Lack of Skilled Employees Hurting Manufacturing

[Brigid]

But I think they left out one thing: The reason why: Republicans have been 30 years destroying public education.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/forum/story/2012-07-02/public-private-manufacuting/56005466/1

[DBoon]

1. maybe if there was more respect for skilled trades

we wouldn't have this problem

Maybe if skilled workers weren't treated as disposable resources more people would choose to enter this area.

[Odin2005]

2. This is BS, there is no shortage of skilled workers.

That's a lie made up so they can get Hb1 visas to import cheap labor from India.

[IDemo]

3. +1

&feature=player_embedded

[Arctic Dave]

7. Preach it!

[hobbit709]

16. Exactly. They want the skills but they don't want to pay much more than minimum wage.

Two years after I got dumped in the tech crunch of 2001, I was offered a job doing the same thing for only 60% of what I was getting before. I told them if they wanted to pay shit wages, they were going to get what they paid for.
About a year and a half later, they folded, basically they lost their customer base due to shoddy work.

[nc4bo]

4. How many of these jobs are listed in the Occupation Outlook Handbook?

http://www.bls.gov/ooh/home.htm

Come off it now, here's where high school students (I'm sure college kids do too) begin researching what's hot now and in the future as far as employment is concerned.

Has any one actually seen a comprehensive list of these mythical high tech jobs that over 300k of U.S. workers or potential workers have no possibility of filling?

So sick of the bs........

And #2, yea that war on education is just another path to the same end. Dumb down education, dumb down the kids and we'll definitely need to import more workers.

[Peter1x9]

5. There is a shortage of skilled workers...

willing to work for minimum wage with no benefits and are experienced in everything under the sun.

If companies were actually willing to train new workers and pay at least a halfway decent wage this problem would go away. Instead they would rather send the jobs overseas or import cheap replacements (h1bs) and then pocket the difference in labor costs.

All that matters to them is the short-term. They could care less when their customer base finally depletes all of its savings and credit and can no longer buy their products. When the depression gets so bad that the propaganda aka "news" can no longer hide it, they'll just take their billions out of the country and laugh at all the suckers left here with nothing.

[Tuesday Afternoon]

6. BullShit.

[Fumesucker]

8. So wages in manufacturing are rising sharply, correct?

If there was truly a real shortage of skilled workers in manufacturing we would be seeing the pay scale of the workers that are available rise quickly as firms bid against each other for those limited number of skilled workers.

[NYC_SKP]

9. Our culture has come to disrespect the laborer and craftsperson.

Make no mistake.

Go here: http://www.mikeroweworks.com/

Watch this: http://www.mikeroweworks.com/2009/02/mikes-mission-video/

[NYC_SKP]

9. double post

oops.

[Nikia]

11. They could always hire workers to train

In the past that was how it was done.
As it stands now, the potential "skilled worked" has to be careful that they pick the right educational program to get hired. Even if they do pick a program that will allow them to get hired at company A, B, or C in their area, they do not know if those companies will be hiring after they are done with the program or if those companies will actually hire them or whether those companies are good places to work. If they cannot get hired at those companies or work for one and get fired or hate it, their degree is pretty much worthless because companies D,E, and F want their workers to have a related but different degree.
Now if a company trains a worker in a skill, they might worry that their worker will go to a different company with that skill. The way to prevent that is to pay well and treat employees well. At many companies, those things, especially together is lacking.

[KatChatter]

12. If Manufactures were so concerned about skilled workers

they would not be opening up non union plants in the south and spending money for remedial remedial math and reading for the slaves, correction workers, they just hired.

Toyota was looking at moving some of its plants to Canada a few years ago because the locals in the south they hired lacked basic skills but in the end it came out cheaper to hire some teachers and reeducate the workers then move and have to pay higher wages.

It has NEVER been about skilled workers, it has always been about exploiting labor.

[Mopar151]

13. Blame some on the headhunters

They overspec jobs because it makes it more certain that the applicants they get will be judged as qualified at the interview. Things like degrees and licenses are a lot more cut and dried than judging the complexity and difficulty of some arcane (to the recruiter) skill.

[SoCalDem]

14. There used to be something called apprenticeship

Young workers were hired on and TRAINED by the companies they worked for. As their skills grew, they advanced in the company.

"Workers" is a word that does not always describe people with expensive college degrees.... many companies have specialized ways of doing things.

There are too many companies who want to hire young, eager, vivacious people who have a degree, and who also have many years of experience. It's an impossibility.

People have to learn their jobs, and the best teachers are the people who are already there.

Unpaid internships seem to be the new apprenticeship, and they are just as valuable to the people doing the work, as the switch from defined benefit pensions to 101-ks (deliberate downgrade).

[Brickbat]

15. "Lack of Skilled Employees WHO AREN'T WILLING TO WORK FOR SHIT WAGES AND BENEFITS Hurting

Manufacturing."

FIFY.

[meaculpa2011]

17. A company here on Long Island (I won't mention which company)...

was operating on three shifts. They had four job postings for night shift CNC operators. Based on experience they were paying $22 to $28 per hour plus benefits. After more than a year they had only filled one. After being the largest employer in town since the early 1930s, they moved out of state. The two reasons they gave: Availability of skilled labor and commercial property taxes that are one tenth what they are on Long Island.

Their old facility has been vacant now for more than three years.

[FSogol]

18. BS. Companies no longer want to spend money to train.

They want to poach skilled workers from other firms. Training workers is a cost of doing business. Don't buy into RW memes.