Ominous Change in Visitor industry...

The Outrigger Ohana Hotels were perfect for me..
reasonable prices.. human scale buildings.. close to
the beach. My favorite was the Royal Islander
on Kalia street.. opposite the magnificent Halekulani.
I frequently fantasize living in a condo in Waikiki.
Visiting the north shore.. and sailing out of Ala Wai.

On Wed, 11 Jul 2007, Jerry Okamura wrote:
> We apparently have a disconnect. Homes are quite
> expensive, and salaries are low (not to mention the
> higher cost of living), when you consider how much a
> home cost. Since, there is not a whole lot you can
> do about the cost of a home, the only solution is to
> provide jobs where they can earn more money. And it
> would seem to me, depending on the tourist industry,
> is not exactly a way to provide jobs that pay enough
> to offset the price of a home.

Of course, there could be subsidized housing for
tourist industry workers. Whether that is desireable is
another question. And the tourist industry is not that
bad an employer. It's one of the most popular places
that teens go to look for jobs after high school. What
other industry would hire greeters with leis at the
airport, or hire valets or porters, etc? The tourist
industry is a bonanza of jobs for residents. What is
needed are the higher paying jobs for kids that
otherwise have to leave Hawaii to find.

On Sat, 14 Jul 2007, Maren at google wrote:

> the likes of you and me have higher paying jobs (and
> unlike me, for all I know you're from here). As long
> as you have to import electronics technicians,
> engineers, scientists, etc. because they're almost
> impossible to find locally I think we'd better think
> about educating people better. (We have some very
> good local technical people, don't get me wrong, but
> they're hard to come by)

It's not hard to train new workers. Why do you have to
hire a college graduate with specific mainland
experience? The hotel industry does a good job at that.
They'll teach job-seekers how to speak standard
english, and do simple math, and some cultural stuff,
and in a few months they have a beginning worker. The
shipyard in Pearl Harbor had an apprenticeship program
that took high school kids and in two years turned out
well-trained technicians. Some even became engineers
through scholarships with the feds. I think that the
program started coming to an end arround 35 years ago
when women were allowed into the program.

Then college graduates who were supervisory clerks with
many years of experience decided to go in the program
because of the better pay that the apprentices got.
These women complained about simple-minded training
they got in english and math and science and the boring
jobs that they got. They were interested in doing more
chalenging ones and got good responses from the Equal
Opportunity Officer and Shipyard Commander for their
criticisms of management.

Anyway, the point is that many companies can afford to
hire higher cheap labor that is subsidized by the state
for on-the-job training-- both young and IIRC older
displaced workers that need retraining. For the smarter
trainees, you may find that six months or less is
sufficient to get useful work out of them considering
the pay that they get.

Even for the more specialized positions, a bored
federal or state worker might be interested in
switching from reviewing electrical wiring in
architectural plans to electronics stuff if you were
interested in hiring them on that basis.

It's too bad that management only complains about these
staffing problems when there are opportunities for
alternate strategies. When there is more competition,
then perhaps they will see the light.

"Alvin E. Toda" <aet@lava.net> wrote in message
news:1184558700-sch@news.lava.net...
>
> On Sat, 14 Jul 2007, Maren at google wrote:
>
>> the likes of you and me have higher paying jobs (and
>> unlike me, for all I know you're from here). As long
>> as you have to import electronics technicians,
>> engineers, scientists, etc. because they're almost
>> impossible to find locally I think we'd better think
>> about educating people better. (We have some very
>> good local technical people, don't get me wrong, but
>> they're hard to come by)
>
> It's not hard to train new workers. Why do you have to
> hire a college graduate with specific mainland
> experience?

Because they believe they need that experience?

The hotel industry does a good job at that.
> They'll teach job-seekers how to speak standard
> english, and do simple math, and some cultural stuff,

I can understand the cultural stuff, but why should they ahve to "teach"
them to speak standard english and do simple math? Well, they have
to teach
them to speak standard english, because the hotels believe that is a
skill
they need to communicate with the hotel guest, I would guess. It is
also
what our schools should be doing, shouldn't it? Ditto for simple
math...that is the responsibility of the schools. If they are not doing
either, teaching them how to speak english, or doing math, then the
schools
are not doing the job that our tax dollars are suppose to be used for.

On Tue, 17 Jul 2007, Jerry Okamura wrote:

>> It's not hard to train new workers. Why do you have
>> to hire a college graduate with specific mainland
>> experience?
>
> Because they believe they need that experience?

I've rarely seen that. What works better is learning on
the job to get that experience. Every company does
things a little differently.

What the company wants in asking for that experience is
to know whether the employee has the intellect and the
ability to learn those skills. Whether they'll get to
use that experience is another story. What every
manager hates to hear is how something is done at
another companey.

>> The hotel industry does a good job at that. They'll
>> teach job-seekers how to speak standard english, and
>> do simple math, and some cultural stuff,
>
> I can understand the cultural stuff, but why should
> they ahve to "teach" them to speak standard english
> and do simple math? Well, they have to teach them to
> speak standard english, because the hotels believe
> that is a skill they need to communicate with the
> hotel guest, I would guess. It is also what our
> schools should be doing, shouldn't it? Ditto for
> simple math...that is the responsibility of the
> schools. If they are not doing either, teaching them
> how to speak english, or doing math, then the schools
> are not doing the job that our tax dollars are
> suppose to be used for.

I don't mind the english and math instruction. The kids
don't like to open the book unless you pay them. That's
part of the criticism of our school system-- ie that
it's hard for the teacher and the system to motivate
the student who's not headed to college, to open that
book. And certainly becoming a hotel employee if you
can learn that stuff, is highly motivating to them. And
they're being paid to learn it.

What I'm bothered by is the cultural instruction. I've
subbed in our high schools, and the kids that are
headed to work in our hotels don't associate with the
haole kids. They keep to their own cliques. Some of the
haole kids do make the effort to associate with our
local kids, and I applaud them for that. But they have
to localize themselves to do that. The local kids that
go to work in our hotels, don't seem to want to learn
other ways as well. In other states these locals might
be called red necks, so I guess this is expected
behavior elsewhere as well.

In some respects, we are a conservative country. But
Hawaii should be more aware of other cultures and
peoples since we have so many visitors, and the kids
should be learning another language in elementary
school. That would be at least Hawaiian if our native
Hawaiian activists would have their way. But no, I mean
languages like Japanese, Korean, Cantonese, Mandarin,
or a European language.