The California Employment Training Panel (CETP) has awarded the Entertainment Industry Development Corp. (EIDC)—the public/private sector partnership that oversees the joint Los Angeles City/County Film Office—an additional $1.5 million. The funding brings EIDC’s total contract with the CETP to $2.9 million.
The money will be used to expand EIDC’s workforce development programs. The rationale is that such training is sorely needed to give today’s artisans the necessary resources to compete for high-tech jobs.
As evidenced in this week’s lead story, an alleged shortage of qualified professionals has prompted many companies in the tech sector—including computer animation studios and visual effects houses—to seek foreign labor. Due to increased demand for skilled foreign workers, the U.S. has raised the annual allotment of H-1B visas to 195,000 annually through September 2003.
However, proponents of the H-1B reform have still found drawbacks in the program, as red tape has made the process of obtaining a visa too time consuming. To address that concern, this month the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) has instituted a pilot program whereby U.S. employers can pay a premium to expedite the processing of H-1B specialty work visas in order to bring foreign talent into the country. For an extra $1,000 per applicant, the INS will process a visa within 15 days, as compared to what has been the norm of two to three months or longer.
H-1B visas enable applicants to be employed in the U.S. for up to six years. The visas can also be renewed once after the first term’s expiration.
Both supporters and opponents of the raised annual H-1B cap regard the visas as a stopgap measure. The long-term solution is clearly based on stateside training. More funding and resources need to be committed to arts and high-tech education in order to help produce more homegrown talent with the necessary technological and artistic skills called for in the new-millennium job market. Retraining of industry workers is also critical.
The latter point brings us back to the CETP’s extra funding for the EIDC. That additional $1.5 million will add 929 workers to the EIDC training program, bringing the total number of industry participants to nearly 1,800—from more than 250 companies.
Training will be provided by such Southern California firms as Montana Edit, Moviola Digital and Weynand Training International. EIDC has also brought on a partner—the San Francisco-based Bay Area Video Coalition—that will provide training in Northern California.
Participating unions include IATSE, IBEW and NABET 53. Training will be in such areas as video/broadcast/Web production operations; postproduction; and animation, motion graphics and broadcast design.
"CETP recognizes we know this industry and the skills workers need to be competitive in this global workplace," stated EIDC senior VP Kathleen Milnes.
Milnes is an industry expert in the area of Hollywood workforce development. She is highly regarded for her development of EIDC’s Hollywood EnTRE (Entertainment Training, Research and Education), an initiative focused on the current and future employment, education and training needs of this industry’s workforce.
While the EIDC via the Los Angeles City/County Film Office tries to combat runaway production, the same battle is being waged through the educating and re-tooling of workers. The alphabet soup of the EIDC, CETP and EnTRE spells out I-N-F-R-A-S-T-R-U-C-T-U-R-E—skilled, homegrown talent that is necessary to keep and attract production.
