A BILL TO BE ENTITLED
AN ACT to develop an at‑risk worker pilot program to assist workers in improving skills before an adverse employment event.
The General Assembly of North Carolina enacts:
SECTION 1.  The Department of Commerce, in coordination with the Community Colleges System Office, shall develop a pilot program in Hoke, Robeson, and Scotland Counties to provide necessary basic skills to at‑risk workers in endangered industries.  The purpose of the program is to ensure that low‑skilled or unskilled workers are capable of completing educational or vocational training in the event of an adverse employment event.  In developing the pilot program, the Department shall do the following:
(1)	Identify a suitable industry around which to develop a pilot program. A suitable industry is one which employs a high percentage of low‑skilled or unskilled workers and which has seen a decline in the number of people employed in this State over the last decade due to increased foreign competition in that industry.
(2)	Design a program to teach basic skills to low‑skilled or unskilled workers. For the purposes of this section, "basic skills" are those skills needed in order to pursue further educational or vocational training and include such things as basic educational skills like writing, reading comprehension, and basic math. The term also includes other skills necessary for success in a training environment such as time management.
SECTION 2.  There is appropriated from the General Fund to the Department of Commerce the sum of three hundred thousand dollars ($300,000) for each year of the 2007‑2009 fiscal biennium to design and implement the pilot project described in Section 1 of this act.
SECTION 3.  This act becomes effective July 1, 2007.