News-Sentinel.com

The area of Texas that stretches along the Rio Grande is growing at a dizzying pace, with the population doubling in the past 20 years. New housing, highways and shopping centers are springing up.

But the valley is struggling with a poorly educated work force — as many as half the adults have no high school diploma. Many businesses import technical and professional workers.

"We've got a work force, but (the workers) have no technical training," said Bill Summers, president of the Rio Grande Valley Partnership in Weslaco.

"The options (in the Rio Grande Valley) were that you go to 10th grade and you go to work at the minimum wage, or you graduate (from high school) and you get a minimum-wage job," said Nancy Boultinghouse, marketing director of McAllen Economic Development Corp.

"Education was not a priority."

The same statement might have been made in the Fort Wayne area 30 years ago, but in this area a high school graduate, or even a dropout, could earn a good wage.

A high school dropout who got a highly paid factory job could earn more than teachers and other college graduates. Factories employed staggering numbers: 10,000 at International Harvester Co., 3,000 at Dana Spicer Axle, 6,000 at General Electric Co. Harvester in particular set the standard for wages in the entire region.

The deep recession of the early 1980s in the Fort Wayne area forced a painful refocusing as many of those factory jobs disappeared. The change has been most striking in Allen County, where manufacturing employment has slid sharply as a percentage of total employment.

Employment turnaround

The largest private-sector employer is now Lincoln National Corp., a financial services company, closely followed by General Motors Corp. As GM shows, highly paid manufacturing jobs still exist, but they are relatively scarce. Now, to get out of the $8-an-hour wage category, some kind of training is almost a requirement.

For the border area, long dominated by agriculture and reliant on seasonal labor, $8 an hour would be an improvement.

Around McAllen, the average manufacturing wage is just less than $6.50 an hour. The largest employers are garment factories, retailers and government agencies, including school districts.

But, says Bob DeSpain at the University of Texas-Pan American, the region needs to shift from low-wage jobs if it is to prosper.

"Everyone focuses in on the minimum-wage, low-skilled jobs that we're losing. There's a burgeoning market for skilled jobs," said DeSpain, who is director of the Center for Manufacturing at Pan Am.

"The textile industry we were going to lose, NAFTA or no NAFTA," said Arnold Pedraza, who is business marketing manager for the Office of Center Operations and Community Services at Pan Am.

Facing expansion

Texas-Pan Am in Edinburg, north of McAllen, has grown rapidly in the last few years and now includes an international trade center, funded, in part, with a $2.25 million grant from the U.S. Department of Commerce. The center hosts many economic development programs and is used for regional conferences and meetings.

The Brownsville campus of the University of Texas also is expanding. McAllen and Harlingen are developing into medical centers for the valley, just as Fort Wayne serves its region with facilities and specialists. A new residency program with the University of Texas School of Medicine is bringing in resident doctors, and a major public health initiative is under way.

A $40 million highway project is widening Texas 83, the main east-west corridor through the valley, from four lanes to six.

The transition can be painful. Texas-Pan Am worked with Haggar Clothing Co. when the Dallas-based clothing maker decided to consolidate manufacturing operations in the state, closing its Weslaco factory and combining operations in Edinburg.

Repeated winter freezes decimated the citrus industry, knocking out one of the valley's economic pillars. And the region is beginning to confront education as its main hurdle — and its hope to a better future.

"One of the areas we're addressing is education, education, education, and technical training," said Boultinghouse.

That's not just a matter of steering high school graduates into higher education. Texas Pan Am is lining up partnerships with public school districts to improve the system.

"If you solve education, you solve welfare, the economy, crime," Pedraza said.

The obstacles are steep. One of Pan Am's first partnerships is with the second-poorest school district in the nation, Pedraza noted. Hidalgo County, where Edinburg and McAllen are located, is the third-poorest county in the United States.

The McAllen-Edinburg-Mission Metropolitan Statistical Area, which includes Weslaco, has a staggering unemployment rate of 18.2 percent.

In addition, 55 percent of residents over age 25 do not have a high school education or the equivalent, and many residents are functionally illiterate in both English and Spanish.

"The primary obstacle of employment for trade-affected workers is the tremendous gap that exists between their current qualifications and the qualifications required for new jobs," said the 1998 Texas Senate Interim Report on NAFTA.

That is why many in the Rio Grande Valley don't understand why the Midwest sees their area as a threat. They speak almost enviously of a state that boasts Big Ten universities, extensive vocational training and companies offering highly skilled, well-compensated jobs.

"As long as you have a skilled work force, you will have those jobs," Pedraza said.

International focus

The Rio Grande Valley prides itself on an international perspective that's more than hype. At a Wal-Mart or Burger King, clerks shift without thought from English to Spanish and back, depending on the customer.

The Rio Grande Valley Partnership lobbies in Mexico City as well as Austin. "Politics is politics wherever you are. It's all the same," Summers said.

"Other people talk international business, but we're actually playing that game," Pedraza said.

Border, state and federal economic development officials see Mexico and Latin America as an asset, not as a threat.

The Rio Grande Valley is closer to Monterrey, Mexico's rapidly growing industrial center, than to Dallas, and only a few hours from Mexico City, said Mike Blum, consultant on highway and economic development projects in McAllen.

"If we continue helping Mexico grow, it's going to flow back to us," said Summers of the Rio Grande Valley Partnership.

"There have been some pitfalls," said Ramesh Srinivasan, associate director of the Economic Development Office at Pan Am. "But we're better off with NAFTA than without.

"We're not the back door of the U.S., but facing new markets in Latin America, starting with Mexico."

NAFTA

Rio Grande Valley's growth outpaces demand for skilled workers, services

But many residents don't have the required education for available jobs.