To solve worker shortage, Dow offers apprenticeships

Fuel Fix ^ | October 23, 2014 | Rhiannon Meyers

[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.

[WayneS]

I’ll bet.

Interesting experiment, though. i like the way those guys think.

[Milton Miteybad]

It’s all that, along with hot, dirty and occasionally hazardous. The candidates most suited to it will tend to be younger, fairly strong, physically fit and able to pass a drug test. Finding people who have all of these characteristics plus a willingness to undertake the risks inherent in working on/around gigantic stills that could blow up at any time is a bit of a challenge. It’s not the type of job that 58-year old Aunt Mavis who used to do the payroll over at Gobsmack Trucking until she got laid off is suited for, as a general proposition.

[Moonman62]

Have a nice day, God Bless.

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You too.