Skilled worker shortage?

[Stitch]

This WSJ article describes Union Pacific's difficulty in finding skilled workers.

http://online.wSportsJournalists.com/article/SB10001424052970203707504577010080035955166.html

My problem is Union Pacific is lazy in its recruiting efforts. Why rely on job fairs and "hiring events" where the candidates are treated as a number? Spend a little to get one-on-one time outside of an office. And don't charge applicants to take an aptitude test, which is insulting to a qualified applicant.

After a website job posting, Ms. Bailey initially drew 58 applicants. Of them, she deemed about two dozen sufficiently qualified so that she invited them to take a $25 aptitude test, at their own expense.

Eighteen took it and 13 passed, earning an invitation to an interview and hiring session.

But of the 13 she invited, three didn't reply, five declined, and three withdrew their applications before the session. So of the original 58 people, just two qualified candidates accepted her offer of an interview session later in October.

 

[bigpern23]

I've said this before, but I think by and large, a big problem is the lack of respect given to blue-collar workers.

Nobody grows up wanting to be a welder anymore because if you're working with your hands, you're often treated like you're a moron.

I've told this story before that my brother-in-law, who is a welder, makes three times as much as I was making at a newspaper. Yet, at family functions, people always ask me about my job and give me a higher level of respect even though his job allows him to provide for a family of four and mine barely got me by.

 

[User 11148]

I've said this before, but I think by and large, a big problem is the lack of respect given to blue-collar workers.

Nobody grows up wanting to be a welder anymore because if you're working with your hands, you're often treated like you're a moron.

I've told this story before that my brother-in-law, who is a welder, makes three times as much as I was making at a newspaper. Yet, at family functions, people always ask me about my job and give me a higher level of respect even though his job allows him to provide for a family of four and mine barely got me by.

When I was in high school and college, I worked at my father's tool-and-die shop and, by and large, was a Class A machinist when I graduated from college. When I got sick of sports journalism a few years later, I went back to work there and very shortly thereafter was making almost twice what I had been as a sportswriter. The big hurdle I had to cross was getting past the idea that somehow I had "fallen" in professional stature.

 

[goalmouth]

Railroad management whining about business conditions? You could've knocked me over with a locomotive.

 

[YankeeFan]

I've said this before, but I think by and large, a big problem is the lack of respect given to blue-collar workers.

Nobody grows up wanting to be a welder anymore because if you're working with your hands, you're often treated like you're a moron.

I've told this story before that my brother-in-law, who is a welder, makes three times as much as I was making at a newspaper. Yet, at family functions, people always ask me about my job and give me a higher level of respect even though his job allows him to provide for a family of four and mine barely got me by.

When I was in high school and college, I worked at my father's tool-and-die shop and, by and large, was a Class A machinist when I graduated from college. When I got sick of sports journalism a few years later, I went back to work there and very shortly thereafter was making almost twice what I had been as a sportswriter. The big hurdle I had to cross was getting past the idea that somehow I had "fallen" in professional stature.

This took me a while to get used to.

I was used to wearing a suit and tie to work, now I wear dirty jeans and a t-shirt or sweatshirt.

I don't go to happy hour downtown, as it would be over by the time I could get home, and get cleaned up.

And, I don't meet as many professional women, and was intimidated by them when I did. I was the same person, but I figured they wouldn't be interested in a "blue collar" guy.

It really took me a while to become comfortable in my new role.

But, I got there. It's good honest work, and I do well. I try to have my employees do more of the grunt work now, so i can focus on sales and growing the business, but I still turn wrench several times a week.

If you've got kids, I would strongly encourage you to have them learn a trade/skill. It doesn't mean they can't pursue a more "professional" career, but it's always god to have.

You can usually find work, you can do jobs on the side, and/or you can eventually do your own repairs around the house or fix your car. That's a huge plus.

 

[Iron_chet]

With the benefit of hindsight I would have learned a trade right out of high school, most likely Electrical or HVAC. Growing up there was a stigma to the technical vocation kids who would "have" to work with their hands.

The appeal of it now, from owning my own business or just doing jobs on the side as well as the portability is something that I will stress to my own children.

 

[Bob Cook]

Wow, large corporations such as Union Pacific lead the charge to squeeze down taxes and demand enormous breaks that end up taking skin and bone out of the education system, which either has to cut like mad, raise taxes like mad, or (in the case of colleges and trade schools) raise tuition like crazy to keep up, thus, in many cases, cutting educational opportunities for those without means.

And then they complain that the labor pool isn't any good.

