[cnn-photo-caption image= http://i.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2008/images/03/27/art.randall.stephenson.gi.jpg caption=" Randall L.Stephenson, Chairman and CEO of AT&T."]
FROM CNN's Jack Cafferty:
The top U.S. phone company is having a hard time finding enough skilled American workers.
Say what? Reuters reports AT&T Chief Executive Randall Stephenson says the company is coming up short in finding enough Americans capable of filling the 5,000 customer service jobs it promised to bring back to the U.S. from India.
So far, about 1,400 of those positions have been returned to the U.S. The company set a goal of 5,000 jobs back in 2006 and says it still plans to stick to that target. But they're not having much luck.
Stephenson is particularly worried about the state of education, pointing to some parts of the U.S. where the high school dropout rate is as high as 50%. He says: “If I had a business that half the product we turned out was defective or you couldn't put into the marketplace, I would shut that business down."
The U.S. economy lost 63,000 jobs last month, which was the largest cut in 5 years. And, if the American public isn't educated enough to handle customer service jobs at AT&T and probably thousands and thousands of others with all different kinds of employers, these companies will have little choice but to continue shipping jobs overseas.
Here’s my question to you: What does it suggest about the state of this country when AT&T says it’s having a hard time finding enough skilled American workers?
Interested to know which ones made it on air?
Mike writes:
As usual, they have left out the other half of the sentence, "We can't find skilled U.S. workers AT THE MEAGER PRICE WE ARE WILLING TO PAY". If these companies would pony up a decent wage, they will find all the U.S. workers they need! Instead they let our country starve to fatten their bottom line.
Amie writes:
I think it means AT&T is not looking hard enough. I am in my twenties and an unemployed American citizen with an education and 5 years of solid management experience and I've been looking for a job for months with no luck. I know several others like me who need to pay our bills. We'd work for AT&T.
Bruce writes:
Jack, I'm a 57-year-old male, whose parents made me sit down and do my homework when I got home from school before I went out to play. They were disappointed in any grade less than a B. They held me back in 3rd grade because I wasn't keeping up. Today I have an MBA and am doing OK. Let's wake up and realize that it's the parents.
Michael writes:
Mr. Cafferty, My son is a college graduate and has a good work record. He is 24 years old and lives in Evansville, Indiana. He applied for a customer service job at the AT&T service center in Evansville. Needless to say, he is well qualified and has yet to get a call from AT&T to go to work. It has been several months since he applied and was interviewed. So AT&T does not have the right to say that they cannot find enough workers in the US.
Tom writes:
They should call me. I have been without a full-time job for the last two years, and I graduated from college in 2005 with a 3.5 GPA average! It’s not that the talent isn't here, they aren't reaching us. Will you give me a job, Jack?
Bill from British Columbia writes:
Jack, It means the writing is on the wall, just nobody can read it.