Career office to open for aerospace workers

FROM THE HOUSTON CHRONICLE'S CAROL CHRISTIAN

With cutbacks expected in the NASA space program, Workforce Solutions is preparing to reinstate a permanent office in the Clear Lake area.

Sue Cruver, marketing coordinator for Workforce Solutions’ Gulf Coast Board, said the target date for opening a Clear Lake-area office in April.

“We’re looking for space where we can set up a full-service career office like the others we have throughout our system,” Cruver said. “This would be open to anybody looking for a job.”

Workforce Solutions is a nonprofit organization that receives federal funds distributed through the Texas Workforce Commission. It's not a government agency, but it doesn't charge for its services.

Once the new office is open, it will have employment counselors, financial-aid specialists for those who want to go back to school, a Veterans Affairs representative and other resource information.

“It’s a team effort to try to find a way to help people,” Cruver said.

Meanwhile, Workforce Solutions staffers are meeting with NASA subcontractors and other aerospace employers to find ways to keep highly skilled people in the area if Congress approves the cuts proposed in President Obama’s 2011 budget.

Those meetings have taken place in space supplied by a NASA contractor and do not constitute a Workforce Solutions office, Cruver said.

“It’s really more of a resource center at this time,” she said.

“We have some very specialized people in the space program.

“We don’t want to lose that talent. We want to see if there are other types of jobs people can go to if they lose theirs,” Cruver said.

The budget, released Feb. 1, included elimination of the back-to-the moon Constellation program, which former President George W. Bush announced in 2004.

Coupled with the planned retirement of the space shuttle later this year, the proposed budget could mean the loss of between 4,000 and 7,000 jobs, said Bob Mitchell, president of the Bay Area Houston Economic Partnership.

“We’re panicked,” Mitchell said.

“Our desire is to turn, if not all of it, at least part of the decision around. Who knows if we can?”
Mitchell said it typically takes Congress six to nine months to complete the budget process.