I have an idea, large corporations. Either pony up tax money for a strong education system for all, or (and/or) pony up dough for an apprentice program. If you want educated workers, you actually have to invest in education, you know.

 

[Iron_chet]

Someone at Union Pacific should be kicked in the groin for making applicants fund their own aptitude tests.

 

[LongTimeListener]

Someone at Union Pacific should be kicked in the groin for making applicants fund their own aptitude tests.

Yeah, I've always been told that if a company makes you pay for anything in your training, it's a sign that the company is a scam. That is something from the "college students selling steak knives" files.

 

[YankeeFan]

I heard this interview with the CEO of CSX when it originally aired on NPR.

These are good paying jobs.

BLOCK: Mr. Ward, you're also running a company that has a workforce that's grown smaller over the last few years. You had about 30,000 workers in 2010. Back in 2006, you had 36,000. So about 17 percent fewer workers now. Why is that?

WARD: Well, two things. One, obviously, when the business is down, then we need less people to handle the trains. In addition, we're always, as every business must do, getting more productive and finding ways to do things more smartly. But as we look at this year, we're going to be hiring about 4,000. About 3,000 of those are to cover our expected attrition, but 1,000 are there for projected future growth and for some technology deployments we will be doing.

BLOCK: So a net gain of 1,000 still won't put you back to where you were, say, in 2007?

WARD: No. I don't think we will get to those levels for quite a few years.

BLOCK: What do you think that says for the overall employment picture in the country if a company that's doing as well as yours is financially isn't getting back to previous levels?

WARD: Well, Melissa, I guess I view that a little bit differently. I think there's going to be 4,000 people that at the end of this year are going to be feeling pretty good about what their life is. You know, our jobs - we're 90 percent unionized company. And a high school graduate can come to our company and make 75 to $100,000 a year in an industry that the jobs are not very exportable overseas. So I think those 4,000 people are going to feel very, very good about our company and where the economy is heading.

BLOCK: You mentioned earlier, Mr. Ward, that you've seen that workers have been able to be more productive even though you have fewer of them. I wonder if the lesson here for a lot of companies is we've been able to make more money with fewer workers. We've seen productivity go up. It hasn't hurt our bottom line, and the fact it's helped and maybe we don't see a need to change. Maybe hiring won't bounce back.

WARD: Well, again, I think we're going to continue hiring at our company. It will be some time before we get back to the 36,000 you've referenced. But I think if you look over the next three to four years, we will be hiring more people than we're seeing in our attrition.

BLOCK: Michael Ward, thanks very much for talking with us.

WARD: My pleasure, Melissa.

BLOCK: Michael Ward is the CEO of the freight rail company CSX. And full disclosure here: CSX is an NPR underwriter.

 

[YankeeFan]

Someone at Union Pacific should be kicked in the groin for making applicants fund their own aptitude tests.

Yeah, I've always been told that if a company makes you pay for anything in your training, it's a sign that the company is a scam. That is something from the "college students selling steak knives" files.

You have to pay to apply to college.

You usually have to pay for the credit check they're going to run on you when you apply for an apartment.

I wouldn't necessarily pay to take a test for some company I never heard of, but for a legitimate company, like Union Pacific, I wouldn't object.

Sure, it's a barrier to entry. That's the point. They don't want to be flooded with 1,000s of unqualified applicants. The $25 fee makes people self select, it covers the cost of the job search, and it should make for a better job search.

 

[YankeeFan]

Wow, large corporations such as Union Pacific lead the charge to squeeze down taxes and demand enormous breaks that end up taking skin and bone out of the education system, which either has to cut like mad, raise taxes like mad, or (in the case of colleges and trade schools) raise tuition like crazy to keep up, thus, in many cases, cutting educational opportunities for those without means.

And then they complain that the labor pool isn't any good.

I have an idea, large corporations. Either pony up tax money for a strong education system for all, or (and/or) pony up dough for an apprentice program. If you want educated workers, you actually have to invest in education, you know.

We spend a lot more money on education than we used to when more and more people went into the trades.

But, it's become a kind of fetish to get more people to go to college.

Especially in bigger school systems, it would be easy to allocate some funds to vocational training. It's not a question of more dollars, it's how you spend them.

So, now we have high school -- and even college -- grads with no appreciable job skills. And, since fewer and fewer kids work after school and summer jobs, they have no actual work experience.

So, we spend government funds on training an "re-training" adults. It's ridiculous.

 

[YankeeFan]

The idea that everyone should go to college has really ****ed things up. In many ways, it's made the BA the equivalent of a High School diploma.

