To watch Senator Capito’s questioning, click here or the image above.
WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senator Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, participated in subcommittee hearing today on the FY2023 Budget Request for the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL).
During the hearing, Senator Capito questioned DOL Secretary Marty Walsh about support for successful apprenticeship programs like the ones at Marshall University, highlighted the need to increase miner safety efforts, and advocated for continued funding of Randolph County’s YouthBuild program.
HIGHLIGHTS:
ON MARSHALL UNIVERSITY’S IMPACTFUL APRENTICESHIP PROGRAMS: “We have some excellent apprenticeship programs in our state, and I recently visited one at Marshall University…at the manufacturing tech accelerator at the Robert C. Byrd Institute (RCBI) at Marshall. It’s providing participants with the skills they need to succeed in entry-level positions in manufacturing. You complete 2,000 hours of paid on-the-job training from a participating employer and the apprentices qualify for a certificate to be a manufacturing technician. I met a veteran there who had obtained this certification after retiring fully from his career in the military. And he's also now, excitingly, in the process of obtaining a patent for an efficient manufacturing process that he created just months ago. Very, very impressive story.”
ON WEST VIRGINIA NATIVE CHRISTOPHER WILLIAMSON SERVING IN THE LABOR DEPARTMENT, PRIORITIZING MINE SAFETY: “I'm very proud that I supported the nomination of Christopher Williamson to be the assistant secretary for the Mine Safety and Health Administration, or MSHA as we call it at home. He's a proud son of...West Virginia and we're happy that he is there. I don't know what initiatives he or you plan to take in the mine safety…Obviously, it's extremely important. I will tell you that our mines are operating at much higher capacity than they have in the past year or so because of the increased demand, because of the geopolitical situation and we see around the world…we're happy we got more miners to work…anything we can do to make them safer, and keep them healthy is important.”
ON NEED TO FUND RANDOLPH COUNTY’S YOUTHBUILD PROGRAM: “I'm just going to kind of put this on your radar screen…I've always been interested in YouthBuild. I've visited…the Randolph County Housing Authority has a Youth Build program that they've had for years. And then for some reason, last year, no funding. And so it was kind of disruptive. If you could help me try to figure out…they did get their funding for this year so we're very pleased about that. But we wanted to have the continuity that you need in a program like that. So if we could work with your office to try to figure out how to make sure they have an ironclad application that they can continue this program.”
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