Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Speaker 0]: Yeah. So we're fresh back to work. We're here to talk with the Department of Labor. That's about 803, which is French as a language here. I'm super by including the S-one 173, and I don't think we'll have a and also if there's time, with Jay, about new version of Necky, you're supposed to jot something a little different. So you take this opportunity while we have you here, for the clear of this effort, so you don't have to come back. Okay. How could I come back with you? Okay,

[Jay Ramsey, Director of Workforce Development, Vermont Department of Labor]: good morning. I'm Jay Ramsey. I'm the director of workforce development at the Department of Labor. And

[Unknown (Policy Director, Vermont Department of Labor)]: I'm from Auburn, policy director at the firm. Thank you

[Jay Ramsey, Director of Workforce Development, Vermont Department of Labor]: for taking care and sharing for screening while we walk through this. So it's about age eight zero three right now and the technical changes as we're trying to position them to the apprenticeship law that was passed in 2023, I believe. So most of this committee was not in place at that time. And when we passed the update to the apprenticeship law, there was a tag at the end that said the legislature wants the department to work with the office of racial equity on some of the equity language and to review the bill to make sure there weren't any other changes or updates that should be made. In January 2024, we submitted a report on what some of those changes could be. So that was obviously the last biennium. So I do want to reference that memorandum and we sent it to the committee this morning it's So on your I think that kind of outlines most of what we're seeing, pros and to change, and a little bit of the reason why. So I'm not going to go through that memo, but if you want to reference it while we're walking through this, if that's your preferred method to walk through and have me address them, or I could just say that I watched Rick walk through and I heard the questions that you were asking him, and I could probably just focus on some of those periods where you seem to have the most questions. It's your pleasure.

[Speaker 0]: So we have done the walk through, so I think you can send the questions.

[Jay Ramsey, Director of Workforce Development, Vermont Department of Labor]: So let me go to the area. So for the most part, what you're seeing are technical changes and tweaks and minor modifications to the language that don't really have a consequence to how we would implement the program. It's just clarifying or rearranging things. On the second page where it's talking about non traditional or premiership end of the three d, and we're updating it to say we're using a calendar year 2023 as the benchmark, that is there to signify that we have confidence in the apprenticeship data starting at that point, because we had a new data system and we changed the law, and it helps to frame what it is that we're looking about when we come in and present to you about what the apprenticeship program has done. So just trying to clarify, we don't want to look back forever, but we do want to look back to a point in time where we have confidence in the data. In the underserved communities, it's listed as number 33. I note that you're proposing to remove all of these protected categories and other kind of demographic qualifiers.

[Unknown (Policy Director, Vermont Department of Labor)]: Not as a means of saying these groups aren't authority, but as

[Jay Ramsey, Director of Workforce Development, Vermont Department of Labor]: a way of recognizing these protections exist in other parts of labor law. They show up in other parts of the federal requirements for apprenticeship. And from a clarification standpoint, we think it will improve everyone's understanding of what we're talking about by instead of looking at all of these different demographics separately, but instead we shift to a model that recognizes how Vermont is kind of structured. Our lens is about rural areas. Our lens is about having access to high speed internet. We're including veterans and people who face barriers. So those are the lenses that we're saying we wanna shift to, and that all of these other populations fall under item E without calling them all out individually. So that was just an attempt to try to simplify this language, but there's still a cross cutting nature for all of these populations with rope areas and access barriers. That's really the purpose of that move. It is also called out in the memo that we wrote with the Office of Racial Equity, as that we ought to be looking at it from this lens instead of these separate panics.

[Unknown (Policy Director, Vermont Department of Labor)]: If

[Jay Ramsey, Director of Workforce Development, Vermont Department of Labor]: we go to page four, obviously there's some clarifications around capital Ps and lowercase Ps, but there was a shift in to be there to say, we're interested in a person's new American status, but really we want to get into what the issue is, and it's about language access. So it's not, are you a new American or not? Because you could be a new American and speak English, it's, are you able to speak English well enough to be in the workforce? Farther down on that page, we added a statement that it felt was missing, that we should also be reporting to you about how we're using federal funds. Just to call that out more specifically. Back up there, that one little word that stricken

[Speaker 0]: between career and technical weaknesses. We have quite a bit of conversation about that if I remember. Right?

