The announcement that Hickory has landed another call center is good news in a dismal economy. As we all know, the macroeconomic picture isn't pretty and unemployment is rising in our area as it is in most areas. My sense is that the recession will be longer and more painful than most pundits predict. We should prepare for a worse case scenario. But, nevertheless, this call center will provide jobs for a good number of our neighbors and we should be thankful for them.
Since this is the second call center that will locate here and there haven't been many other companies coming here (except for the often touted MDI and Target) I would like to make a couple of observations:
First, we need to rejoice for the good news and double down on efforts to attract more. We still have a lot of ground to make up both in terms of the number of jobs and the pay scales. In the whole Unifour area, since the furniture and textile bust, we have lost around 24000 jobs. Many of these jobs paid $15 to $18 dollars an hour. The jobs at the call center will pay pretty well but certainly not what we lost. We have to get what we can but at some point we need to land industries that pay the fat checks .
Secondly, while the call centers are good news it does not create a "Hickory Brand". And we don't want to be the Bangalore, India of the US (should we call ourselves Hickolore or Bangalickory?) In the former economy, we were known internationally for furniture and textiles. This was our "brand name" if you will. Now, I am all in favor of a diversified economic base but we need a focus for Hickory. What will we be known for? The county has made some strides in biodiesel. Charlotte is trying to lure energy companies such as solar panel manufacturers and nuclear plant technology. Kannapolis has the biotech operations that David Murdock is creating. And Hickory will have ????????????
Double-H Believes : Hickory is a center of retail sales (drawing from a 6 county area) and we have a vibrant restaurant scene. If people are coming to shop and eat, why do we not have more entertainment businesses?
Manufacturing is not dead. Burke county has attracted a specialty battery company, there are medical devices, medical textiles, military textiles that camouflage soldiers, etc. We need to get industry leaders and partner with them to get ahead of the curve on some of these and locate them here to use the talent base and assets we have here to build our brand. The call center is good news. Now let's get some momentum.
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Wednesday, January 7, 2009
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4 comments:
The Job Creation Issue is the issue that is going to have to be addressed by the council. I really think they have been lost about the power that they have. I was pleasantly surprised to hear Chuck Hansen refer to Hickory's Regional Importance when he addressed the council last night about the Stormwater Advisory Committee. Our council essentially has a lot of responsibility toward the direction of this entire region.
We are geographically the center of the Unifour. We are geographically the center of Western North Carolina. Heck, you could even say that we the geographic center of the Eastern Seaboard.
We have a lot of ingredients to sell this area. Many people here lack pride about what we can be, because they have self-esteem issues about what we have been.
Yes, we were a small textile and furniture town. Yes, there was a lot of dirty work involved in those areas. Yes, those areas were predominantly manned by a limited skilled labor force. But, that is where everyone and every region of this country has come from.
100 years ago, you either worked in a sweatshop or you worked on a farm. There wasn't much in between. There were textile garment sweatshops in (gasp) New York City and other metropolitan areas, so why should we be ashamed?
Most of you seem to be awestruck by the sophistication of these metropolitan areas. Go to their underbelly. There you will see many of the same issues that we are facing here in Hickory today. The only difference is that they have the concrete jungle and we have the clay jungle.
I saw a lady that I went to school with last week on the WBTV news. She dropped out of school, probably around 10th grade. We had jobs available for people like that back then. You could go to work at age 16 in a factory, but those jobs are no longer available and the people that did that are basically lost in the system.
These people have limited skills and limited ability to adapt. What are we going to do with them? We have to mold them into something. We can't just put them into a perpetual cycle of unemployment and government dependence.
These people can't work at call centers. These people can't be moved into the service sector. But they can do medial labor jobs. We have to create some sort of manufacturing employment for these individuals. That is one area that it is imperative that we work on developing.
Another area that we must force upon this State, when it comes to development, is to let us experiment with vocational education. When our younger citizens get to 9th grade, they need to be given a choice to either pursue the traditional education route or move toward learning a skill.
Maybe if given a chance to learn a skill, instead of something that they aren't curious about and find mundane at that time, then these 16 year-olds wouldn't drop out of school. And maybe keeping them in the system would help them gain more curiosity over time.
Education needs to be about students and not about teachers and administrators. We need to meet the kids' needs, because they are our future.
In the end, it's all about vision. I believe, we've been travelling down the path looking at the mirror. We need to start looking at the road.
What happened to this?....
http://www.catawbaedc.org/News%20Content/2007%20Articles/HDR%20120507%20FBP%20Distribution.pdf
The City has been selling rain barrels to do just what you mentioned in your blog about the run off water since May 2007.
Yes and I think the program is great and I laud them for it. We also need to push the cistern idea. I saw where Hickory High is going to use a cistern to water their football and baseball field. That is good management and I hope that other schools and government agencies in the area will follow suit.
Just think how valuable a collection of cisterns along with a man-made aquifer near Valley Hills Mall and Catawba Valley Boulevard could be. That would be a wise infrastructure investment.
I think that when our city agencies, officials, staff, and workers do something that benefits our community, then it should be pointed out. They are employees of the community and when they do something good, we should show them our gratitude and appreciation.
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