Vanishing
Breed By Michael A.
Verespej There are pockets of success, a few glimmers of hope. In Pittsburgh, for example, the MANUFACTURING 2000 program is training upwards of 250 entry-level machinists and welders annually. In Wisconsin, manufacturing apprenticeships are at an all-time high. And in Danville, Ill., an industry group has put together a multimedia marketing campaign and combined it with a series of programs designed to boost interest among students in grades K-12 in skilled manufacturing jobs. But the harsh reality facing U.S. manufacturers is this: Whether you're in the Rust Belt or the Grain Belt, the Northeast, Deep South, or California, it is hard to convince students that they should choose a career as a precision machinist, tool-and-die maker or designer, mold maker, or other skilled position. Not even the lure of salaries ranging from $40,000 to $70,000 at the end of the typical four-year apprenticeship of paid work and schooling seems to be persuasive. "When you try and convince parents that these are good careers for their children, they tell you 'It's great, it's wonderful -- but not for my kid,'" says Lawrence A. Wohl, professor of economics and management at Gustavus Adolphus College, St. Peter, Minn., who also is a member of the Minnesota Apprenticeship Advisory Council. "Those occupations don't have a lot of status in this status-conscious world," where people seem to prefer white-collar jobs and "clean" workplaces. "There is a social dimension to this," he adds. And that's just one of several factors contributing to what the National Tooling & Machining Assn. (NTMA), Fort Washington, Md., estimates is a shortage of 25,000 to 30,000 skilled manufacturing workers just in the U.S.-a number that's expected to increase because the average age of such workers typically is 50 and older. What are the ramifications of the skilled-worker shortfall? First and foremost, it impairs manufacturers' ability to grow -- and ultimately survive -- and shifts skilled machinist work outside the U.S., mostly to the Far East. A case in point: Bachman Machine Co. in St. Louis couldn't find enough qualified workers two years ago to take on a $2 million contract for a U.S. auto manufacturer, so the work wound up going overseas. "Over 40% of our 2,500 member companies say they are turning work away because of a lack of skilled people," says NTMA president and COO Matthew B. Coffey, who expects the situation to worsen because of the impending retirement of many skilled workers (see "Retirements Loom"). The reluctance of talented students to seek out careers in manufacturing has several causes. Many object to the four-year apprenticeships and lower wage scales during training, and view skilled manufacturing jobs as having a limited career path that stops at line management. "People are concerned that they are walking through a one-way door . . . and that these jobs are very restrictive," says Wohl. There also is resentment of manufacturing stemming from large-scale layoffs in the 1980s and transfer of manufacturing operations overseas. People lost jobs, and had to uproot their families and move to find work. That has not been forgotten by the children of those workers. "Young people . . . got disenchanted when manufacturing went elsewhere," says Dave Horn, continuous improvement director at AMT-The Assn. for Manufacturing Technology, McLean, Va. That perception of instability and job upheaval remains, and is reinforced by the continuing transfer of manufacturing production overseas and the recent wave of industrial layoffs. It also is hard to convince parents that not everyone should go to college. Data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, for example, show that the average weekly pay earned by a college graduate in the U.S. is $827 per week compared with $490 per week for a high school graduate. Finally, despite the fact that more manufacturing today is done in clean environments where workers program computers to run machinery instead of operating it themselves, the image persists that manufacturing is a dark, dirty place that's unsafe and involves a lot of physical labor. 'Dirty, Boring, Smelly' A study last November by the Manufacturers' Assn. of South Central Pennsylvania (MASCPA) of 335 high-school students in York County (where there are more manufacturing jobs than anywhere else in the state) shocked even association officials. Almost 90% of the students -- 300 -- said that they would not want to work in a manufacturing setting. And, of the 189 students surveyed who had toured a manufacturing facility, over 79% said that they would not want to work in the plant that they had toured. The top three words the students used to describe manufacturing were (in order) dirty, boring, and smelly. In addition, students said that the main reasons they don't select jobs in manufacturing are the hard physical labor involved, the unpleasant working environment, low wages, undesirable hours, and the lack of opportunity for advancement. Also troubling, when students were asked how they would feel if they went back to their 10th high-school reunion and were employed in manufacturing, 121 said they would feel unsuccessful (75 said they would feel successful) and 93 said they would feel embarrassed (58 said they would feel proud). "Those are very telling numbers," says Dana DeHoff, director of education and training for MASCPA. "We didn't expect that the antimanufacturing bent would be of that magnitude," especially since MASCPA's effort to spread the message about today's manufacturing is in its third year. "Unless we get out and talk more, the misconceptions about manufacturing that people have built up over time . . . are not going to change." Paul Anselmo, a former teacher who now is president of New Century Careers Inc. (NCC) in