[Jay Ramsey, Director of Workforce Development, Vermont Department of Labor]: It's more of a stylistic thing, think. Have always, so my roots in career technical education at the national level, that conversation has, I was involved more closely was it's not career and technical, it's career, like technical education over the course of your career is what the difference is. Remember if

[Speaker 0]: we had that conversation here in the Sakwa.

[Jay Ramsey, Director of Workforce Development, Vermont Department of Labor]: I think it was in the Sakwa. It was up there in the Sakwa. From our perspective, this was a choice that I made to remove the and, but it doesn't change generally the understanding of how

[Speaker 0]: this would apply and apply. Yeah. Does the program rely on tech? Probably. Just wanted to create program providing career and technical education, or is it providing career technical I think it's both. Okay. And then, you know, prior to that, we had the listings, you know, underserved communities means. So if we look at ABCDE, they're just all that listed in. It's not a list of priority, right? It's just a list. They all can follow it as priorities depending on who. Yeah.

[Jay Ramsey, Director of Workforce Development, Vermont Department of Labor]: I guess I'd just say there is no rhyme or reason to the order of

[Speaker 0]: the list of difference. They're all the same.

[Jay Ramsey, Director of Workforce Development, Vermont Department of Labor]: The question to clarify here. On page five, under the Apprenticeship Advisory Board, we're proposing to add some new These new areas for the advisory board to pay attention to, you can infer these things from what was in the previous list of duties, but we in the Office of Operations Committee felt like it was important to specifically articulate these duties as they relate to that newly restructured underserved community definition and to charge the advisory board to specifically look at, pay attention to where the apprenticeship programs are being registered and who is being registered as an apprentice. And are we, when we're building and supporting partnership programs in rural communities, are we also making sure we're thinking about, do these folks have access to the internet and some of the other things that are called out in that new definition. On page six, there you noted a strikethrough of the social security number, which does show up a little bit later as an optional field. And so this is just reflecting practice from the National Office of Apprenticeship that the social security number, we want individuals to control how that information is shared. So it is not required for them to register as an apprentice. We do appreciate when people are willing to share their social security number, because in this case, it allows us to ping the national apprenticeship database to see has this person appeared in other states as apprentices, and should we be giving them credit for that experience?

[Speaker 0]: So that if they don't make it optional. But they but they use it. They use that to track people, and we need it to basically do the same. So then what do we do, or what do you do, if someone doesn't want to share their Social Security?

[Jay Ramsey, Director of Workforce Development, Vermont Department of Labor]: I'll pull us out of the apprenticeship discussion for a moment and put us into EOA, Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act program. That program serves the Wagner Peyser part of that program serves any Vermonter. And anybody can choose not to share their social security number with us to enroll in the program. And that means that if there is 100 people in the Wagner Peyser program and five of them have chosen not to share their social security number, it just means that we're not able to report on program outcomes for those five people, but we have 95 others, and so it isn't It's okay from the perspective of the program.

[Speaker 0]: If we But if the numbers were higher than that? It's still an insignificant number of people that say, I don't want to share my social security number. Would it ever get to a significant number?

