Featured Employers of the Month
Manitowoc Group
The Manitowoc Company is building a strong business - and real futures for those who seek challenge, passion, pride and satisfaction in their work. Since our inception in 1902, we have grown and diversified with operations in over 20 countries around the world. Our quality, industry-leading products in cranes, foodservice equipment and marine have made us a Fortune 1000 company. Now we're ready for more - more growth, more innovation, more value, more excellence - and we need the right people, people like you, to help us get there.
Ledcor Group
Making Ledcor a Great Place to Work
Our success depends on our employees. We listen to our employees in an effort to make Ledcor a better place to work and build a career. It is our goal to be an employer of choice where every employee feels valued, and is offered rewards and competitive compensation; an opportunity for personal and professional growth, and affiliation with a respected, high-performing company.
Industry News
Traditional trades short of workers
Chicago Sun-Times, by Martha Irvin
There's no shortage of work for Mike Kirby, a 21-year-old apprentice electrician in Iowa who's been on the job 10 hours a day, seven days a week lately.
He and others in the traditional trades are in great demand throughout the country, with many trade groups and employers hotly recruiting high school students to fill the growing need for everything from plumbers to bricklayers and dry-wallers.
Yet despite the opportunities, the jobs are proving a tough sell - - not only to young people but to their parents and school counselors, who don't always see the trades as a desirable option.
"That's the way it's preached: 'If you don't go to college, you can't do anything.' But obviously that's not true," said Kirby, who'll finish his apprenticeship with Shaw Electric in Davenport, Iowa, next year.
He expects to make $18 an hour once he finishes.
Officials at organizations that represent the construction trades say national age-specific statistics aren't available. But they note the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates the industry will need to add 100,000 jobs a year each year through 2012, while also filling an additional 90,000 openings annually for positions vacated by retiring baby boomers and those leaving the industry for other reasons.
Some believe the labor shortage will become more severe as the need for skilled workers increases on the hurricane-ravaged Gulf Coast and in regions with housing booms.
"Do we have an immediate crisis? Probably not. Will we in five years? Absolutely," said Gary Dowty, executive vice president of the Lake County (Ill.) Contractors Association.
Already, he's seen several baby boomer trades workers take early retirement -- "good retirement and pensions," he noted. "They can afford to retire at 55 or 60 and they're doing it."
Each spring, Dowty's organization sponsors a career expo for local eighth-graders, who get to build toolboxes, lay brick and use a jackhammer -- and each year, the two-day event has gotten more popular.
The idea is to plant seeds early -- with some trade organizations hoping to capitalize on the popularity of the children's TV program "Bob the Builder" and home-improvement shows, including "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" and "Trading Spaces: Boys vs. Girls."
Some trades organizations, such as the Associated Builders and Contractors, or ABC, have partnerships with the Boy Scouts of America and Junior Achievement. They offer training programs in Spanish. And still others, including Chicago Women in Trades, send speakers to schools to get more girls interested in a traditionally male-dominated field.
Trade organizations also hope to supplant the notion that a college degree is the only path to a good career, creating an atmosphere more like that in Europe, where trades such as plumber, electrician and carpenter often are regarded as attractive professions with steady work and high stature for skilled technicians.
"We say, 'Apprenticeship is the other four-year degree,' " said Bob Piper, vice president of work force development for the Arlington, Va.-based ABC.
Increasingly, some jobs such as construction management do require a college degree -- and offer competitive starting salaries for graduates. "And yet nobody's saying, 'Hey, this is a good career,' " said Michael Holland, executive vice president of the American Council for Construction Education, based in San Antonio.
"We're not going to change this overnight. But if these kids get an honest look and hear it from each other, they can see there's an opportunity," said Brian Peters, a board member for the northern chapter of the California Professional Association of Specialty Contractors, which noticed a big change in the group of young interns who showed up for orientation "slouching in the chairs, hats on backward." By the end-of-summer banquet, he said, "it was shiny shoes, sitting up straight, bright-eyed, realizing they'd accomplished something."
Amy Stafford, now an 18-year-old college freshman, was one of the 35 who finished an internship, hers at a plumbing company in Rocklin, Calif.
