President Barack Obama promoted job training – and other topics from his State of the Union speech – while speaking on Thursday in Waukesha.
Obama signed an executive order making formal what he told the nation on Tuesday night – that Vice President Joe Biden will lead a review of federal job training programs. Obama told workers at a General Electric engine plant in Waukesha that some training doesn’t prepare people for existing job openings.
“We’ve got to move away from what my Labor Secretary Tom Perez calls ‘train and pray,’” said Obama. “You train workers first, and then you hope they get a job. We can’t do that.”
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Obama said his administration will also support state and local job training programs, and later challenge community colleges to partner with companies to design job-driven training.
The conservative group Americans for Prosperity, which organized a protest outside the Waukesha plant, said Obama’s job training plans come very late, and House Republicans said the federal review will duplicate another completed three years ago.
Obama also updated another topic from Tuesday night, by encouraging Wisconsin to join his efforts to raise the minimum wage.
“Right now the federal minimum wage doesn’t even go as far as it did back in 1950,” said Obama. “We’ve seen states and cities raising their minimum wages on their own, and I support these efforts, including the one that’s going on right here in Wisconsin.”
Republican leaders in Wisconsin say they have no plans to back a proposal by Democrats to raise the minimum wage in the state.
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