General Electric, Alcoa, Boeing and Lockheed Martin have pooled resources to help 15,000 veterans get manufacturing jobs.
10:26AM EST November 11. 2012 - General Electric, Alcoa, Boeing, Lockheed Martin and a national industry group are joining forces to gets thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of veterans into high-paying manufacturing careers.
The wide-ranging effort will match military skills with civilian jobs, offer veterans training to fill skill gaps, and share best practices among companies for recruiting and keeping veteran workers.
Industrial conglomerate GE, aluminum-making giant Alcoa and defense contractors Boeing and Lockheed Martin are pooling resources to help 15,000 veterans transition to manufacturing careers. The group hopes to bring that number up to 100,000 if more companies join the effort.
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The Manufacturing Institute, a nonprofit branch of the National Association of Manufacturers, will manage the project.
Kris Urbauer, GE's program manager of veteran initiatives, said veterans leaving the miltary and looking for work are returning to a job market with a desperate need for manufacturing workers.
"The timing is perfect to … marry those two things together," Urbauer says, adding that "the opportunity to grow manufacturing in the U.S., with this great talent pool kind of leading the charge, is, I think, the perfect confluence."
An estimated 600,000 manufacturing jobs in the U.S. are unfilled, and the average employee in the manufacturing industry is in his or her 50s, said Mike Haynie, executive director and founder of the Institute for Veterans and Military Families at Syracuse University.
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By 2020, the industry will need 10 million or more new skilled workers, Haynie estimates.
A few years ago, veteran hiring was touted as "the right thing to do" for vets, he said. But now it's seen as "the right thing to do for business as well."
"You can also look at this as an opportunity for them to serve yet again," Haynie said. "We all recognize how important the manufacturing industry is to this country."
Program officials have created an online search tool, as well as digital badges, to translate personality traits and work habits into related manufacturing jobs at getskillstowork.org.
Urbauer said 21st-century manufacturing is more technical and much different from the stereotypical unskilled factory work of decades past. Training sites are opening across the country to help veterans hone technical manufacturing skills, with a focus on meeting the immediate needs of local employers.
The initiative also aims to have companies train other companies in how to recruit, hire and retain vets.
"Using many of the same tactics and tools, such as a website for transitioning veterans that includes a military-to-civilian skills translator, we have hired and trained nearly 3,000 veterans in the past 21 months for jobs at Boeing," Rick Stephens, a Boeing senior vice president, said in a statement.
GE, Alcoa, Boeing and Lockheed together employ about 64,000 veterans, the companies say.
Training sites
Training will begin in January near the GE Aviation manufacturing hub in Cincinnati with other training sites opening in 2013:
• Austin, Texas
• Charleston, S.C.
• Detroit
• Durham, N.C.
• Evansville, Ind.
• Fort Worth and Houston, Texas
• Greenville, S.C.
• Los Angeles
• New York
• Philadelphia
• Puget Sound area, Wash.
• Raleigh, N.C.
• San Jose, Calif.
• Schenectady, N.Y.
• St. Louis
• Washington, D.C.
Source: http://www.news.theusalinks.com/2012/11/11/firms-help-vets-move-into-manufacturing-careers/
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