Post-Katrina Worker Recruitment Program Along Gulf Coast Is Off to a 'GREAT' Start

摘要

Tim Horst is neither a juggler nor a matchmaker by trade. Yet the president of Bechtel Group unit Becon Construction Co. and newly named program manager for one of the hurricane-devastated Gulf Coast's largest construction recruitment programs has had to become a little of both. Horst is the point person for the Gulf Coast Workforce Development Initiative, an ambitious, business-funded effort launched in 2006 to find and train craft workers to rebuild areas battered by Hurricane Katrina and keep them in place for power, industrial and other major projects planned in the region. Infused with 5 million dollars from the Business Roundtable, the initiative's "I'm GREAT" pre-apprenticeship program is promising to attract and train 20,000 new industry workers by 2010.