[ ABOVE: Dirk Pieper, president and CEO of Sage Automotive Interiors, spoke this week at the S.C. Automotive Summit held in Greenville. ]
With the many entrances to automotive and manufacturing careers, educators and industry partners can do a better job at highlighting them, said members of a workforce development panel at the S.C. Automotive Summit held in Greenville this week.
“Kids like to create things, they’re curious, they want to know how things work,” said JoAnn Bortles, who works with a nationwide high school engine build competition organization, Hot Rodders of Tomorrow. “I don’t think their interest is being nurtured in the right way.”
The skills gap and workforce shortage problem facing the industry is twofold, said Greenville Technical College President Keith Miller, who also spoke on the panel.
“If we look just at Greenville County, over 54 percent of those involved in some aspect of manufacturing now are approaching retirement age,” he said. “There’s also a lack of sufficient interest on the part of the young.”
Part of that lack of interest is tied to perceptions, said Lexington-Richland Center for Advanced Technical Studies Director Bob Couch, who oversees a program that offers high-wage and high-tech courses to high school students.
“We’re seeing two-year graduates making more and starting with higher wages than four-year graduates,” said Couch, noting the challenge of rising tuition costs and mounting national student debt at more than $1.2 trillion. “Part of the challenge is: How do children coming out of homes today get on a productive track to get the wages that they need to have to provide for their family?”
The state’s history as a textile hub has left many parents with an inaccurate perception of manufacturing careers, which is a challenge in itself, Miller said.
“In the eyes of some, manufacturing is not the high-tech field that it is,” he said. “To solve this whole issue of a shortage of skilled workers and everything, it’s not higher education’s challenge or K-12’s challenge or industry’s challenge; it’s all of the above, and that collaboration is key.”
Another aspect of the challenge is not only building technical skills, but building basic skills ranging from collaboration and communication to basic math and reading, he said.
One opportunity is expanding focus to recruit and employ more women in the industry, which can be achieved through non-conventional avenues such as the arts. One student, Miller said, began to practice her art through welding and advanced to the point where her projects won regional welding competitions. Her aim is to become an underwater welder, a job that garners salaries between $100,000 to $200,000 per year, according to the American Welding Society.
“Awareness needs to be centered around young girls and females,” he said. “There has to be an attraction of different students’ interests in different fields.”
Bortles said during her 35-year career, which included loading raw materials, high-precision welding, and research and development, she had the most fun “down there in the trenches” working on the floor with machines, a little-emphasized aspect of the industry.
“The easy answer here is the kids are just not enjoying it, and I have to disagree,” she said. “As far as manufacturing and automotive, I think there’s outdated stereotypes and perspectives. … That has to change.”
