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.
There are 95 million unemployed in this country, there is no shortage.
Have you seen the quality of recent college grads?
“Dow is investing billions on a massive new ethylene cracker”
As an aging white male, I could possibly construe the preceding as a racist statement. Help me Al Sharpton!
I’m 60 with two college degrees, one in engineering and one in business. I have a good resume and interview well. A head hunter told me I’d need to take a competency test before he could send me to a particular client. It included fractions and logic problems as well as reading comprehension. Most of it was grammar school level with only a handful of problems that were high school level. When I spoke to the head hunter about it he told me that virtually all of the candidates from the local “historically black” college had failed the test. Many others with college degrees had also failed, but in lesser amounts. The test had dramatically reduced the client’s turnover. As an aside he told me that he believed that if the test went to court it would be ruled racially discriminatory.
The entire idea behind public education was to prepare illiterate farm hands to work in the industrial revolution. Even as society has become more complex the education system has dumbed down its product to the point they are not capable of working. All they are capable of doing is filling out welfare forms and voting Democrat.
There is a difference between quantities of people, and quantities of workers, particularly for jobs that require skills and effort.
One-third of job applicants fail, avoid drug tests
http://standardspeaker.com/news/one-third-of-job-applicants-fail-avoid-drug-tests-1.1736972
Drug testing troubles employers during worker shortage
http://www.caller.com/business/eagle-ford-shale/drug-testing-troubles-employers-during-worker-shortage_04336350
Survey: A third of manufacturing job applicants disqualified due to drug testing
http://thetimes-tribune.com/news/business/survey-a-third-of-manufacturing-job-applicants-disqualified-due-to-drug-testing-1.1736611
There is a genuine shortage of qualified workers in some sectors who are willing and able. But most reasonably intelligent people can get qualified with a minimum amount of OTJ exposure.
Most tsets I have taken for employment were usually nothing hig. I am weak on fractions since it’s been a few years since I have had to do much with them.
Me and higher math never got on too well though.
The pre-screen test that I took for where I am now were MCSE caliber ones in areas that I have had little to no exposure.
It was an online exercise. I figured I bombed big time. The recruiter called the next day and I asked for the bad news. I scored about 85 or so percent. High guess factor.
Anyone who expects the product of government schools to come out with those skills is probably an idiot. Of course they have to be learned somewhere, what have these companies been doing before now?
What I have seen was the cost spent on training was considered wasted when the training was finished, employees left to another company who could pay more, since they didn't spend money on training.
And the economy is at the lowest labor-force participation rate in 45 years. something's not right.
I’m tired of being a civil engineer. Where do I sign up?
Who would want to eat such a thing, anyway?
Hiring the product of government schools and realizing that many of them are both uneducated and untrainable.
I would be willing to try a nice 101 Proof Bourbon cracker, but ethanol? No way.
Don’t be so obtuse!
Ethanol has a terminal OH group CH3CH2OH and contains all single bonds.
Ethanol is a liquid (alcohol)
Whereas ethylene contains one double bond H2C=CH2
Ethylene is a gas.
/pedantism
Granted that companies do not have the enforcement teeth as the U.S. military, but this is the way the system worked back a generation or two ago.
My Dad stayed in the Naval Reserves for 20 years after World War II ended because that was part of the agreement of sending him through OCS to train for his particular skill set.
He barely missed a Korean call-up because my eldest brother was born in the summer of 1950. By the time a Vietnam call-up loomed, he had six kids. But he still dutifully reported for his two weeks of reserve training every summer until his contract was discharged.
how do they expect anyone to be qualified in that field without hiring them and training them? I really do not believe they thought that schools would do that for them.
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