Stories like this frustrate me. Manufacturing companies in the US are having difficulty filling key positions because there seems to be a lack of skilled employees to fill them. The excuse that education systems don’t emphasize the value of trade and manufacturing jobs, or that schools are “not evolving alongside industry needs” doesn’t hold too much water. In my view, the industry as a whole should have been able to anticipate this problem, and should have invested in their employees rather than letting them go. Teaching employees the skills they need to operate more technologically complex machinery is a far more sustainable method of maintaining a healthy workforce, as opposed to assuming that new generations would provide an unlimited pool of fresher and cheaper workers. Workers who have been affected by this situation are totally justified to be angry with an industry that has failed them. Read more in-depth at The Wall Street Journal.
Photo: Employees install panels on airplane wings at the Boeing Co. manufacturing facility in Renton, Wash., last year. PHOTO: DAVID RYDER/BLOOMBERG NEWS