Much like Jaguar Land Rover’s own program, Ford is training military veterans for apprenticeships and entry-level civilian positions in welding in the auto industry and beyond.
Detroit Free Press reports the program, a partnership between the automaker, the United Auto Workers and Wounded Warriors Family Support, will teach welding to eight selected veterans of Enduring Freedom, Desert Storm and Desert Shield in a six-week course beginning this week. The course is being taught at the UAW Ford Technical Training Center.
The ultimate goal of the program is to send veterans into a profession where some 290,000 skilled welders will be needed by 2020, as explained to the students by UAW vice president James Settles Jr.:
The worst thing you can do is train people with the expectation they’ll get jobs and they don’t get jobs.
Aside from welding, Wounded Warriors founder and president Col. John Folsom is also looking into a 10-week machining course.
Welders make top-dollar because there are so few of them. Perhaps if “they” had kept welding and other vocational training in public schools instead of implementing COMMUNIST CORE CURRICULUM – we’d have a population with SKILLS.
My mother was a teacher in Thomas Edison Vocational (before becoming a principal) and even the bad kids went on to be master plumbers and auto technicians.
My uncle learned enough shop skills to gut his own house and rebuild the entire interior – saving hundreds of thousands of dollars on both his houses. Now he hand rebuilds Capris, Merkurs and Mustangs – installing superchargers/ turbochargers like it’s nothing…
I look at him and realize right away what’s wrong with the generation below me.
We aren’t training them.
Liberal Arts education was meant only to supplement trade skills. Not to replace them.
I personally see law degrees, MBA degrees, Film degrees and psychology degrees as EQUALLY WORTHLESS.
I’d rather have a degree in Medicine or technology.
Man, you just don’t give up, do you? I do agree with you, for the most part, but must every article be turned into an attack on those who hold different ideologies?
>> Perhaps if “they” had kept welding and other vocational training in public schools instead of implementing COMMUNIST CORE CURRICULUM
I don’t know, in Massachusetts we’re kinda sorta leftists and, well – follow the link:
http://www.massvocassoc.org/students/voced/schools
The problem is there were two decades where there was a surplus of skilled trades and the training programs withered as people were no longer interested. Now as manufacturing is picking back up most of the skilled trades have a labor pool nearing retirement.
Agreed. Not everyone is meant to go to college. Our society seems to have th mentality that they do. Someone who is a skilled master plumber/welder/tradesman can make a heck of a lot more money that someone working at sbucks with a degree in basket weaving theory.
I see. “The leftists” don’t want blue collar trades taught…despite the fact that they depend on unions for financial support, and union membership is largely made up of tradesmen (you know, like welders). Better to see those jobs go away so that the unions and “leftist” funding dries up.
The evil leftist scheme is all making perfect sense to me now!
(…and leave it to BTSR to make a nice program that benefits veterans into some liberal-hating rant…LOL)
I learned to do all that by fixing HP series 2100 and Nixdorf IBM compatible mainframes, welding, cars, plumbing, houses (In South Africa that means bricks, steel reinforced and plain concrete, plastering as well as carpentry) wiring and electrical work from Mohawk Data Sciences. In the old days if you were capable of fixing an IBM mainframe you could fix absolutely anything else (You could tell I was good though as I came to work at 10 o’clock or so every morning while everyone else arrived at 8)
@BTSR…Your are so right. In Canada, the situation is even worse. There isn’t a computer in the world that will replace a plumber. I know an electrical contractor. Before he can even start with a kid, he has to teach them the difference between a socket, and a wrench,negative and positive. The schools don’t even teach the basics.
“The schools don’t even teach the basics.”
The most successful people I know learned the basics from their parents, their grandparents, or those of their friends.
The fundamental flaw in the argument against “the schools” is that they are responsible. Parents are responsible, followed by extended family, followed by community – of which the school is only one institution.
I agree, but in many cases the family/extended family unit has been completely destroyed.
Or those family members don’t even know the basics because the skills ineptitude is multi-generational.
What’s the point of life if not struggle? We all have hardships and obstacles to overcome. If we seek help, opportunity, a chance to succeed, do not we eventually find that which we seek?
The lesson of Cuchulain’s fight with the sea is not that life is an absurd or a meaningless struggle, it is that the greatest virtue of man is the indomitability of his spirit. Where there is a will, the will finds a way. We should be providing this example to our youth at every opportunity. We should be instilling them with courage and spirit to face the struggles of life. We should not rely on, or expect some abstract “other” to do this work for us. There are people in your life who will see you as an example, we should keep this in mind and act accordingly.
I agree trades aren’t taught as much as they once were, but I just googled “welding school Denver” and got about 20 returns, including several community colleges, where it costs about $5,000 – $6000 to earn an associate’s degree in welding. My daughter could have covered that from her Pell money she got this year.
If you want to learn a trade like welding, it’s still very feasible, but as you say, the white collar jobs get the attention, partially because not everyone knows how much a skilled tradesman job can pay. I think if that were more widely known, more kids would go down that path…but then again, that would also bring down the wage.
