Posted on 10/23/2014 4:36:17 AM PDT by thackney
As refineries and petrochemical plants struggle to find enough skilled workers to fill a surge of new jobs, Dow Chemical is considering an old solution to solve a new problem.
The multinational chemical corporation plans to launch a pilot apprenticeship program next year at eight of its plants, including manufacturing sites in Freeport, Bayport, Deer Park, Seadrift and Texas City.
The company expects to hire 60 apprentices, who will receive two to four years of training and on-the-job experience to prepare them for jobs as chemical process operators, instrumentation and equipment technicians and analyzer technicians.
The apprenticeship positions will be posted on Dow’s website within the next month and the company hopes to start hiring as early as January, Earl Shipp, Dow’s vice president of U.S. Gulf Coast Operations, said in an interview with Fuel Fix. Once apprentices complete the program, Dow will consider hiring them full-time.
While apprenticeships remained popular in Europe, they fell out of favor in the United States as parents and schools encouraged students to pursue college degrees rather than training for trade jobs, such as plumbers, electricians, pipe fitters, machinists and welders, Shipp said.
But vast new supplies of cheap natural gas unleashed by the U.S. shale boom have prompted the petrochemical industry to build and expand their plants, which use gas as fuel and raw material.
Especially on the Texas Gulf Coast, the center of much U.S. petrochemical activity, the building boom is creating a shortage of workers with the necessary technical skills to fill construction and manufacturing jobs. At its sprawling Freeport plant alone, Dow is investing billions on a massive new ethylene cracker and new propane dehydrogenation unit to capitalize on low-cost gas, as well as two new plastics plants.
If skilled manufacturing workers were in short supply before, the shale boom made the shortage even more acute, Shipp said. The petrochemical resurgence is expected to create 630,000 new manufacturing jobs in the United States by 2025, according to a recent study by energy analyst firm IHS.
“As a country, we’ve got a bit of an issue,” Shipp said. “”We have this God=given gift of abundant and affordable and accessible energy through technology, but we need the people and the workforce to be able to get at it.”
While Dow plans to partner with local community colleges to provide some training, the company opted to spearhead the apprenticeship program in-house rather than solely provide funding for local colleges and trade schools to prepare the people it wants to hire, Shipp said.
“An apprenticeship program is a commitment,” he said. “We’re not just saying we want to throw money at the problem. We’re saying we want to be a part of the solution to the problem.”
Dow’s pilot program, developed as part of a coalition among Dow, Alcoa and Siemens, aims to offer a playbook for other U.S. companies seeking to take similar initiatives.
“The three of us are working together and we do have slightly different industries, but we have the same needs and we’re committed to go figuring this out,” Shipp said.
Please point me to some of the help wanted ads
You need my help to do a Monster search?
We have the “Sud America” contingent in a company I work with. Bright enough youngsters but almost zero problem solving skills. Not just the Sud America bunch but many others from around the globe. Very few WASPs. Most classes look like a contingent from the UN. There are PLENTY of Green Cards for technical fields from what I can see. You lead them into a logical progression of ideas, principles, concept and theory but if you expect them to extend that to the next step in a problem solving way... fugeddaboutit. They vapor lock and start hand wringing. Maybe 15% are what I call “connectors” who can link up principles and experience into new solutions and expanded know-how.
I led a group of them yesterday through a procedure that comes to a fork with two options whereupon I said the easiest of the two was A but there are circumstances where B is appropriate and B is a bolt on of what I had taught them only a couple of weeks before. Lost.
Q: If B is faster why isn’t that preferred?
A: You aren’t ready for it and it has more risk.
Q: How do we do B?
A: Refer to what you were taught two weeks ago.
Q: Why don’t you teach it now? A: Time and need.
Q: But what do we do if we need to use B?
A: Call me, I’ll do it for you.
If it isn’t cookbook and there isn’t a spreadsheet and there isn’t an app .... it is going almost nowhere.
these are good, usually long lasting, steady jobs. The “refinery and chemical” zones where these plants are are full of nice homes with man-cave barns and boats and campers and people with vacation time to use them and what appear to be prosperous retirees.
Very true, especially in the IT field. I’m not sure how many others it has penetrated.
I humbly apologize for getting ethanol and ethylene confused in my joke.
The apprentices were mostly high school graduates, with a smattering of college graduates. I was one of the few literate men among the bricklayers, so they made me timekeeper. It was really a "nothing" job, just keeping records and pushing paper, but it was something I could do easily. However, there was no future in it. Had I stayed with it, I could never have become a supervisor because I lacked bricklaying skill. The apprentices, even though many of them could have handled the job, wouldn't have wanted the job. They wanted the career track as a bricklayer, eventually leading to supervisory position.
I returned to college at the end of the summer. However, I consider that job to have been an important part of my "out of school" education.
Actually, companies like Dow Chemical work with schools to get the specific training available. Those motivated enough to take the class and smart enough to pass the class then make for a more successful employee.
Fast Start Training
http://www.dow.com/careers/faststart.htm
Dow, like other companies dependent on a talented and innovative workforce, has a responsibility to use its expertise and resources to make the workforce stronger. We believe that public-private partnerships are critical to the developing and sustaining the workforce of the 21st Century. Dow’s contributions to the Fast Start training program are helping ensure that community colleges can act quickly to train employees in the skills they need to meet the needs of local manufacturers.
These companies need to train employees because the schools are not going to do it for them.
Please point me to some of the help wanted ads
You need my help to do a Monster search?
...
It would be nice if you could help since you’re the one with the inside knowledge.
Tell you what, maybe you should call up Dow Chemical, explain to them they are wasting money on an apprenticeship program, and help them with their advertising. I’m sure they need the help, they haven’t been doing this very long, only 117 years. They’ve only managed to hire about 53,000 people for their current workload.
1-800-523-3945
Oh, that’s quite alright.
I was going for the “over the top” humor of pointing out the difference in the chemical structure between the two substances that you inconsequentially mistook for each other.
If the compensation is good, why are they having trouble finding people? I assume that working in a refinery entails risk, is physically demanding and requires shift work. I would like to see what they actually offer to entice people into the profession.
No problem. I understood what you were up to.
But...
...seriously, now, doesn’t a 101 Proof Bourbon cracker sound delicious?
Dunno about that...
Reminds me of a time when some friends decided to use their carbonator on some Jack Daniels...
They said that the subsequent burps burned terribly.
Not just people, skilled people.
They don’t need bodies. They need people to complete specific tasks. Task that are more than common sense and inherently intuitive.
So in other words, you’re going to make claims, but you’re not going to back them up. That tells me there is probably truth to my speculation. This is another way for big corporations to cheap out on compensation. It’s not a traditional apprentice program.
Yeah, you go with that.
I’ll continue working in the same industry that pays very well.
Have a nice day, God Bless.
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