Shortage of Skills

It Grows Despite Unemployment

FOR U.S. industry, the rise in unemployment to new highs last week underlined a startling paradox: all around the nation, even in such critical jobless areas as Detroit, jobs are going begging for lack of skilled workers to fill them. Industry is hard put to find enough trained craftsmen, but the problem is getting worse. For every 100 skilled workers that the nation had in 1955, it will need 122 in 1965 and 145 in 1975. Yet the nation's spotty training programs are not even turning out enough new craftsmen to replace those who retire. Automation and such new industries as electronics have vastly increased the demand.

What can industry do to fill it? A number of companies have tried apprentice programs. They put high school graduates through paid training programs in their shops and send them to school several hours a week for classroom studies. Companies such as General Electric. General Motors, Ford and International Harvester try to get the top graduates from high schools and give them an engineering education that comes close to what they would get in college. Entrance requirements are high; Harvester says it turns down nine out of ten who apply. Applicants who are admitted get a four-year course in advanced mathematics, hydraulics, electronics and similar subjects-plus training in the shop. The program pays off: 75% of the students who took the course are still with the company.

But such programs will train only one-tenth of the craftsmen needed for the '60s. The Government supervised widespread apprentice programs right after World War II, but enrollment has dwindled from 400,000 to 160,000.

In industrial Massachusetts, where the need for skills is vital, the Labor Department's regional director of apprentice training, Hubert Connor, has only 4,000 in his apprentice programs.

"That's terrible," he says. "We should have 18,000. Industry and labor don't seem to realize the tremendous need that exists now, and will exist in the future, for skilled help." --One difficulty is that students lose interest in lower-paid training jobs when they see they can make more money in the short run as laborers.

Managerial apathy is also a big factor.

A Labor Department study of employee training in heavily industrial New Jersey showed an average of only 16% of the companies with any kind of program.

An obvious source for skills would seem to be vocational high schools, but many a businessman hesitates to accept their graduates. President George Prezembel of Chicago's Midwest Machine Co. says: "It's all pretty sad. If you show them where to drill a hole, they can usually do that; but if their drill needs regrinding, they are stuck."

The reason for such disdain is that too many vocational high schools are of the kind described by Director James Goode of Dallas Vocational School: "We handle delinquents, truants, troublemakers, boys with 'low normal' IQs, the ones who have dropped out of regular school programs. We produce the buck privates of industry." Industry does not want them any more than the schools do.

--Another problem is what the schools should teach. Many industrialists and union leaders want faster action in turning out men to run specific machines in specific plants. Others argue that in the long run such specialization is unsound. A student might be trained to operate one plant's complex machine, but where does he go when the job and the machine become obsolete? Retraining such workers is hard because they often have to change from a physical skill to a technical skill. In this technological age, what is needed, says Dr. Maurice F. X. Donohue, dean of the University of Chicago adult education division, "is the more broadly educated individual. Once able to think, he can teach himself to adapt to the specifics."

A number of vocational school systems, encouraged by local industry, have already started to change to meet the new requirements. Miami wiped out its old vocational schools, started a Comprehensive Shops System that mixes training in applied electronics with the usual courses in history and math. High scholastic requirements give the schools new prestige. In Chicago, Vocational School Assistant Principal Frank J. Daily says: "We have completely upset the idea that only stupes go to vocational schools. It is now recognized that a poor student is a poor craftsman."

Cleveland's School Superintendent Mark C. Schinnerer believes that vocational high schools are on their way out altogether: "The need is for a system of junior colleges and technical institutions providing training for industry advanced well beyond high school level. Industry today is demanding greater skills than we can produce in high schools."

One big obstacle to all training programs is the prevailing view among parents that a blue-collar technician has a less desirable job than a white-collar worker, even if he earns more money. Industry has done little to counteract this.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.