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College program speaks out on future of the job market

Aimee Seim<br>Herald Staff Writer | Hagadone News Network | UPDATED 19 years, 5 months AGO
by Aimee Seim<br>Herald Staff Writer
| April 28, 2006 9:00 PM

As baby boomer generation retires, worries arise as to where market will find employees with technical skills

MOSES LAKE — As more people from the baby boomer generation retire, employers are looking to the next generation of employees to fill their positions in the workplace.

In addition to replacing retiring employees, finding people trained with specific skills is equally vital. Instructor Steve Matern and his colleagues are concerned about both these factors and their relationship to economic growth in the Columbia Basin.

Matern teaches in the Industrial Electrical Technology department at Big Bend Community College and says companies are already expecting that in the next four to five years there will be a shortage of qualified technical employees, a trend that is already starting to happen now.

Students in the IET program at BBCC are instructed in industry safety procedures, electrical and electronic theory, applied industrial electricity, electrical codes, process control and instrumentation, and programmable logic controllers.

Graduates leave with the skills to work in a variety of fields including utilities, construction, telecommunications, broadcasting and manufacturing, to name a few.

Recently, employers from the Bonneville Power Administration, MonierLifetile in California and a glass company out of Colorado have made calls to Matern seeking qualified employees.

After MonierLifetile contacted the IET program at BBCC, Matern and one of his students, 37-year-old William Schwartz, made a trip to California to meet with company representatives.

During the meeting, company representatives talked to Schwartz about the possibility of working for them and discussed changes taking place in the IET field with Matern.

"They discussed the fact that it would be better to look for recruits in a training program rather than (advertising for a position)," Matern said. "Lately companies have backed away from having people in training positions to save money, but now they are up against that, they are going to start losing the people who have the skills and they don't have people coming up."

As of yet Schwartz has not been guaranteed a job with MonierLifetile, but he is confident the possibility of working with them remains optimistic.

Schwartz's primary reason for enrolling in an IET program was to find a better job to help support his family in a field with opportunities to progress in salary and position later on.

Such perks were not as readily available to him working in the restaurant business for 15 years.

There will always be work available for those who have skills, Schwartz said.

Matern and others in the IET industry want students and job seekers to recognize that too.

It is not going to be easy to attract industries like Microsoft or biodiesel fuel companies to the area if there is no trained work force, said BBCC instructor Bill Autry.

Autry used the food industry as an example where industrial plants are highly automated and need people who know how to operate specialized equipment.

Jack Eidukas with the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, local union 191, has been working as an electrician since 1962 and knows the changes in the industry are requiring employees to have more technological skills.

"We've gone from mechanically controlling manufacturing processes to a computerized system," Eidukas said.

In the last five years National Frozen Foods in Moses Lake has hired three employees from BBCC.

Bob Kerns is a maintenance manager with NFF and considers one of the biggest obstacles to finding qualified employees to be getting the word out about education programs such as the IET program at BBCC, and offering those programs at the high school as well as college level.

"That gives us an avenue of getting someone who has skills and helps them get better skills to fit our industry," Kerns said. "These programs provide a way for students to make a living wage and stay where their families are."

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