Pittsburgh -- a nonprofit organization that provides free machinist and welder training -- agrees. "If parents, students, or school systems don't understand manufacturing, why would people pursue it as a career?" The blame for the misconceptions about manufacturing falls on parents, educators, and manufacturers alike. "All of us say [to our children], 'We want you to go to college.' But what we mean is, 'We want you to get the education you need to get a family-sustaining job," says Mary Stanek Wehrheim, who as president of family-owned Stanek Tool Corp. in New Berlin, Wis., works tirelessly to convey to educators, parents, and students the types of jobs available in manufacturing and their earnings potential. Likewise, educators push students toward college because of a lack of familiarity with manufacturing and because that is the yardstick of schools' success. "Ask any superintendents of schools anywhere how their school or school system is doing and they will recite to you how many of their students are going on to college," says NTMA's Coffey. "That is the sole criteria on how they judge themselves -- how many go to college, not how many they have prepared for work." Manufacturing's Mistakes But manufacturers, too, must shoulder responsibility for the lack of interest students show in industrial careers. For starters, in the aftermath of the layoffs in the 1980s, many manufacturers cut back on in-house training, eliminating opportunities for employees to gain skills. Furthermore, now surfacing in an unexpected way is the hidden cost of manufacturing's 20-year-old strategy of outsourcing component manufacturing and moving manufacturing away from big cities to rural areas to reduce labor costs. "Manufacturers are having a hard time keeping people and convincing workers to move to those locations because [families] now have dual incomes. [Workers] feel that if they move to a smaller town their spouse is not going to have the same [income-earning] opportunities," says Jeff Werling, economist with the Manufacturers Alliance/MAPI, Arlington, Va. What's more, those lower wages mean fewer younger workers are attracted to those jobs, he says. Besides, suggests William T. Dickens, economist and senior fellow with the Brookings Institution in Washington, "If manufacturers are facing a shortage, why aren't they raising wages enough to get people to come in or setting up training programs so people can expect to receive rewards in the future for taking training now? I am always suspicious when I hear that there are skilled-worker shortages. It seems to me that business just wants someone else to do their training for them, particularly in these narrow-skilled fields." Another problem: Too many manufacturers have a smug and shortsighted attitude toward skilled workers, insists Steve Keyzers, human resources manager of Textron Inc.'s Textron Aerospace Fasteners, Santa Ana, Calif. Keyzers does not have problems finding skilled employees for Textron Aerospace, where the average skilled worker makes $75,000 annually, the first-year production worker typically makes $27,000 a year, and where most skilled manufacturing workers can earn $45,000 after two years with the company. But he stepped down in January after three years as president of the Pacific Coast Manufacturers Assn. because he was convinced that neither educators nor manufacturers in Orange County wanted to act to get more people interested in manufacturing careers. "The manufacturing industry is very fickle" and will not commit to hiring trainees, says Keyzers. Even when they make the commitment to hire, sometimes they break that promise. A case in point: He persuaded one regional educational institution to train students in blueprint reading, statistical process control, and inspection, but in the end, says Keyzers, "the manufacturers didn't want to hire the people as they had promised" because the economy had soured. "Manufacturers don't realize that this is an investment they have to make in their future," says Keyzers. "They think that they can hire [manufacturing workers], let them go, hire them, let them go, and that the workers are always going to be there." But they are not always going to be there -- even for Textron. In 1996 Keyzers tried to induce workers Textron had laid off in 1990 to return. "They didn't want to come back because they had made the transition to other work. That kind of yo-yo with the workforce is self-defeating," he says. Nor did Keyzers feel that he got much cooperation from educators or teachers. "We put educators on buses, brought them to manufacturing facilities, provided videos and literature for all high schools, and offered guest speakers, but they turned their backs on us," he says. What's more, he's convinced that "the lack of communication" on the part of educators about careers in manufacturing is "purposeful." He speculates that they don't view manufacturing in as favorable a light as new-economy industries. Ironically, manufacturing association executives and CEOs of manufacturing companies believe that Keyzers' approach - preaching the message endlessly and opening doors of manufacturing plants for tours - is the only way to change people's minds. "We have to show . . . that the industry has changed from a dark, dirty, dangerous place to a high-tech workplace with a lot of computers," says AMT's Horn. "It is a huge problem trying to attract people to the trades," agrees Stanek's Wehrheim, who became a crusader on the issue seven years ago because of shortages within her company and the industry. "It is going to take a lot of education and effort to get people to understand what manufacturing is today and how it has changed. It is not going to happen on its own. Manufacturers have to take the bull by the horns and explain to the educators