A general guideline these days is that people are rewarded when they can do things that take trained judgment and skill — things, in other words, that can’t be done by computers or lower-wage workers in other countries. Money now flows around the world so quickly, and technology changes so fast, that people who thought they were in high demand find themselves uprooted. Many newspaper reporters have learned that their work was subsidized, in part, by classified ads and now can’t survive the rise of Craigslist; computer programmers have found out that some smart young guys in India will do their jobs for much less. Meanwhile, China lends so much money to the United States that mortgage brokers and bond traders can become richer than they ever imagined for a few years and then, just as quickly, become broke and unemployed.

One of the greatest changes is that a college degree is no longer the guarantor of a middle-class existence. Until the early 1970s, less than 11 percent of the adult population graduated from college, and most of them could get a decent job. Today nearly a third have college degrees, and a higher percentage of them graduated from nonelite schools. A bachelor’s degree on its own no longer conveys intelligence and capability. To get a good job, you have to have some special skill — charm, by the way, counts — that employers value. But there’s also a pretty good chance that by some point in the next few years, your boss will find that some new technology or some worker overseas can replace you.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/27/magazine/changing-rules-for-success.html?pagewanted=all

If everyone has a degree, then it's not so special -- especially if yours isn't from a top school.

And, if it's not in a field directly related to a career, it's even less valuable.

 

[bigpern23]

I get what you're saying about it being a "fetish" to get more people to go to college. I think, unlike in the past, kids view college almost as an extension of high school now (and even when I was in school).

It's just another four years on your 16-year education plan and you can skate by and get a degree and bam, you're going to make $100,000/year because back in the day, the folks with a college education got paid well.

Now, there's so many college grads that the ones who don't put any work in, will have no appreciable job skills, but they think that because they have a diploma they're above working a $30,000/year job.

You get out of it what you put into it and a lot of people still don't put any real thought into what they're doing in college or why they're doing it. They just think diploma=money, not education/skills=money.

And many of those students, if they had learned a trade instead of spending four years doing the minimum in college, would make more money and have no student to debt to pay off.

 

[Evil ... Thy name is Orville Redenbacher!!]

I heard this interview with the CEO of CSX when it originally aired on NPR.

These are good paying jobs.

BLOCK: Mr. Ward, you're also running a company that has a workforce that's grown smaller over the last few years. You had about 30,000 workers in 2010. Back in 2006, you had 36,000. So about 17 percent fewer workers now. Why is that?

WARD: Well, two things. One, obviously, when the business is down, then we need less people to handle the trains. In addition, we're always, as every business must do, getting more productive and finding ways to do things more smartly. But as we look at this year, we're going to be hiring about 4,000. About 3,000 of those are to cover our expected attrition, but 1,000 are there for projected future growth and for some technology deployments we will be doing.

BLOCK: So a net gain of 1,000 still won't put you back to where you were, say, in 2007?

WARD: No. I don't think we will get to those levels for quite a few years.

BLOCK: What do you think that says for the overall employment picture in the country if a company that's doing as well as yours is financially isn't getting back to previous levels?

WARD: Well, Melissa, I guess I view that a little bit differently. I think there's going to be 4,000 people that at the end of this year are going to be feeling pretty good about what their life is. You know, our jobs - we're 90 percent unionized company. And a high school graduate can come to our company and make 75 to $100,000 a year in an industry that the jobs are not very exportable overseas. So I think those 4,000 people are going to feel very, very good about our company and where the economy is heading.

BLOCK: You mentioned earlier, Mr. Ward, that you've seen that workers have been able to be more productive even though you have fewer of them. I wonder if the lesson here for a lot of companies is we've been able to make more money with fewer workers. We've seen productivity go up. It hasn't hurt our bottom line, and the fact it's helped and maybe we don't see a need to change. Maybe hiring won't bounce back.

WARD: Well, again, I think we're going to continue hiring at our company. It will be some time before we get back to the 36,000 you've referenced. But I think if you look over the next three to four years, we will be hiring more people than we're seeing in our attrition.

BLOCK: Michael Ward, thanks very much for talking with us.

WARD: My pleasure, Melissa.

BLOCK: Michael Ward is the CEO of the freight rail company CSX. And full disclosure here: CSX is an NPR underwriter.

CSX is expected to hire approx. 500 employees in W.Va over the next few years making that pay range.

 

[LongTimeListener]

The idea that everyone should go to college has really ****ed things up. In many ways, it's made the BA the equivalent of a High School diploma.

