On Tuesday, October 26, 2021, Senator Tom A. Wright (R – New Smyrna Beach) spoke on a panel regarding the 2022 legislative priorities impacting manufacturing at the FloridaMakes Make More Manufacturing Summit. The panel was moderated by Joe Mayer, Director of Government Relations, Lockheed Martin and sitting on the panel was the Honorable Tom Wright, Florida State Senator, District 14; the Honorable Elizabeth Fetterhoff, Florida House Representative, District 26; Tom Feeney, Chief Executive Officer, Associated Industries of Florida; and Tony Carvajal, Executive Vice President, Florida TaxWatch.
The panel touched on the four main topics of finding people with the skills for emerging technologies, developing resilient and sustainable supply chains, accelerating the adoption of the smart factory and industry 4.0 technologies, and attracting the next generation of manufacturers.
Senator Wright shared the need for educated workers by stating “One of the things that seems to be apparent to me… is that we are definitely in need of what I call worker bees and I say that with a good feeling… we have to help our educators to produce these people who can work in our facilities.”
Senator Wright also touched on the benefits of the Skillbridge program to help fill open jobs by saying “The Skillbridge program is being operated by the Florida Veterans Foundation… we have these Veterans that are coming back, who if they have 180 days of service left or less and they can continue to receive their pay and benefits from whichever branch of the service they are in and they can choose to come back home and be an apprentice in a company in their area.”
Senator Wright also mentioned his efforts to help Veteran employment by stating “let’s say we have a veteran who has been driving a truck in the Army, but doesn’t have a CDL… these men and women know how to drive these big rigs so why don’t we let them run these big rigs while we get their CDL.”