This is nice to see. It would be even better if it were opened to all the industrial trades. For example, I understand there is a shortage of machinists who can do both conventional an CNC work.
Agreed 100%.
There is a shortage of all skilled trades. Many younger people aren’t willing to do manual labor, even if it is stable work that pays well. Many of the people that have the skills and desire can’t pass a drug screen.
This is true, there is a large subset of people to today who will in fact refuse work that is “beneath them”. As in, not work at all if they can’t do the job they want. Give them the job they want, and they can’t perform it satisfactorily because they didn’t work their way through the sh1ttier jobs to develop the necessary skills.
Managing people like this in the workplace is difficult. You want to help these people develop, but in many cases there is just zero drive. Perhaps things just aren’t uncomfortable enough for them yet.
And this isn’t just a problem in the U.S. or North America, it’s a global problem. I’ve seen several studies and stories about unemployed people (esp. younger people) world-wide that refuse to consider jobs beneath their idea of themselves.
I’ve also worked with individuals from a certain background that refuse to accept reality and literally exist in a fog of dishonesty in order to preserve their ideas of status and deference. I have been able to remove those working relationships from my life, thankfully.
Not to call anyone here a liar, but I’d like to see some studies/factual evidence/data/etc. to back up the anecdotes. If I’m being told/ordered by the older generation(s) to despise my fellow Millennials/”young people,” I’d like to know I’m doing so based on academic findings.
While I’m sure there are studies out there, to know exactly what I’m talking about, you’ll just have to give the joining workforce a try.
@BTSR, you will really enjoy a book called “Shop Class As Soulcraft” by Matthew Crawford, if you haven’t read it already.
I wonder how much demand there is for hand-finish welding in automotive assembly these days? I would assume everything possible is done by robots, and that vehicles are designed to minimize human labor. My welding instructor in community college[1] started out at (I think) GM, and he spent his days changing the wire reels on the robots. He quit after a few years because he wanted to actually weld for a living.
[1] That is where most vocational training is done these days, or at a focused tech school. Most public school systems don’t want to spend the money on the dedicated equipment and instruction for something that few students are interested in.
Most of these welders will likely be working in skilled trades fabricating and setting up industrial equipment in plants. There is basically no welding done by hand on the end product anymore.
And the type of welding being done in the skilled trades is the kind that can’t/shouldn’t/won’t be done by a robot (at least in the near future).
danio3834, “Most of these welders will likely be working in skilled trades fabricating and setting up industrial equipment in plants.”
Or they could go into small-business for themselves. There is a huge demand for welders in the private sector.
That happened to a guy I know who was a welder during his USAF career prior to his retirement. He was just sitting at home after he retired, watching TV all day, getting fatter and grubbier by the day, until I asked him to build a custom utility trailer for me (which he did).
Now he builds custom utility trailers, either for individual customers or an outfit that sells trailers all over Texas and New Mexico. And he makes a handsome living at it. A lot more than his Air Force retirement each month.
He also build the metal gates on my property, ramps, windmills and several other custom utility trailers, like the most recent one, a four wheel shorty for my Wacker 70 AC generator.
He makes a darn good living at it, as long as he gets paid in cash (so he doesn’t have to declare it as earned income and screw up his AF retirement pay and VA disability exemptions).
He doesn’t accept checks, or credit cards. But he does have a backlog of jobs for all sorts of utility trailers, gates, fences, lawn furniture, etc etc etc.
I own both a MIG and a TIG welder, as well as an Oxy-Acetylene rig, all bought used over the years, but I’m no welder. So to me it is pure magic to see what this equipment can do in the hands of an experienced welder.
Pure magic!
We don’t need as many welders because we don’t build as much stuff as we used to. So it’s nice that someone projects we’ll need thousands of welders but truth is these jobs don’t pay as much as you think, unless it’s something really specialized. $30/hour on contract labor is not going to make me stop what I’m doing and run out and learn how. I think the ability to weld and braze (well) is an amazing skill and I have great respect for people who can do it but the vast majority of people who make their living at this aren’t getting rich.
I recommend you research the actual manufacturing output of America today vs at any point in the past.
We build far more “stuff” now than at any point in history. We just do it with far fewer people.
Another reason for lack of skilled tradespeople: Their parents don’t want them doing it. I came of age in the late 70s. I thought I might like to be an electrician but my dad was a dentist for the VA and also worked in a steel mill earlier in his life. He DID NOT want me going to the vo-tech school because of the “swearing and smoking and drinking those people do”. I did try to train for accounting but it was not the best for me. By the time I learned a trade I am now too old to be hired. My brother was 12 years my junior and when he wanted to be an auto mechanic dad mellowed out and let him. He is an engineer now but did work in garages. Welding is a hard ___ job for the young, if these veterans are older, employers will think “you cannot handle the job”.
Ha ha… reminds me of the old Python sketch where Dad’s a playwright who doesn’t like his son being a coal miner:
http://www.ibras.dk/montypython/episode02.htm#8
Halfway down the page, parts are Ken, Mum, Dad.