A general guideline these days is that people are rewarded when they can do things that take trained judgment and skill — things, in other words, that can’t be done by computers or lower-wage workers in other countries. Money now flows around the world so quickly, and technology changes so fast, that people who thought they were in high demand find themselves uprooted. Many newspaper reporters have learned that their work was subsidized, in part, by classified ads and now can’t survive the rise of Craigslist; computer programmers have found out that some smart young guys in India will do their jobs for much less. Meanwhile, China lends so much money to the United States that mortgage brokers and bond traders can become richer than they ever imagined for a few years and then, just as quickly, become broke and unemployed.

One of the greatest changes is that a college degree is no longer the guarantor of a middle-class existence. Until the early 1970s, less than 11 percent of the adult population graduated from college, and most of them could get a decent job. Today nearly a third have college degrees, and a higher percentage of them graduated from nonelite schools. A bachelor’s degree on its own no longer conveys intelligence and capability. To get a good job, you have to have some special skill — charm, by the way, counts — that employers value. But there’s also a pretty good chance that by some point in the next few years, your boss will find that some new technology or some worker overseas can replace you.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/27/magazine/changing-rules-for-success.html?pagewanted=all

If everyone has a degree, then it's not so special -- especially if yours isn't from a top school.

And, if it's not in a field directly related to a career, it's even less valuable.

I have talked about this in groups with other parents, noting that if one of my sons didn't really want to go to college and could learn how to be an electrician or something, I'd encourage him to do that.

There was almost a race to the phone to call Child Protective Services.

Meanwhile I live out here in the land of the West Coast Conference, where the Catholic colleges charge Ivy League prices for a state school education, and they have people lined up out the door to pay for it.

 

[Evil ... Thy name is Orville Redenbacher!!]

The idea that everyone should go to college has really ****ed things up. In many ways, it's made the BA the equivalent of a High School diploma.

A general guideline these days is that people are rewarded when they can do things that take trained judgment and skill — things, in other words, that can’t be done by computers or lower-wage workers in other countries. Money now flows around the world so quickly, and technology changes so fast, that people who thought they were in high demand find themselves uprooted. Many newspaper reporters have learned that their work was subsidized, in part, by classified ads and now can’t survive the rise of Craigslist; computer programmers have found out that some smart young guys in India will do their jobs for much less. Meanwhile, China lends so much money to the United States that mortgage brokers and bond traders can become richer than they ever imagined for a few years and then, just as quickly, become broke and unemployed.

One of the greatest changes is that a college degree is no longer the guarantor of a middle-class existence. Until the early 1970s, less than 11 percent of the adult population graduated from college, and most of them could get a decent job. Today nearly a third have college degrees, and a higher percentage of them graduated from nonelite schools. A bachelor’s degree on its own no longer conveys intelligence and capability. To get a good job, you have to have some special skill — charm, by the way, counts — that employers value. But there’s also a pretty good chance that by some point in the next few years, your boss will find that some new technology or some worker overseas can replace you.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/27/magazine/changing-rules-for-success.html?pagewanted=all

If everyone has a degree, then it's not so special -- especially if yours isn't from a top school.

And, if it's not in a field directly related to a career, it's even less valuable.

I have talked about this in groups with other parents, noting that if one of my sons didn't really want to go to college and could learn how to be an electrician or something, I'd encourage him to do that.

There was almost a race to the phone to call Child Protective Services.

Meanwhile I live out here in the land of the West Coast Conference, where the Catholic colleges charge Ivy League prices for a state school education, and they have people lined up out the door to pay for it.

I'm with you LTL.
I would tickled to death if my kids were plumbers or electricians.

 

[Stitch]

I'd say community college is the answer to teach a trade, but a quarter of the class I teach have trouble writing a complete sentence.

 

[LongTimeListener]

I'd say community college is the answer to teach a trade, but a quarter of the class I teach have trouble writing a complete sentence.

Why do you need to write a complete sentence to be a plumber? I'm not trying to intimate that plumbers are illiterate, but really what is the value of sitting in an English composition class for that career path?

 

[YankeeFan]

I have talked about this in groups with other parents, noting that if one of my sons didn't really want to go to college and could learn how to be an electrician or something, I'd encourage him to do that.

There was almost a race to the phone to call Child Protective Services.

Meanwhile I live out here in the land of the West Coast Conference, where the Catholic colleges charge Ivy League prices for a state school education, and they have people lined up out the door to pay for it.

Let me know what they say in a few years when Johnny moves back in with them, and expects mom to cook his meals and do his laundry.

Remember the Colgate kid from the Times profile?

Meanwhile, the kid with the trade skills will likely have a job, his own place, and no debt.