For the group Talent First education is only about creating workers to fill the needs of the businesses in the Grand Rapids area

On Wednesday, Crain’s Grand Rapids Business ran an article with the headline, West Michigan talent gap widens as automation and AI reshape workforce needs.

The headline suggests that automation and AI are changing the kind of employees that businesses are looking for. However, the article is based on a new report by the Grand Rapids-based group Talent First. Their current Board of Directors is taken straight from the Grand Rapids Power Structure.

Talent First was created shortly after the economic crash of 2008/09 and was the brainchild of 40 CEOs who met to discuss how they could develop strategies to recruit the kind of employees they need.

So, after the working class was devastated from the economic crash, which also involved the US government bailing out the banks and Wall Street, local CEOs met to figure out ways to change the direction of education systems to create future workers that they would benefit from.

The Talent First report bemoans the lack of graduates from area colleges that would fit the kind of workers they need. The report states, “West Michigan is producing four graduates with the needed credentials for every 10 job openings — a shift from 15 per 10 jobs just 15 years ago — as automation and AI accelerate employer demands faster than the region’s workforce development systems can adapt.”

The report also has a section with the heading of K-20 pipeline: Leakages limit skilled talent supply. This section uses a graphic (shown on page 20 of their report) but frames the issue as employer driven and employer needs. Of course this all makes sense, since Crain’s Grand Rapids Business is a pro-business publication and Talent First was created by members of the Capitalist Class. It’s instructive to note how the Capitalist Class fails to understand that workers are the ones that create wealth and that without them there would be no millionaires of billionaires.

Influencing Education to create a labor pool

During the decade after the economic crash there was a DeVos-funded group called Believe to Become, which initiated a K-12 effort to influence education and mold students to meet the needs of the business community. GRIID reported on this in 2017, first in May and followed by an article in June.

A second example of how K-12 education, specifically in the Grand Rapids Public School District is reflected in these FOIA documents related to their curriculum around offering classes on Hospitality and Tourism for High School students.

At the university level there has been a long-standing tradition of having the business community fund departments and programs in the Grand Rapids area. However, in 2023, Grand Valley State University began a program called the Laker Accelerated Talent Link. This program involved certain businesses that partnered with GVSU in order to generate labor to fill the needs of those companies.

The five companies that are partnering with GVSU are, Acrisure, Amway, Cascade Engineering, Corewell Health and Michigan Software Labs. Now, these aren’t just random companies that will be partnering with GVSU, they are companies that are deeply tied to the Grand Rapids Power Structure, which is essentially an interlocking system of power, as is reflected in the graphic above. For the purposes of this post, we will attach the DeVos name to Amway, since the DeVos family is at the top of the Grand Rapids Power Structure and has dozens of subsidiaries that are represented in the groups that make up the local power structure.