and the parents the earning power, the technical level of the jobs, and the innovation level of the work." Armed with U.S. Dept. of Education data which show that 70% of students go to college, but that six years later only half of that 70% have earned a degree and just one-third of those have jobs related to that degree, Wehrheim regularly talks to high-school classes, goes to high-school career days, offers teachers and educators calculators for their advanced math classes if they come visit her plant, and inundates schools with literature, videos, mouse pads, and rulers that tout the benefits of manufacturing. Wehrheim also worked with the area chapters of three manufacturing associations to organize a Tooling Around Town day six weeks ago that attracted 450 parents, educators, and students to 36 companies that opened their doors for three hours in the early evening for tours. "To dispel the rumors and myths, you have to open your doors and let them see what is inside your four walls," she says. Greg Jerz, owner and president of Jerz Machine Tool Corp., Cassopolis, Mich., agrees. "You have to go out and do some preaching. You have to sell your company and the careers to the kids." For the last seven years, Jerz Machine Tool, which has 30 employees, has covered the cost of apprenticeship programs for employees. "We are doing this because of our inability to get skilled workers to work here," he admits. The company has graduated just one apprentice in seven years, but has six employees in the program now. "It is still of value to us because while they are here they tend to be much more productive workers" than those not in the program, says Jerz. One tactic that manufacturers have found helpful in changing the attitude of educators toward manufacturing is to speak in a unified voice, says Vicki L. Stewart, president and CEO of the Danville (Ill.) Area Economic Development Corp. (DAEDC). "Educators were frustrated because everybody wanted something different and industry groups were frustrated because educators weren't . . . changing overnight," says Stewart. So DAEDC asked 15 metals companies to identify specific hiring needs over the next 18 to 24 months and the skills required for those jobs. "Because the data didn't represent an isolated employer" and because the needs -- which DAEDC compared to state and national job shortages -- were seen as "a microcosm of the needs of employers nationwide, educators were willing to change," says Stewart. "That is critical because . . . you need to show educators and students that there is a portability of skills for which there are long-term rewards." The partnership forged by DAEDC has helped to jump-start basic training programs and "get people into the pipeline to build skills" to address short-term needs, says Stewart. Long-term, DAEDC hopes that the larger, multipronged educational and marketing effort that it has put in place (see "Teaming Up To Change Attitudes") will pique the interest of students in manufacturing careers. "To get change long-term, you have to make changes in the elementary grades so you can address some of the root causes," such as lack of knowledge about manufacturing, says Stewart. The York County, Pa., survey reports that 79% of the students said they had not received enough information in school to have a clear understanding of career opportunities in manufacturing. "Kids are being asked to make decisions about things they know nothing about," says Stewart. "That is part of the problem." Coordinated Effort In Pittsburgh, "manufacturers working together and not trying to outdo each other" has helped manufacturers obtain entry-level machinists, says New Century Careers' Anselmo. NCC was formed this year to manage the MANUFACTURING 2000 program for training machinists-now expanded to welders as well-that grew out of a partnership of 17 area metalworking companies, the Steel Center Area Vocational-Technical School in Jefferson Hills, Pa., and the Institute for Economic Transformation that is part of the Graduate School of Business at Duquesne University. Using professional marketers and recruiters, NCC finds, recruits, and trains roughly 130 students each semester. The 17-to-22-week program includes five to 10 manufacturing-site visits. NCC helps graduates find jobs at the 112 companies that are now part of the partnership. The retention rate for the 300-plus graduates is 70%. Other manufacturers' groups also are aiding in the training effort. NTMA graduates upwards of 2,000 machinists annually and the Tooling & Manufacturing Assn., Park Ridge, Ill., another 600. But even Institute for Economic Transformation director Barry Maciak agrees that while training is critical, "it is not the obstacle. The question is: How do you drag people into manufacturing?" As Werling of the Manufacturers' Alliance points out, "The people that manufacturers need [for skilled manufacturing work] do exist. But [they] are going to college, they are getting M.B.A.s, they are becoming doctors. So my tendency is to think that a parent is probably correct when he or she insists that [a son or daughter] go to college and get a degree." Adds Textron's Keyzers, "Even if you had everyone's support to get . . . kids to see the potential, took them all to machine shops, got them excited [about manufacturing], and droves of them went to school to learn those skills," the challenge is to sell them on the future when "on the upswing manufacturers will hire you and on the downside they will lay you off." But sell -- and sell quickly -- they must. "We have a lot of people to influence and not much time," declares MASCPA's DeHoff, "because when you walk around [a manufacturing facility], you see that everyone in sight is going to retire soon." This article is reprinted with the permission of Industry Week. |
