Jobs in advanced manufacturing go unfilled, despite efforts to address shortage

3:14 PM, Aug 31, 2012   |  

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Last November, Bob Lasch attended President Barack Obama’s Advanced Manufacturing Partnership meeting in Cambridge, Mass. As coordinator of Monroe Community College’s $9 million Applied Technologies Center, he returned home feeling like the Rochester area was ahead of the game when it comes to boosting interest in high-tech manufacturing jobs.

Government grants, innovative collaborations and targeted curricula are chipping away at the shortage of skilled workers. But experts agree that more must be done because an estimated 40 percent of advanced manufacturing employees are expected to retire over the next five to 10 years.

“That’s probably the biggest threat to local advanced manufacturing,” said Todd Oldham, vice president for EconomicDevelopment and Innovative Workforce Services at MCC. “That’s happening across the country.”

Nationwide, manufacturers can’t fill 5 percent of their positions. That’s 600,000 jobs, he said. Finger Lakes Community College physics professor Sam Samanta estimated the number of open positions in New York state at 50,000.

Kevin Kelley, executive director of the Rochester Technology & Manufacturing Association, said the solution is to add flexibility to Regents diploma requirements and present programs to middle school and high school students. That flexibility could be ushered in by two alternative diplomas being considered by the state Board of Regents — the Career and Technical Education Regents diploma and the Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) Regents diploma.

Both would help keep local manufacturers competitive by producing more workers skilled in the use of state-of-the-art technology. The Career and Technical Education diploma could help fill industry’s “middle skills” jobs, those requiring more than a high school education and less than a four-year degree, such as precision machining, welding, optics and imaging.

“And they pay more than you’d think,” Oldham said.

An entry-level machinist’s job will average $12 to $14 an hour, and most manufacturers offer a benefits package that includes health insurance and a retirement or 401(k) plan, said Dave Phillips, training manager at G.W. Lisk in Clifton Springs, Ontario County. Over a career, the hourly wage can reach the high $20s.

In 2011, Kelley’s organization and the Center for Integrated Manufacturing Studies at Rochester Institute ... surveyed salary structures at the association’s 143 member companies. A sampling of average hourly wages at the 36 companies that responded included $26.50 for mold makers, $18.94 for welders, $17.37 for fabricators and $16 for lathe operators.

Boosting interest in manufacturing jobs will also require a change in attitude among students and, Oldham said, among parents who still cling to a “manufacturing is dead” mentality and visualize the greasy, dirty factories of old.

“People think of big heavy machinery, heavy lifting and the repetition of standing on an assembly line, putting one piece in place over and over, but most of that repetitive work is done by some automated process now,” said Phillips, who described the advanced manufacturing setting as pleasant, well-lit and air-conditioned.

Lasch worked as a toolmaker for 18 years before joining the MCC staff, and he says it is amazing the way technology has changed the manufacturing environment.

Collaboration

The Rochester area is home to three Workforce Investment Boards that often collaborate to identify and meet local employers’ needs. Among them is the Finger Lakes board in Geneva, which received a $5 million, four-year grant in November, in part to provide $8,500 in tuition assistance for 266 unemployed workers to enroll in one of 10 advanced manufacturing programs at Genesee, Monroe or Finger Lakes community colleges.

Executive director Karen Springmeier said the state Department of Labor applied for the grant on behalf of her office because “the state recognized our efforts through Finger Lakes Advanced Manufacturers’ Enterprise (FAME)” to help meet employers’ needs.

Mike Mandina, president of the local precision optics company Optimax, is executive director of FAME, which has become a linchpin of high-tech employment efforts since 2007. FAME works to:

• Improve industry collaboration with workforce educators.

• Help with skilled worker recruitment, hiring and training.

• Raise awareness of the opportunities and importance of advanced manufacturing.

Last week, the Finger Lakes Regional Economic Development Council showed the importance it places on the workforce issue when it identified funding for another program, Multiple Pathways to Middle Skills Jobs, as a priority. The program would aim at providing hands-on training to students and displaced workers.

Innovative curricula

Instrumentation and Control Technologies, a Finger Lakes Community College degree program that started last fall, is among those for which the $8,500 workforce grants are available. It gives students a foundation for various careers, including work in precision optics, precision manufacturing, green technologies and electro-mechanical systems. Starting salaries are estimated at $30,000 to $45,000.

Samanta started the program with 15 students ages 17 to 40-something at the Victor campus. In addition to math, science, English and technical courses, the curriculum includes 270 hours of co-op work (similar to internships) and visits to various manufacturing sites.

“The skills students learn in the ICT curriculum will enable local high-tech industries to accelerate the rate of their innovations — through better designs, prototyping, testing, manufacturing and continuous quality control,” Samanta said in an email from Austin, Texas, where he was presenting on “Reinvention of Technical Training for the 21st Century.”

Samanta also collaborates with Lynn Fried, FLCC’s manager of professional development and continuing education, who he said helped create non-degree targeted training, such as precision machining at G.W. Lisk and clean room operator training at Moser Baer Technologies in Canandaigua.

Lisk invested $100,000 in the on-site program, which ran from September 2011 until March. All 10 graduates are now employed, seven of them at Lisk, and another session will start soon.

MCC has a host of technical degree and certificate programs and offers dual-credit programs through some area BOCES programs. The Corning Inc. Foundation announced last month that it is providing a $500,000 grant to update the school’s optics degree program and support outreach to high schools.

This summer MCC and the Rochester Technology & Manufacturing Association used Summer of Opportunity funds from the city of Rochester to teach 14 teens the basics of precision machining and expose them to modern manufacturing through weekly tours of local businesses. Lasch said MCC’s job readiness program also equipped adults with the basic skills needed for entry-level machining jobs.

Digging deeper

While community colleges are updating training, they are also focused on building awareness of advanced manufacturing careers among middle and high school students. MCC offers summer optics camps for students in Monroe County and job-readiness programs for students across the region.

While Oldham noted that many local school districts have cut funding for career technology programs, West Irondequoit is among those doing more.

The high school’s technical coursework includes robotics, automation, electricity, alternative energy, building trades and construction systems.

“Many courses earn dual credit with both MCC and Rochester Institute of Technology,” Assistant Superintendent Linda McGinley said in an email.

This year, with a Farash Foundation grant matched by the West Irondequoit Foundation, the district is undertaking a K-12 Innovations and Interventions Initiative to equip students with science, technology, engineering and math skills and career readiness experiences that will enable them to pursue related careers. FAME, MCC and Spex Precision Machine in Rochester are partnering on the project.

Springmeier said the Finger Lakes Workforce Investment Board is also working to help Junior Achievement build programs in schools, and it is recruiting industries to act as posts for the Boy Scout-affiliated Explorers program to increase career interest among teens.

“We have to drill down to the middle-school level to make kids aware,” said Kevin Kelley.

Looking ahead

Collaborations across the area have sparked optimism among many of those involved in building a high-tech workforce, but they still worry about meeting the imminent void from baby boomer retirements.

“It’s kind of scary,” Lasch said, adding that if the skilled workforce doesn’t grow, “companies will either move or turn work away. That’s one of my biggest fears.”

Oldham recognizes the challenge as well but said, “I am pretty optimistic because of the things you’re seeing across the board and how we can come together as a community to address it. It’s a systemic problem. It has to be solved collectively.”

Lauri Follette

Sr. Examiner

Self-Sufficiency

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