"I didn't worry about getting greasy cutting gas pipe, and I didn't worry about having to wear work boots and carrying heavy things," Stafford said. "I loved my job. I loved the people."
For now, she plans to continue her studies in criminology at Fresno State University, where she's attending on a track scholarship. But she's grown to see the trades in a new light.
"At this point in my life, if I wasn't in college, I would definitely consider going into a trade," she said.
Trading Rates
A sampling of mean hourly wages for various construction trades.
- Painters: $16.05
- Dry-wall and ceiling installers: $18.00
- Carpenters: $18.39
- Heavy equipment operators: $18.69
- Brickmasons: $20.56
- Plumbers: $21.40
- Electricians: $21.73
- Construction managers: $26.31
Source: U.S. Department of Labor/Bureau of Labor Statistics
Copyright The Chicago Sun-Times, Inc.
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved
Featured Article
St. Louis area educators see continued demand for skilled workers
St. Louis Daily Record & St. Louis Countian, by Mike Trask
While analysts continue to try to figure out where the nation's economy is headed, one constant remains: The demand is still strong for skilled workers.
St. Louis area educators and professionals involved in job training continue to see a strong demand from businesses for skilled workers in the trades and in the health-care and information systems professions. More and more businesses are seeking state assistance in the training of employees while at the same time legislators- faced with a tight budget-are looking at ways to cut costs.
For the past two years, the Division of Workforce Development had appropriated [to it] $8.5 million for customized [job] training, said Lita Pener, director of workforce development for the St. Charles Community College. The college for a number of years has operated a customized job training program for area businesses.
While the state budget for the 2005-06 fiscal year has not been finalized as yet, she said that particular program has taken a $1 million cut. So we're looking at $7.5 million with probably more businesses than we've had in the past eligible to participate in that program. Several years ago the funding stood at about $16 million, she added.
In other words, Pener said, the demand for job training programs is greater while the supply of such programs is down because of budget cuts. Workforce development is one strategy for economic development, and when you see funding cut in certain training programs, it makes you question whether there is a commitment to economic development in the state of Missouri, she said.
In fairness, Pener pointed to other programs such as Gov. Matt Blunt's Quality Jobs Act as a good economic development. The legislation offers tax incentives to companies that will locate new facilities Missouri and create good-paying jobs with certain fringe benefits such as health insurance. But, she said, that does not help companies already here that would like to expand.
Lewis and Clark Career Center, operated by the St. Charles School District, is the only vocational high school in St. Charles County. Kathy Frederking, the school's director, said other districts have had to raise their tax rates to pay for their students to attend Lewis and Clark. Other school districts pay the St. Charles district tuition to send their students to Lewis and Clark.
As education funding levels went down, it made it harder for our local high schools to pay the tuition they needed to pay to send students to our program, she said. We have students from all of the high schools in St. Charles County.
Fortunately, she said, the other school districts in the county last year were able to get voters to approve tax hikes, which really eased that burden. But there was a time when we were really concerned whether the tech school would be able to continue operating.
Currently, the school has about 90 fewer students than it had about two years ago, Frederking said. It's because of the financial situations at the sending schools. Demand has not gone down. We got more applications this year than we've ever received from students wanting to attend. So the demand is there; it's just a matter of the school districts being able to fund additional students.
Some of vocations offered by Lewis and Clark include auto repair and service, building trades, welding, health occupations and computer maintenance and computer programming. Demand is such that some of our students are employed even before they officially graduate, although many go on to continue their education or training. Demand for occupations in the health-care industry is especially strong now, she said.
In fact, she added, the business community wishes we had more available space so we could assist them or offer them space to train because there really isn't a lot of availability for technical training within the county. Frederking said local business owners have been generous in terms of donations and volunteering their time to serve on advisory boards.
The Special School District of St. Louis County has responsibility for vocational education not only in the county, but for public schools in St. Louis City as well. According to the district's Web site, about 2,200 students currently are enrolled in career programs at two schools: North Technical High School in Florissant and at South Technical High School in Sunset Hills.
Repeated attempts to reach officials at those two schools were unsuccessful.
Copyright 2005 Dolan Media Newswires
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved.
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