How to cultivate a new generation of skilled welders

A student practices his TIG welding skills at the grand opening ceremony of the South Central College welding lab in September.

When it came to establishing a summertime garden in my yard, I got pretty lucky. I mean, you just put some plants in the ground, water them, and wait for produce, right?

Well, it worked out for me over the past several summers, but it was dumb luck. I happened to choose a spot by my shed, where water drains away from the building, which keeps water from pooling and eliminates the threat of wet roots that can turn into rotted roots. The garden location doesn’t eat up a large amount of the lawn, something my wife was concerned about, and it happens to get about eight hours of sun per day.

That luck allows me to do the bare minimum and still enjoy fresh vegetables in the summer. A little more preparedness and I arguably could have had a larger haul of topnotch produce, but I was OK with what came off the plants. I was satisfied.

You get what you put into it. Sometimes luck makes up for a mediocre effort, but you can’t count on it. I’m reminded of that when I hear metal fabricators complain about the lack of skilled workers, which inevitably means younger workers willing to work for the competitive wage being offered. Manufacturers and fabricators complain about being unable to find the right people for their openings, but what exactly are they doing to cultivate that next generation of fabricators and welders?

Sarah Richards, president/CEO, Jones Metal Inc., Mankato, Minn., will tell you that if you want a large pool of potential manufacturing workers in your community, you need to get your hands dirty. When she arrived to work in the family fabricating business in the late 2000s, the local educational institutions had turned their back on manufacturing education. The secondary schools weren’t pushing vocational training, and South Central College had abandoned its welding program. Unless kids were working on a farm or on their own cars, they likely weren’t being exposed to any sort of metal manufacturing activities.

That’s when she decided to get more involved with the local schools. She and other manufacturers began lobbying the local school district to support technical education and taking on advisory roles to the local community college. The local manufacturing community opened their doors to tours to the students. The young people began to learn what manufacturing was and that it was occurring just down the street from their schools and homes. Their grassroots efforts resulted in South Central relaunching its welding program in a newly remodeled welding lab that area metal fabricators helped to make possible.

It should be noted that Richards is well aware that she can’t hire every graduate that comes out of that new welding program at the school’s North Mankato campus, yet she ensures Jones Metal remains engaged in the community and maintains its presence in front of the area’s young people. In her mind, this work is for the greater good.

“I always feel like the more people that we can put into the local manufacturing pool with skills and interest in manufacturing, the better it is for everybody. It’s better for the whole country, really,” Richards said. “So I try and work hard to support programs that do exactly that, whether we have an opening for those students or not.”

Understandably, time is a resource that most metal fabricators don’t have in abundance. But, in the spirit of continuous improvement, fabricators need to work at creating the time that can then lead to the creation of a young and robust workforce. Being a small shop is not an excuse.

Jessica Kloeckl, who handles both human resources and accounting duties for G&S Manufacturing in Courtland, Minn., said that the company currently has at least one person involved with the South Central College welding program advisory council. Even though the shop has just shy of 30 employees, it wants to get its name out there and show students the variety of work that makes its way through a job shop.

“We’re always going to need people with technical skills,” Kloeckl said, “and we’re always going to need people who weld. That’s never going away.”

These metal fabricating companies in the Mankato area eventually saw success after years of visiting schools to promote manufacturing. The same result is possible for other areas, but fabricators need to get involved.

There’s fertile ground to cultivate in North America. Students are wary of building up debt related to college loans, and their parents just want the kids to have a solid launching pad to build a career. Fabricators just need to plant the seed and watch over the growth. With a little luck, they might not be complaining about the lack of skilled workers five years from now.