22/05/2005
Too much work and too few employees to do it is typically good news for job seekers.
By Lisa Radke / Miami Herald
Labor Crunch
Todd Andrew quickly became aware there was a problem when his subcontractors had trouble finding skilled craftsmen to do finishing work for his company's construction projects. The president of Andrew General Contractors in Orlando, Andrew began to realize that skilled laborers in Florida - and around the country - were steadily decreasing and little was being done to fill the void.
"We've seen this on and off for the last 10 years," explains Andrew. "Sixty percent of our work is through subcontractors, so we hear the complaints from time to time with the electrical subcontractor we use or the plumbing subcontractors. They're just having a hard time finding skilled journeymen."
Aging workforce
Too much work and too few employees to do it is typically good news for job seekers in that industry. However, Jeff Owens, president and CEO of Advanced Technology Services Inc., a leading supplier of outsourced factory maintenance, industrial component repair and IT services for Fortune 500 companies based in Peoria, Ill., says it goes beyond that.
"A lot of people started working at these jobs when they were 18 years old, and, at most manufacturers, if you work for 30 years, you're eligible for retirement," explains Owens. "The majority of people who are in these jobs are eligible for retirement and there is really no one who is coming up behind them to replace them."
Because many companies have eliminated their apprentice programs that educate young workers in a specified area of expertise, Owens foresees the current shortage of skilled laborers only getting bigger.
That's why ATS has implemented a training program that recruits young workers while they are in high school. The initiative employs students as interns then hires them on full-time after graduation where they go through an intensive, 18-month training program. The result is multi-skilled workers who are capable of maintaining and prolonging the life of complex factory machinery. A job that formerly required multiple people can now be accomplished by one multi-tasking hybrid.
Technically speaking
"Our philosophy is we're going to make [our students] a high-tech technician more like you would see in the IT world and apply it to manufacturing," Owens says. "We're trying to build up a new generation of manufacturing technologists to work in these large plants."
Andrew believes that young people are attracted to all things high tech, which leads some people to assume that computers are their only job choice. Not true, say the experts.
"A lot of the folks we employed as electronic soderers went into different careers [after 9/11] because there was nothing else out there at the time," explains Jean Goetz, co-owner of Express Personnel, a staffing firm based in Fort Lauderdale. "Now we need those folks, and we can't find enough of them."
Cashing in
Goetz admits that employers need to offer higher wages to attract employees with the work ethic and skills required for the job. Though some companies aren't able to pay more, Goetz believes that will be their only option in years to come.
"There are clients that pay $7.75, $8, $9 and $10 for the same job level," says Goetz, who offers referral bonuses to her clients as a means to attract more workers. "When our clients come in, we offer them all four positions with all four different salaries. Now which one do you think they're going to choose?"
Others believe that there is a stigma attached to the idea of working in a factory. Though visions of 12-hour days working in dangerous steel mills or hazardous cement plants are still a reality for some, most manufacturing settings are much safer and cleaner than you might think.
"If you go into manufacturing plants, the technical sophistication and the computing power is much more than you might find in the office environment or in many of the computing environments that are out there today," says Owens. "If you really enjoy technology, you enjoy electronics and software and even video games, all of that is out there on the factory floor."