Montana : The United States will need 180,000 more skilled welders by the year 2018 — and they will need them quickly. Even if Montana had to fill 10 percent of that pool, industry would be unable to fill the jobs, said Bruce James of CWBGroup, a Canadian welding training company. He spoke at a workforce symposium in Butte on Tuesday.
“So the answer is we have to do something with the existing people. We don’t have 5 to 10 years to create a high quality, independently operable trades person — someone you can leave on their own.
“We have to find ways to fast-track those individuals who have the competency and aptitude to do well in those fields,’’ James said.
Building such a workforce through stronger apprenticeships was foremost on everyone’s mind at the symposium, which drew at least 150 leaders from education, industry and government. Folks from all corners of the state converged to get a primer on how apprenticeships are used in places like Bavaria, Germany. They’re here to coordinate “industry-recognized credentials,” or standards, that will ideally integrate all partners seeking and turning out apprentices to meet demand.
Think of it as a time-out huddle to ensure all players are running the same play.
Pam Bucy, Montana Labor and Industry commissioner, wants the entire team to consider a successful Bavaria, Germany, model. Everyone wears the same jersey — education, industry and government — in tracking young people starting as young as age 10 or 11. The overall goal, Bucy told The Montana Standard, is to boost the greater economy by using the same industry training standards in schools and businesses.
The German government sends personnel into the schools to support trades training, said guest speaker Mathias Bihler. He runs a successful comprehensive manufacturing company, Otto Bihler Maschinenfabrik, in Bavaria.
Teachers start conferring with parents about their child’s career when students are about 10 years old, he said.
A “synchronized curriculum” among all partners begins in grade school. Parents have options to track their child into a middle school with dual technical and university goals or technical studies only. High school students can head straight for college, or they can track to technical school first, then college.
Bihler said Germans tend to seek more education because of the competitive job market of 82.2 million people in the country.
“Workers are being sucked in by industry because they have practical and theoretical understanding of technology,” Bihler added.
While Bucy said the fully integrated approach of education-industry-government may not be practical for Americans, it’s a “different philosophy of labor” that works.
One Bozeman resident who runs TeckNow Education Services told the crowd the Germans approach career choices differently and earlier:
“They would rather follow children’s passions,” George Keremedjiev said. “That’s the magic of Germans — they turn apprenticeships into a strong economic component.”
Keremedjiev, originally of New Jersey, has lived in Bozeman since the late 1980s. He is president of TeckNow, which provides information security and computer training, including cybersecurity and computer systems.
As Montana teammates inch their way toward an expanded apprenticeship model, many schools already offer dual credits for high school students in several areas.
“If they go into a formal training program, students get credit,” said Bucy. “That’s where we really want to expand and get that on-the-job-training model in non-traditional jobs, too, like nursing, phlebotomy, internet technology and engineering.”
Montana has 40 programs in its two-year colleges that adhere to industry standards, said Matt Springer, director of RevUp, a Montana workforce navigator website.
Springer said if everyone follows the same standards in Montana, “it takes the guess work out of hiring.”
Highlands College of Butte offers at least three trades that follow industry standards: machining, computer-aided drafting and welding.
In order to fill projected apprenticeship openings in the trades, it could help the Montana team to at least learn from the German model. “There are more jobs available than we have to fill them,” said Bucy. “We do not have the luxury of having people take 2, 4 or 6 years off the job to get their training.”
Offering specific, short-term training on top of what a student or worker already knows is key. But the Germans take it to the next step. “We need to glamorize apprenticeships,” said Keremedjiev.
Note: News shared for public awareness with reference from the information provided at online news portals.