[Jay Ramsey, Director of Workforce Development, Vermont Department of Labor]: It might. I don't think it ever has, and then that would need to be a conversation that we have with the Department of Labor about, so there's a majority of people that don't want to share a social security number with us. How do we mitigate that? Because we want to be able to report. And I don't ever heard of a state having had that conversation, so I hope it's not one that we ever have to do. When we transition people from Wagner Pfizer to more intensive case management under Title I. We do, if people are going to pay someone's wages, for instance, as part of their training program, we do need to have their social security number, because we're going to be paying and taking taxes out of those payments for those people. So we're able to explain that to people and then it makes sense to them, but just generally when you walk into the office, job centers, you may be asked to provide your social security number, but you can opt out. So that's the same here. And for the most part, these are employer led programs, and so employers are already collecting social security numbers to verify I-9s and some of these other tax purposes, so it's not out of the realm of possibility that the apprentice would also be giving their

[Unknown (Policy Director, Vermont Department of Labor)]: social. So it actually fits with data minimization. You only to provide you only want to collect the information that you actually need to do the work. And if you're paying someone, you need their social security. But

[Jay Ramsey, Director of Workforce Development, Vermont Department of Labor]: from the perspective of the state or the federal government, we're not trying to require someone to provide it in this program in this instance. So it has moved to a later section of option data points, which is where all the demographics fall as well. People have the option to say, choose not to identify, some people don't. The next section there on page six around adding these other protected categories is just trying to align the language, the protected classes that Vermont has that are in addition to the ones that the federal government has, so we're just calling them off more specifically here, and there's an alignment exercise between federal and state law. And then on page seven, adding that item 14 is aligning with federal requirements that this is already a statement that the federal government requires us to put in partnership agreements, and so we just wanna call it out specifically. Do statements change very often? I said there's not things that's going Oh, every time they tweak something, we'll have to make sure we put that in. I would say if they do change it, so they being the federal Department of Labor, if something changes, or sometimes an interpretation changes, they send out a guidance note to all the states to say, Our interpretation of this law has changed in this way, and we recommend you take the following actions. So those are the times where we might come and say, We need to change their because this isn't happening. You receive meaningful, useful guidance that allows us to have effective dialogue between departments of labor and the states that do justice sort of administrative blocking. Again, you see it's calling out the optional fields. Demographics were already optional. Reorganized this so that the optional ones were listed together, we didn't have to skim through to make sure

[Unknown (Policy Director, Vermont Department of Labor)]: you have all the optionals correct.

[Jay Ramsey, Director of Workforce Development, Vermont Department of Labor]: As we move down here, page seven, we changed the word registered to certified in pre apprenticeship, and just where the paper ran this, states don't generally, and the federal government has not defined what a pre apprenticeship program is, and so we are seen as a state on the leading edge of this as part of registered apprenticeship. We don't, I suppose the language maybe matters, maybe doesn't, but we don't want to confuse someone having a registered pre apprenticeship as being a registered apprenticeship. And so we're going to have a certification process, which we've already stood up. There are already four programs in this area, but it's just certifying and putting it on the books that this program exists and that it's connected with these employers who already have a registered apprenticeship program. So it's a Vermont certified program. And then moving into the next section, again, most states do not have a definition of what youth apprenticeship is. We think about it as youth in apprenticeship, but this was a new area for us. We continue to work with the tech centers and work with schools on what this means, and we're changing the language here because what we've passed was first blush. We think this is what it's going to look like. This is a follow-up with you all to say, in working with schools and tech centers, we think we need this additional clarification. I imagine at some point in the near future, we'll come back again and say, we need to add a little bit more over here and less over here. And so that these changes are in that spirit of we're modifying and changing the program and trying to update the statute to reflect this new area that we're trying to define and have an active part of this. I don't know if there are specific things that you want to ask about in here, instead of me walking through it, This is a newer area.

[Unknown (Policy Director, Vermont Department of Labor)]: So I know that there are students who are in work study type programs that could be considered apprenticeships that are not in career technical education centers, they are not eligible then for this pre apprenticeship program? There are other pre apprenticeship programs that they might be eligible for?

[Jay Ramsey, Director of Workforce Development, Vermont Department of Labor]: I think the way Essentially, yes, my short answer to your question is yes. What we're trying to do in this language first is to say, there's a well developed path from the tech centers to college through dual intercurrent enrollment programs, but we don't have an active, visible, well worn path from tech center programs to apprenticeships. I could say there's probably a good path from electrical and plumbing, but there's not in any of the other areas, and this is trying to create a framework to make that happen. We recognize, too, that there are high school students who are getting these experiences that would be good candidates to connect into apprenticeship, and it's maybe the next innovation that we could work on is what does that look like?

