruit new talent. Individuals who are going back to school to gain skills in high-demand sectors must not lose unemployment benefits while going through state-approved training programs designed to fill these positions.
3. Tuition reimbursement in high-demand fields. Because training is so important, I would also dedicate a pool of state workforce development funds to reimburse tuition costs for job seekers in high-demand clusters. Typically, tuition reimbursement programs operate after the fact. But workers who have lost their jobs can’t afford to pay for retraining and wait to be paid back. Workers in high demand fields who agree to accept open positions prior to receiving benefits would receive partial tuition reimbursement. To keep the system fair, those workers who decline positions or don’t pass training programs must repay the state or lose future unemployment benefits.
4. Overhaul the Employment Security Commission. Reform of this key organization is sorely needed. During these challenging times, most South Carolinians are looking for a hand up, not a hand out. That is why it is infuriating that some people are collecting unemployment insurance after being fired for misconduct, voluntarily leaving work or turning down jobs. We need to keep our unemployment compensation system strong to stretch scarce dollars to cover legitimate unemployment and retraining needs – not to pay those who choose not to work. I will require accountability at the Commission and cut through the red tape to better connect job seekers with employers. I will call on the agency to provide more user-friendly, targeted information about which companies are hiring where, identify local training options to help job seekers compete for open jobs, and match workforce skills and needs.
5. Call on South Carolina to institute a Workshare option. Many states are offering employers facing economic hardship an alternative to laying off their workers. Workshare allows employers to reduce the hours of their workforce while their employees retain partial benefits and receive partial unemployment insurance to compensate for lost wages. Workshare enables businesses to reduce overhead without having to lose their talented employee base. It also saves companies valuable time and money when it is time to rehire. For South Carolina workers, Workshare would mean the difference between a paycheck and a pink slip. And for the state, paying only a fraction of a worker’s unemployment benefits is cheaper than paying full unemployment.
6. Buy local and put our own purchasing power to work. South Carolina state agencies purchase more than $1.3 billion a year in goods and services from out-of-state businesses. The SC Small Business Chamber of Commerce believes that our state’s economy would be much stronger today if state government instead pumped some of this $1.3 billion a year into South Carolina's small businesses and workers. I agree that we need to reform our state government to use more in-state services, goods and labor to support the growth and development of our small businesses. We also need to look for more cost savings in our state purchasing decisions by using bulk purchasing and strategic sourcing. Having run a large, complex state agency, I know how to make this transition.
7. Expand “Certified South Carolina.” The Certified South Carolina program lets our citizens know whether the food they’re buying was grown or produced in South Carolina. A local purchase not only delivers a quality, healthy product, it helps our farmers stay financially strong. I will direct more of our purchasing power to help our farmers and fishermen succeed and create more jobs by requiring school lunch programs to buy from them whenever South Carolina products are affordable and available. When products are available, new state contractual relationships will give local producers the certainty they need to make investments and meet state purchasing requirements at competitive prices.
8. Support for Small Businesses. To regain the jobs that have been lost we must do more than recruit a Boeing-type industry to our state every decade or so. We must also focus on helping thousands of small business open or expand in our state. The first thing we must do is look at how to reduce taxes and unnecessary red tape for small businesses. Second, we need to find ways for small employers to form purchasing pools so that they can afford health care and other critical business services. Finally, I will develop microfinance credit programs with private sector partners to expand agricultural and small-business access to capital.
9. Jobs for South Carolinians, not illegal immigrants. In this economy, every job matters. It simply isn’t right for an illegal immigrant to take the wages of a hard-working, legal South Carolina citizen. We must enforce immigration rules and require companies to obey the law.
10. Rural transportation initiative. In rural parts of our state many citizens can’t compete for jobs for the simple reason that they can’t get from home to work. We must expand public-private partnerships to be sure that workers from rural communities can get to areas with high concentrations of jobs, such as tourism-related jobs in coastal SC or to major employers like BMW and Bosch.
11. Improving efficiency, saving money. Right now, federal resources are available to encourage homeowners and small businesses to retrofit their homes and businesses to make them energy efficient and save on their energy bills. Energy efficiency improvements could create 22,000 good-wage jobs in the fields of plumbing, roofing, insulation and general construction [2]. We need to be sure our local workers in these trades have the right training to do these efficiency upgrades and educate our residents and businesspeople about the financial assistance available to pay for efficiency improvements.
12. Health care, small business & cigarette tax. South Carolina has the lowest cigarette tax in the nation. That means that nonsmokers pay more for health care and taxes to cover the rising health costs of smokers. Increasing the cigarette tax means that smokers would pay a greater share of the financial burden they create and generate revenue that can be used to reduce health care costs on working families and small businesses. The state cigarette tax should be raised to the national average and indexed to track the average going forward to help pay for South Carolina’s health care responsibilities under new federal health care legislation. These funds will provide a boost to our health care sector, which creates good jobs with good benefits. In addition to creating new health care jobs and reducing health costs for families and business, we will also provide health insurance coverage to our kids, which is the right thing to do both morally and as an investment in the workforce of tomorrow.
Part 2: Jobs for a Strong Future
