Labor Commissioner discusses state of workforce at luncheon

Oklahoma Department of Labor Commissioner Leslie Osborn arrived in Lawton Oct. 10 to discuss the workforce at the monthly Lawton Chamber of Commerce luncheon.

She started by clarifying exactly what the commission does.

“We ensure that people that go to work have a safe place to earn their living and still get to go home to their family at night,” Osborn said. “Instead of being reactive, we decided years ago to be a proactive agency.”

Osborn then compared their department to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA).

“A lot of times people have a fear about us because they’ve heard of OSHA,” Osborn said. “OSHA is the federal Department of Labor Economics. OSHA does have the ability to walk into any business in the United States anytime without letting them know in advance to do spot checks and make sure you’re keeping your employees safe. That’s a good mission, but they can be a bit heavy handed. A lot of their fines start at $15,000 to $20,000 a pop and can shut down a business.”

Osborn then mentioned one of the many incentives offered to small businesses.

“If you know anyone in the state with a small business, we have programs for free where we can come in and imbed an employee that’s OSHA trained from the state in your business, train your employees and make sure you’re doing everything right,” Osborn said. “That’s called the SHARP Program. It’s available to anybody who meets Small Business Association (SBA) guidelines of a small business.”

One of the incentives to the SHARP program is that it’s free; they don’t report if the business drops out and they get a certificate that exempts OSHA from coming for 1-2 years, Osborn said.

Another perk of the Labor Commission is to provide training to anyone who needs it, Osborn said.

“Three years ago, a young man was hired the day he graduated from high school to work for the City of Mangum and he was dead one week later,” Osborn said. “He backed a backhoe into an electrical line because he had never been trained. We will go out and train cities, counties or schools for trenching, electrical and whatever it may be. We even got a bill passed for those smallest cities that might not be able to afford protective equipment and can help them get those kind of things.”

The commission make sure wages are paid.

“We have a division where if you are not paid the wages you are owed and somebody goes out of business, you work for them for a month and don’t get a check, if you come to us, we have a wage and error division. We can quickly expedite getting you your check at no cost.”

It also handles safety concerns.

“We’re basically a safety agency,” Osborn said. “We have those safety programs, but we do a lot of things that no one would expect. We check every public use elevator and escalator in the state every other year except for the City of Oklahoma City because it has its own jurisdiction. We also have an asbestos abatement project to make sure that people are using certified products to keep people safe. We check every Marshall grade hot water heater and boiler every other year.”

Another role you wouldn’t think about is the commission inspects every amusement park ride in the state each year.

One of the things tasked with is workforce development. During COVID, businesses had signs on their doors asking for patrons to be polite to their hard worked, underpaid, understaffed employees. When the Medical Marijuana bill passed, not a lot of people noticed due to isolation, unemployment and countless other situations.

“By the time it ended, we had 48,000 people working in that industry in our state,” Osborn said. “Only one percent were projected to have come from out of state. They were primarily entrepreneurs, horticulturalists or processors from other states who saw an opportunity. The other 99 percent was already working in our low wage jobs.”

After COVID, businesses such as these increased their wages to gain more employees.

“Say you worked at a small town convenience store making $8 an hour,” Osborn said. “If you pulled up Indeed, any of those types of Medical Marijuana businesses start at $12 or $15 an hour with no experience needed.”

“If we really want to get jobs here, we have to invest in some things that make businesses want to stay here or make businesses want to move here,” Osborn said. “If I have a manufacturing facility, you have to have medical facilities close just in case. When we didn’t accept the Medicaid expansion dollars, we lost 12 major medical system in rural Oklahoma. We did accept those dollars later with a state question and now we built back a lot of that but we’re still hurting. Now we have 41 of our 77 counties that don’t have an OBGYN, it’s doubled after more laws and if we keep passing those bills the projections at OU and OSU Medical will have five to 10 counties with maternal health care.”

Osborn said one of the biggest challenges facing workforce in the state is the lack of childcare.

“Women are half of our population,” Osborn said. “Right now, over half of our counties are deemed childcare deserts. That means there’s only one slot available for every 10 that are needed. That is a workforce issue for every woman of childbearing years.”

One thing to consider to increase the workforce, Osborn said, is to consider the formerly incarcerated.

“We have one of the highest incarceration rates in the nation,” Osborn said. “We’re a high poverty, low education state. If you grew up in a home where you were hungry all the time or there was abuse, you often unfortunately fall into that generational cycle. The only way to change that is to break the cycle. In Oklahoma, one out of every four adults has a misdemeanor and one out of every nine adults has a felony. If you have a business that says, ‘I won’t ever hire a felon/former felon, you’ve missed a lot of your workforce.”