[Speaker 0]: Does this also include youth who have dropped out of school that have now gone to adult learning center to get their high school diploma or GED.

[Jay Ramsey, Director of Workforce Development, Vermont Department of Labor]: Yes, and? I think for the purpose of creating a delineation here, youth apprenticeship program is for the students who are still enrolled in high school and actively participating in a CTE program. But if there is a, think I get the foundation of your question here that if there are young folks who did not complete high school and they are working with like any of the adult providers to complete their diploma, adult providers would be looking for them to create pre apprenticeship programs. But that pre apprenticeship program might rely on coursework at the tech center. So there's potential overlap. Don't have any,

[Unknown (Policy Director, Vermont Department of Labor)]: I should say,

[Jay Ramsey, Director of Workforce Development, Vermont Department of Labor]: Nichols has a pre apprenticeship style program called Step Up to Child Care, which we're working with them to certify, so that could be price students that are trying to complete while we're also working to get tomorrow to populate with the child care membership program. So I think there's probably some technical matters in your question that we would need to talk through, which would be, is WIOA Title II paying for these participants, or is the general fund paying for them, or is the head of bank paying for them? And that's where we get a little mixed up sometimes. As a general policy, don't want there to be double dipping. And so that's part of the process of clarifying in implementing these programs. How are we paying for the program itself and the individual participants?

[Speaker 0]: When I read two, it talks about enrolled in an educational program approved by AOE, those programs are also. But there's some questioning now going on now with the new graduation requirements. Sounds like there's some determination guidance by AOE that both students now are not eligible to go to CPE. So we're trying

[Jay Ramsey, Director of Workforce Development, Vermont Department of Labor]: to get that figured out. Yeah. That's what I thought they were

[Speaker 0]: different. Yeah. But when I'm looking at this language, doesn't preclude those students in a different program from being able to access a free apprenticeship program.

[Jay Ramsey, Director of Workforce Development, Vermont Department of Labor]: Yeah, this model that you're seeing here is trying to line up the pathways, and if the CTP is the provider of an education component of the pathway, the apprenticeship program could pay for that, or if there's other ways to pay, we just have to be really clear when we're developing the agency plan, how is it being paid for and

[Speaker 0]: Good. Thank you. Emily has a. Oh, okay. Amoille?

[Emily Carris Duncan (Member)]: Hi. This may not be for this section, but I'm curious to know if adult ed is in the conversation about creating a pathway to apprenticeship through CTE.

[Jay Ramsey, Director of Workforce Development, Vermont Department of Labor]: It has not been like a concentrated conversation. The discussions that we've had right now with adult basic education are a bad example with Northeast Kingdom Learning Services. And they're, try not to use jargon, in the WIOA realm for adult basic education, there's a type of program called IET, Individualized Education and Training Program. It has requirements, and we've tried to structure the pre apprenticeship requirements to overlap. So you could be an IET and a pre apprenticeship, and that's the policy connection. Then outside of that, we haven't had a lot of in-depth conversations with adult basic ed providers about how to make this work. That's an area that we know we need to move forward. Did that answer your question, Emily?

[Speaker 0]: You all set, Emily? I think she's frozen. I think so too. Yeah. Looks frozen. Be cold down there. I'll just move on to the Yeah, that's very helpful.

[Jay Ramsey, Director of Workforce Development, Vermont Department of Labor]: Again, as we're working Sorry,

[Unknown (Policy Director, Vermont Department of Labor)]: I'm back.

[Jay Ramsey, Director of Workforce Development, Vermont Department of Labor]: There you are.

[Speaker 0]: Did you hear Jay's answer?

[Emily Carris Duncan (Member)]: I heard the first part of it.

