Via Dean Baker, Thomas "Airmiles" Friedman reports on the travails of Caterpillar, Inc:
"We cannot find qualified hourly production people, and, for that matter, many technical, engineering service technicians, and even welders, and it is hurting our manufacturing base in the United States. The education system in the United States basically has failed them, and we have to retrain every person we hire."
Forced - forced! - to provide training for skilled staff! The American education system has failed - failed I say! - to provide an army of skilled welders and engineering service technicians, all lined up three deep and ready to work at whatever the CEO of Caterpillar decides is the going wage. What a total, total crock. The CEO really honestly believes that the idea of training his employees is bizarre behaviour akin to sexual perversion. No wonder the American teaching unions are asking for more money, if they're being asked to drag arc-welding kit from classroom to classroom, along with the textbooks.
No wonder the American teaching unions are asking for more money, if they're being asked to drag arc-welding kit from classroom to classroom, along with the textbooks.
ReplyDeleteSilly dsquared: that's what community colleges are for.
(One 50 miles away advertises on television with a female welding student, and the local CC offers courses in 'Welding Technology': 'Successful graduates of the Welding Technology curriculum may be employed as entry level technicians in welding and metalworking industries.' They also have 'Basic Welding I' and 'Ornamental Ironwork', to spare Garden Gates, Inc. the burden of training their staff.
It reminds me of one job advert that ran in the local rag during the days of High Thatcherism: 'Security Guard. £10/night. Must provide own dog.'
See also Barnett, Correlli for several whole bukes moaning about how many more Meisters a typical German engineering company has, and then ranting savagely and fact-deficiently against any British government that proposed to do anything about it.
ReplyDelete(One of the reasons why I like Erik Lund's blog - he regularly goes after Barnett with peer-reviewed material.)