It is unfortunate that West Virginia could not interest Shell Oil in building its proposed ethane cracker plant here. But Shell's decision to locate in Monaca, Pa., did not surprise me in the least. Bigger states can offer more.
Monaca is 25 miles from Pittsburgh. The Pittsburgh metro area's population is one-third larger than West Virginia's entire population.
West Virginia proposed a site in Hancock County (population estimated at 30,500 and on a downward trend from 2000). One quick look at the map tells you that 90 percent (or more) of the plant's work force would have to commute from Ohio and Pennsylvania. Unless, of course, I have overlooked an indigenous tribe of intelligent forest creatures who could be trained to crack ethane.
West Virginia should feel very fortunate that Toyota Motors chose Putnam County to locate an engine plant. This has been wonderful for our state. The plant just keeps growing.
But a change is brewing. Japanese business executives are the most polite people in the world. A Toyota executive would never say anything derogatory about West Virginia's work force. But the executive would drop a hint when appropriate.
Recently, Japanese corporate executives convened at the Toyota plant and started dropping hints. They worried that West Virginia students tested poorly in math and science. And they worried that West Virginia needed more skilled workers to operate modern equipment. And they worried about illegal drug use.
If the Japanese were more forthright, like New Jersey plant managers, they would simply say: "Your kids can't add; your young men are wrench-turners in a robot age; and all of them are pot heads."
Here is what happened recently. The state made a pitch to bring hundreds of new skilled jobs to Hancock County while simultaneously being told in Putnam County that we barely have enough skilled workers to fill the available jobs.
As for students who rank at or near the bottom in math and science, there can only be three reasons. A). The kids are born with the "stupid gene" and will never learn anything. B). The public education system has failed to educate our children. C). The tests used to measure math and science comprehension are faulty.
West Virginia educators have opted for "C" to explain this phenomenon.
As for workers who lack those "tech savvy" skills that everyone likes to talk about, we just don't have an environment to learn these skills. West Virginia has always been a natural resources state. "Tech savvy," then, means chainsaws. We know how to saw logs. But we export our logs to the furniture manufacturing plants in North Carolina.
When your job options are coal mine, saw mill or drilling rig, then it's very difficult to learn the skills to operate a complex milling machine at Toyota's engine plant. Conversely, if you can operate a milling machine, you'll take a machinist's job in another state before going to the mines.
If West Virginia does ramp up tech savvy vocational schools, then the grads of those schools will leave the state if the skilled jobs aren't here. This is no different from losing our college grads to other states for the last 60 years.
As for West Virginians being dopers, we need to face the fact that drug abuse in our state is a health epidemic. But we have treated the problem as a crime. We have built new prisons and overfilled them. A lot of good this has done.
Drug use is an attitude. And until our elected leaders, our preachers, our teachers, our doctors and our civic leaders get on soapboxes and shame everyone who gets blitzed on bath salts, Percocet or pot, then our youth will continue to think it's cool when Mom and Dad do drugs.
Believe it or not, drug abuse was not a problem until the 1960s. That's when doctors hooked housewives on Valium, and rock stars glorified marijuana. Attitudes, how shall I say, changed.
Going forward, West Virginia has some daunting challenges if it hopes to maintain a work force. Consider the biggest hint that the Japanese executives dropped at the Toyota get-together. They worry about baby boomers retiring and not having skilled workers to replace them.
In New Jersey speak, this means: No workers? We're outta here. Bada bing!
In Japanese speak, this means: We worry about West Virginia's future.