[Jay Ramsey, Director of Workforce Development, Vermont Department of Labor]: Okay. That was the best part. I think that working more closely with the adult ed providers and the tech centers is a body of work, an area of work that we're interested in. It's getting the stars aligned with everyone's desire to do this and the timing. Sometimes the adult providers are interested in and the tech centers aren't, and so it's pulling everybody together at the right time and finding the right moment.

[Unknown (Policy Director, Vermont Department of Labor)]: Cool, thank you.

[Jay Ramsey, Director of Workforce Development, Vermont Department of Labor]: On page nine there, we're again clarifying and removing some language that's not helping, and adding language that we feel like is helping, Specifically, they're number nine. We want to know if the students are being paid outside school day or the school year. Number 11 there, we want to make sure that for that paid work that students are doing that's related to an apprenticeship, they're getting something from it in terms of completing the program. That's what that term advanced standing is about, recognition of prior learning, essentially. We want to know more about the programs and how much they cost, just as a way of trying to account for the treatment costs of the program and what the impact is. And then the last page there, adding some requirement or assurances from the schools that their team that is working on this program and their employer partners all share a common understanding of child labor law. So people aren't being taken advantage of, or young people are not being put in situations where the labor losses, they shouldn't be doing. Anyone below the age of 18 should not be operating in a deli, the meat slicer, for instance. Then adding the specific statement that the plan complies with the section above.

[Speaker 0]: So we can have an issue, I think. I I understand the term labor laws, but if they're in a CT center and they're in the culinary, they can learn how

[Jay Ramsey, Director of Workforce Development, Vermont Department of Labor]: to use a meat There are exceptions.

[Speaker 0]: But if they get a job in the summertime, work at a deli somewhere, or grocery store in the deli, they can't slice the meat. It makes don't make a lot of sense.

[Abbey Duke (Member)]: So even though they've had the training,

[Speaker 0]: You can do the training, but you can't practice, basically. Unless it's, unless the the CTE center is tied to after work. Which is what the, we wanna know, are

[Jay Ramsey, Director of Workforce Development, Vermont Department of Labor]: they being paid in the summer and is that part of this program? Because that would extend those exact exceptions.

[Unknown (Policy Director, Vermont Department of Labor)]: We had a question on page nine, section 11. When we're talking about the program giving credits to students, the credits aren't about graduation or finance, it's about So

[Jay Ramsey, Director of Workforce Development, Vermont Department of Labor]: just to put a finer point on it, this is outlining the arrangement with the employers that are participating in the program and having some agreement that the employer might say, We have a two thousand hour apprenticeship program, and we're going to give you credit for two hundred of those hours, so now they only have to be in the program for eighteen hundred hours, and maybe the program also has a requirement that you have to have an OSHA-ten certificate or a CertSafe certificate, and if a student is coming in with those things, we're going to make it so that you don't have to repeat that instruction, and we'll move you along a little bit faster in the coursework and credential.

[Speaker 0]: So

[Abbey Duke (Member)]: is there a world where credit or certification

[Unknown (Policy Director, Vermont Department of Labor)]: is necessary?

[Jay Ramsey, Director of Workforce Development, Vermont Department of Labor]: I think credit or credential. We're using credit as a general concept, not an academic one, if that distinction makes sense.

[Unknown (Policy Director, Vermont Department of Labor)]: It does to me. I just don't want it to not make sense to somebody else. Just wondering if that makes sense to, if there's a way to clarify it.

[Jay Ramsey, Director of Workforce Development, Vermont Department of Labor]: I don't know if don't know we could potentially add credit for hours and for coursework and or credentials earned, that it's potentially all of those things, or it could only be one thing, it's really dependent on what employers are wanting to agree to. So I wouldn't object to having the status clarifiers if that would be helpful. I think it will help us in communicating to schools what this means.

[Speaker 0]: It's recorded. We can tell Rick to go there. Yep.

[Jay Ramsey, Director of Workforce Development, Vermont Department of Labor]: I can follow-up with Rick. That yeah. Okay, and maybe there was one item about the strategic planning, submitting a report every five years, but moving the date from 2024 to 2026. That's just a recognition of all of the other things that I've come and talked about that got in the way, so we do intend to do that this summer, and we'll have a plan outlined for five years that we can share with the next legislature next biennial.

