By Tony DeMasi, editor
f you think good help is hard to find then you might be looking for
it in the wrong places. Across the country, the Federal Government,
through the Department of Labor, is opening Customer Service
centers. As part of the President’s High Growth Job Training
Initiative, these centers focus on meeting the needs of retail and related
industries. It’s a win/win/win situation. The students win because they
are trained and employable, the country wins because it has expanded its
tax base and merchants win because they have a qualified pool of candidates
for employment.
Nationally, more than 700 companies in the retail and service industries
utilize and participate in Retail Skills Center programs. More than
25,000 people have been served, and over 5,500 potential retail employees
have found jobs through the skills centers since the first Retail Skills
Center opened in June 1997 at the Mall and Court at King of Prussia
near Philadelphia. With momentum growing among developers and businesses,
the National Retail Federation’s Foundation expects the number
of people served through the skills centers to double in 2006.
The latest such training center opened recently in downtown Oakland
Calif. The Bay Area Customer Service Center is the first retail skills center
in the state and the 17th such facility in the country. With major support
from the U.S. Department of Labor, the Bay Area Customer Service
Center took shape through the partnership efforts of the NRF
Foundation, the Regional Technical Training Center in Oakland, the
Oakland City Council, and the University of Phoenix, where it will be
located. Two additional centers, one in Culver City and another in Palm
Desert, are scheduled to open in early 2006.
Skills centers are recruitment, training and placement facilities that
operate as integrated components of the workforce investment system.
Along with customer service and industry-specific training, centers offer
computer and classroom instruction, including English as a Second
Language, and career counseling. Centers also offer the industry
endorsed National Professional Certification in Customer Service and
the new National Professional Certification in Sales, credentials that recognize
excellence in customer service and sales skills.
For more information, contact your local office of the federal government’s
Department of Labor bureau, or go on line to the University of
Phoenix’s Web site. The University of Phoenix is providing most of the
training at the sites.
I’m also saluting President Bush on what looks as if will likely postpone
any major push for federal tax reform until 2007 or 2008. Any tax
reform before that would virtually cripple the economy. It could mean gas
prices hiked up by at least 50 cents a gallon, and a possible national sales
tax.
At special issue is a provision included in the Growth and Investment
Tax Plan, one of two tax reform options endorsed by the President’s
Advisory Panel on Federal Tax Reform in a report submitted to Treasury
Secretary John Snow November 1.
Under current law, businesses can deduct the
cost of imported merchandise or raw materials as a
business expense the same as domestic products
are deducted. Under the Growth and Investment
Tax Plan, the deduction for imported items would
be eliminated, effectively subjecting those items to
the plan’s 30 percent corporate tax rate and driving
up tax costs for importers. With $648 billion
in general merchandise consumer goods imported
into the United States during 2004, NRF calculates
that the change would result in $194.4 billion
in new taxes retailers would be forced to pass on to
consumers.
Relatively few consumer
goods are manufactured at
competitive prices in the
United States, so retailers
couldn’t easily shift to
domestic products to avoid
the tax.
Economists on the
Advisory Panel said floating
exchange rates would compensate
for the loss of the
deduction. But NRF believes
such an adjustment would
take too long to achieve, and
wouldn’t necessarily help
retailers because many countries
in Asia, Latin America
and the Middle East – all
major sources of imports – do not have floating
currencies. In addition, exchange rate fluctuations
wouldn’t ease the impact on imported oil because
the global price of oil is set in U.S. dollars. As a
result, gasoline and home heating oil would face
large price increases.
NRF also believes elimination of the deduction
would be a violation of World Trade Organization
rules and could expose billions of dollars worth of
U.S. exports to WTO-sanctioned trade retaliation.
I whole heartedly support and congratulate the
National Retail Federation on its actions to protect
all retailers.
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