Local manufacturers have screamed for years about the difficulty in finding young workers. The problem bedevils everyone: recruiters, companies, trade schools and the workforce associations created to help them.
One of the more unusual programs in recent manufacturing history was one dreamed up by a Worcester, Mass.-based Manufacturing Extension Partnership, called the MOST program. The idea? Create a mobile training lab — a special bus equipped with computers and manufacturing equipment that would stop in the parking lots of local factories to train new workers.
The federal government gave them a $3 million grant to create the program, which takes folks with little or no knowledge of manufacturing. They learn basic computer and machining skills over a two-week bus stop. Eight weeks of on-the-job training follow at a local factory.
Frank Rio of Connstep, who coordinated the program in Connecticut, said the bus-based training program was “by far the best” he had seen it had an impact. Between June 2006 and 2007, five two-week sessions were held. About 55 CNC [computer numerical control] machine operators were trained.
Thirteen Nutmeg State manufacturing companies, most of them in Metro-Hartford, signed on to have these two-week program grads take on-the-job training and work for them. A year later, about 70 percent of those workers remained on the job. In all, some 328 aspiring machinists were trained across New England.
Now the group plans to go back to the feds and suggest the bus-based model attempted in New England become a national one.
“Employers need people right now and are very interested in seeing people come out of this program,” Rio said. “It’s not a cure-all for everyone, but it brings in employees who can become productive.”
It’s not without its problems, either.
Judy Boyle, human resources manager for Stowe Machine Co. in Windsor, which hired two of the workers trained on the bus, said they came in without a lot of background in what factory work was like, and required more than eight weeks of training. One of the workers left pretty quickly; the other, however, stayed and is well on his way to moving up the factory floor ladder at Stowe. A 50 percent success rate is “very good” she said, but the program should be improved to better screen potential workers.
“We are very busy, so it takes time to train these people and it’s very costly,” she said. “With the right individual and good screening, you can tell very quickly if someone’s heart is into manufacturing and if their will is there … But I do think it’s a concept that could work.”
A number of well-known companies in the area also supported the effort. Kamatics Corp. in Bloomfield, Pegasus Manufacturing in Middletown, Marlin Firearms in North Haven, and Leed-Himmel in Hamden all volunteered to host “the bus,” which could train 12 workers at a time. All hired one person from the sessions.
Could the bus be the answer? It’s dubious. Although it gets workers on the floors quicker than most training programs — typically a full year at a community college — much gets lost when condensing 52 weeks of training into 10.
The options, however, are few. Manufacturers in the Bristol area, for instance, have taken to recruiting eighth graders into trade schools. Others have begun offering scholarships for trade school students to take manufacturing programs at places like Asnuntuck Community College in exchange for a guarantee of working for a certain time after graduation. On many shop floors, the average age of machinists is more than 50, meaning the race is on to train the foremen of tomorrow.
The problem, most manufacturers will tell you, is not necessarily training. It’s getting the message out to young people that manufacturing and factory work is not a “grease under the nails” profession, said Stowe’s Boyle. “We’re high tech,” she said, but most parents still associate factory work with a 1940s image of overalls, lunch pails and a life of struggling to make ends meet.
The biggest thing anyone can do, arguably, is to change that image, Boyle said.
Or to put it another way: Convince the kids it’s time to get on the bus.
Kenneth J. St. Onge is a freelance writer. Reach him at kenstonge.com