[Speaker 0]: Some small changes. That should be good, good to go. Put us to S-one 173. Thank you. So questions on the culinary study. S327, section 10. Our thoughts have been more maybe not to try to create another culinary institute, but to think of, can we create an apprenticeship program for colonies that could start in, I mean, of the CTs have culinary, or a lot of them do, that we could start a pre apprentice program there in culinary, and then continue to follow through the adult work group. So with this study, I think maybe that's something that we think about as part of that conversation.

[Jay Ramsey, Director of Workforce Development, Vermont Department of Labor]: So we'll start with, you all know this, I think you've been hearing from folks about it, there is a need for post secondary training and development opportunities in hospitality and tourism, and specifically related to food and beverage. As you're noting, all of the tech centers have culinary programs, kitchens, spaces, I think. As I have heard other folks through the years talk about how do we use the tech centers or for this purpose, there is a space consideration. Some of them have signaled we might need more walk in freezer space, we might need more refrigerator space. That would probably be an outcome of what you're looking for in this report. So say department is taking notes of these conversations and the board has identified hospitality and tourism, travel and leisure as one of the priority sectors, And the department has been working on how to incorporate hospitality and tourism like this need in some of our federal grant fund applications. So for instance, the federal government, we expect, will release a call for proposals for state apprenticeship expansion funds.

[Speaker 0]: That will

[Jay Ramsey, Director of Workforce Development, Vermont Department of Labor]: be the fourth year that we're getting that. We've used twenty twenty's for construction and teacher apprenticeship programs. We could pull a little bit out to start working on what does an apprenticeship program do. The space, what are the employees? We know there are models in other states that we could look to. Maine is one that has apprenticeship as the primary delivery mechanism for it, and it's based around resort towns where the anchor employer provides most of the experience, but the people rotate through the different restaurants in town to get experience cooking different foods and serving in different roles. I think apprenticeship, and the department thinks apprenticeship can be part of the solution here. It's just getting the right people at the table at the right time and trying to help our grantees understand what the needs are, and I'm just specifically calling out there the changes that we're making to the grant program for adult CTE. That RFP is out, we've made a specific call out to thinking about planning for and addressing the needs in culinary. So I would expect when those applications come in that we will see some of them addressing how this fits, both as a standalone coursework credentialing and as an integrated part of what the future atmosphere partnership programs are. So I think there's a way to rely on some of the existing resources that we have, financial and some of the physical assets that exist around the state. So that we agree there is a need here, and we're interested in, over the next year, leveraging some of our existing resources to start that process.

[Unknown (Policy Director, Vermont Department of Labor)]: So when we're talking, I guess I have. I fully see the adults tech ed supporting tourism, culinary arts, those fields. I'm wondering more about the apprenticeship program and how that ties in. And are programs better suited to larger businesses, or is it easy enough for a smaller business to have an apprentice? How does that work in the real world?

[Jay Ramsey, Director of Workforce Development, Vermont Department of Labor]: It's challenging when the majority of employers are smaller employers, nine or fewer, and they just want to do their business, so they don't have time or resources to figure out how to make apprenticeship. So what we have to do is bring it at a level and say, regardless of what the employer's size is, there needs to be an intermediary, some entity that's acting on the coordinating planning, getting people on board, and managing the registration of pregnancies. A model that we have that has been successful in two different sectors is in construction, not electrical, not plumbing, but the commercial carpenter program. ABC, New Hampshire, Vermont said we wanna sponsor and be an intermediary. So they go out and sell the program to these businesses and get them to agree to sign on, and they help manage where is the coursework happening, who's delivering it, where is the classroom, what are all the materials and supplies, all of that stuff that goes into making a program work, the intermediary handles. We have a similar model with the teacher apprenticeship program where the Vermont Rural Education Collaborative stood up and said, Look, we'd like to work on figuring this out first. Castle helped figure it out, and now that is expanding statewide and the Agency of Education will be the sponsor and intermediary. We have some successful roles where we're recognizing small businesses don't have the capacity to figure all of those things out, and so we can raise it up a level, and that could be any number of organizations. So

[Unknown (Policy Director, Vermont Department of Labor)]: if Hello Burlington, for example, which is working on tourism in the Chittenden County area, wanted to be that organization.

