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Laborers aging, replacements headed to college
By Scott Miller
Staff Writer
About 40% of Alcoa’s South Carolina work force, around 500 people, is set to retire in by 2010, and Jennifer DeWitt wonders who will replace them.
As executive director of the Lowcountry Manufacturers Council, DeWitt hears about problems like this all the time and is working with schools to increase vocational studies.
In an ever-advancing technological society and global economy, schools often place more emphasis on students’ attending four-year universities and pursuing a college degree, DeWitt said, rather than on their heading to a trade school or training them to go straight into a trade job.
“You’ve got a lot of industries dealing with a retiring work force in the next 10 years,” DeWitt said. “We feel strongly that there needs to be a stronger connection between the business community and schools.
“Our community does not need everyone to have a bachelor’s degree,” she said.
Schools working on it
But educators understand the issue too, said Pat Raynor, a spokeswoman for the Dorchester County School District 2. The district established a task force last year to consider ways to improve vocational education.
“We certainly have been thinking of beefing up our vocational offerings, but that is an expensive venture,” she said. “We’re taking small steps. We know and you know it’s good for economic development to have a trained work force coming out of our schools.”
The Charleston County School District board of trustees recently approved additional funding to increase the number of automated robots in vocational classrooms to give students more hands-on skills, said spokesman Elliot Smalley.
He also mentioned the Garrett Academy of Technology, a district-wide vocational school with courses on refrigeration technology, carpentry, metal fabrication, electronics technology and other fields.
“We support (vocational studies) as a district, but there’s been no one key initiative that I could point to,” Smalley said, noting that the district offers vocational courses at several schools, not just at Garrett Academy.
Still, schools like Wando High School in Mount Pleasant take pride in noting that 96% of their graduates are college bound, Principal Lucy Beckham said in a previous interview with the Charleston Regional Business Journal.
Blue-collar stigma
Employers Mike Blanchard and Ray Maher said vocational schools like Garrett Academy aren’t producing a labor force either. Those students are college bound too, they said.
Maher, vice president of Brantley Construction Co., said he was donating to Garrett Academy but quit because he wasn’t seeing a return on the investment.
“A lot of contractors contributed but never got any benefit from it,” Maher said.
One of the problems is persuading students that a hardworking career in trades is OK, despite the dirt, the sweat and the distance from a comfy office, said Blanchard, president of Charles Blanchard Construction Corp.
“There is a huge disconnect between what we need and what the public school system is providing us (with),” Blanchard said.
Students who do look to the trades for work after high school typically aren’t ready to be in the workplace, he said.
Scott Miller is a staff writer for the Business Journal. E-mail him at smiller@scbiznews.com.
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