[Jay Ramsey, Director of Workforce Development, Vermont Department of Labor]: Maybe the convener and help to figure it out, then maybe some other organization says, actually, we have the capacity to do this and it fits within our mission, then it can become a partnership. If the department doesn't have the ownership over a particular model, we're interested in figuring out and supporting the models that are emerging that we know will work, given the demographics of Vermont's business.

[Speaker 0]: Thank you. Question.

[Abbey Duke (Member)]: So as we think about creating a summer study, really looking at culinary and hospitality workforce development, do you see particular elements to include in that study that would help move in that direction of

[Jay Ramsey, Director of Workforce Development, Vermont Department of Labor]: Think about that.

[Abbey Duke (Member)]: You it can think and get back to Kirk on that. We're working on the language of that study, so put some thought into it. That's a big question to put. The idea is we're thinking through language for a summer study that would kind of look at how do we what are the different kind of those workforce training needs within culinary? And then how can we start bringing some resources of people together to whether it's apprenticeship, adult CTE, ways for adults to get certificates or college credits, even. Okay, thank you.

[Speaker 0]: Identify the certifications.

[Abbey Duke (Member)]: Yeah, identifying certifications. Maybe it's identifying potential partners that could but that's really helpful to think about how those other apprenticeship models work. And that makes a lot of sense. They have a trade group, or they have an organization that is serving their members through apprenticeship programs?

[Jay Ramsey, Director of Workforce Development, Vermont Department of Labor]: I would say, maybe a couple of years ago, I was the apprenticeship director, I presented to the Vermont Lodging Association about apprenticeship, and that's a range of different sizes of businesses. They're either focused on lodging, or there's a food and beverage component to what they do, they're interested in it. It's just all of the mechanics of how do you make the program work and what is the Switching hats now as a job seeker, someone that might be interested in this field, what's my career path? This one restaurant here that only employs five people, where do I go beyond that? And how can I make sure that as I'm gaining skills and experience in the industry, that I'm also receiving wage increases and that I can see

[Speaker 0]: a path to becoming the manager or owner of the business? But it's really no different than what we do on the electrician and plumbers. They're all, a lot of them start small, start apprenticeships with small businesses and they work their way either up to the point where now it's time to go to a bigger one or it's time for me to open my own system. But it's getting those people with the certifications that are affordable and if there's any licensure that goes along with any of those, you know, they get their licenses and they become more valuable. So I think we can set this up to assist the small businesses Yeah. They might be the feeders, but it really helps them in fulfilling their employment needs. Yep, definitely.

[Jay Ramsey, Director of Workforce Development, Vermont Department of Labor]: And if they find

[Speaker 0]: the right person, then they just know what they have to do to keep.

[Jay Ramsey, Director of Workforce Development, Vermont Department of Labor]: Yes, and I believe this is just recognizing what already happens in the industry. We're just trying to bring an up here to it so that people could have the free

[Speaker 0]: pay for themselves. And they become, they can be the sponsor, it could go two ways they could sponsor or you have the program that through a Visa Act or something, pay for the floor through the yard,

[Jay Ramsey, Director of Workforce Development, Vermont Department of Labor]: whatever. Yeah.

[Speaker 0]: Great. So, yeah, Abbey and Kirk will be in touch. I appreciate you helping work this out too. Anything else for Jay? Great. Jay, I wanna thank you for coming. What do you think? Lunch time now at 01:00, our PCPs are here tonight, Charlie Baker opened it, What's happening in with the RPC right now and once that's done, we'll be done for the rest.