Skilled Workers

The Philadelphia Naval Shipyard yesterday said it would introduce a cost- saving scheme that could result in pay cuts for about 60 white-collar workers. At the same time, however, a spokesman said the shipyard was having trouble finding skilled applicants to fill some 200 production jobs - a problem that becomes especially worrisome as the shipyard prepares to begin work on a $750 million overhaul of the aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk. The cost-saving program will allow the shipyard, which has a total of 9,200 employees, to compete for important U.S. Navy ship repair contracts, said Al Peterson, a spokesman for the shipyard.

Low unemployment and a workforce shortage have created severe retention and recruitment problems for Chester County's high-tech companies, a study being released today reports. "Many companies ask, 'How can I find workers?' " said Michael Grigalonis, program manager of the Chester County Development Council, a private, nonprofit economic development group that prepared the 33-page "A Needs Assessment of the Chester County Workforce. " The report was prepared on behalf of the Workforce Partners of Chester County, a group of educators and businesses addressing the labor shortage.

Though sounds on the campus of Glen Mills Schools typically are restricted to subdued murmurs and quiet greetings among peers, the auto shops are alive with noise and commotion. In the auto-body shop, a student wearing the standard navy-blue jumpsuit meticulously sands black paint off a 1983 Chevrolet El Camino with a tool vaguely reminiscent of a dental instrument. In the adjacent auto-tech center, a student removes tires from rims. But amid the clamor of metal on metal and high-tech machinery, some typical shop sounds are absent at Glen Mills.

Although many manufacturing workers lost their jobs during the last two decades, the industry remains a good employment option for highly skilled workers, the chairman of the National Association of Manufacturers said here yesterday. Calvin Campbell Jr. was in town to address the World Affairs Council. His industrial trade group of 14,000 companies is based in Washington, where it lobbies Congress on many issues and offers services to its members. "Manufacturing is never going to go away.

Philadelphia has plenty of substance but no sizzle - and that's a problem the region must address if it is to push its economy forward, a group representing area business leaders said yesterday. After unveiling the results of a $270,000 study that called for building up the area's technology sectors to spur economic growth, Greater Philadelphia First also released a six-pronged plan on how to do it. Perhaps the most tangible of the six initiatives was a business marketing program that will promote area companies so they can attract more skilled workers.

The nation's unemployment rate fell 0.1 percentage point last month to 4.6 percent as the economy created more jobs than expected and wages rose. "Everyone should be happy," Diane Swonk, deputy chief economist at First Chicago, NBD, said yesterday after the government released the jobs report. "It's a nice surprise that the economy can stay so balanced with continuing strong employment. " February's unemployment rate matched the rate of last November, which was the lowest since October 1973.

Joerg Recklies, a tall, energetic 32-year-old with a boyish face, is a good example of why technology companies from around the world are spending billions of dollars to build new production and research facilities in the eastern German state of Saxony. Government officials are boasting about the creation of a Saxon "Silicon Valley" in this region, which historically was one of Germany's richest and most industrialized. There might be a touch of hype in the sloganeering, but there is also a large measure of substance.

Five of the nation's top 10 credit-card banks are based in Wilmington, drawn there in large part by low state bank taxes and weak consumer-protection laws. But one of the industry's giants, First USA Bank, has picked a Pennsylvania site to develop vital new software. After a decade of rapid expansion in Delaware, Texas and other states, "it is essential for us to have a presence in the technology corridor of King of Prussia, in order to attract and retain" high-tech workers, said First USA spokesman Tony Plohoros.

Harold's fork truck is rated for 4,000 pounds. He has to move and stack 10 skids (pallets) of paper, each weighing 1,500 pounds. What is the maximum number of skids he can lift at one time? If someone wants a job at Case Paper Co. , that person had better know how to calculate the answer. Even more basic: Can the person use a tape measure? "You'd be amazed at how many people can't read a ruler to one-sixteenth of an inch," said Lee Cohn, who directs production at the Philadelphia company.

A serious shortage of skilled workers and a surplus of unskilled imperil economic growth, according to a report presented to Labor Secretary Elizabeth Dole yesterday. With a slap at American educators, businesses and parents, the Commission on Workforce Quality and Labor Market Efficiency's report outlines steps to upgrade what it said was the nation's woefully inadequate workforce. "Increased demand for highly skilled workers, combined with an aging workforce, has already created shortages of skilled workers (that are)

Three jobs are open at Rodon Group, the plastic-parts manufacturer in Hatfield. But CEO Michael Araten isn't sweating it. Rodon works with local community colleges to make sure students - the firm's prospective employees - get the math and computer skills they need to work at the company making plastic parts for products such as bed frames and machinery. "We're willing to look at non-traditional methods," Araten said. Companies across the country have been working short-handed because it's hard to find workers with the skills they need.

By Stephen M. Curtis, Jerome S. Parker, Stephanie Shanblatt, and Karen A. Stout Federal economists estimate that two million jobs go unfilled today as a result of skills, training, and education gaps. In Pennsylvania, a report submitted last year by the governor's Manufacturing Advisory Council noted that the number of new workers entering the industry, coupled with the growth in manufacturing, has left a staggering gap of available skilled workers. Simply put: Every decent-paying job today takes more skill and more education, but too many Americans are not ready.

One recent afternoon, I found myself strolling across the South Street Bridge, over the Schuylkill and into West Philadelphia. The rebuilt bridge, a handsome, user-friendly example of contemporary civil engineering, opened in November 2010 to much fanfare after two years of construction and a decade of fraught planning negotiations. The result is impressive, featuring wide sidewalks, roomy bike lanes, colorful light fixtures, and ready access to the Schuylkill Banks path at its southern end. My thoughts inclined toward the symbolic significance of the bridge and its position between Philadelphia's academic nerve center and one of its most in-flux neighborhoods.

Harold's fork truck is rated for 4,000 pounds. He has to move and stack 10 skids (pallets) of paper, each weighing 1,500 pounds. What is the maximum number of skids he can lift at one time? If someone wants a job at Case Paper Co. , that person had better know how to calculate the answer. Even more basic: Can the person use a tape measure? "You'd be amazed at how many people can't read a ruler to one-sixteenth of an inch," said Lee Cohn, who directs production at the Philadelphia company.

Bucks and Montgomery County manufacturers are meeting Wednesday morning to talk about a key issue - after years of declines in manufacturing employment, they are facing looming shortages of highly skilled workers. "It's a huge problem," said Lisa Christman, senior human resources director at the K'nex toy manufacturing company in Hatfield and one of the organizers of Wednesday's meeting. Christman doesn't have to walk far from her office at K'nex to the factory floor, where injection molding machines spit out the brightly colored rods and connectors that combine to create construction-toy roller coasters and Ferris wheels.

HALF A BILLION dollars over four years. That's the astonishing amount a new report from Pew's Philadelphia Research Initiative says has been spent on workforce development in the city. And if you don't quite know what "workforce development" means, you're in good company. Neither do most of the businesses in the city that might take advantage of publicly funded programs that train residents for jobs ... to say nothing of laid-off or unemployed workers who might access the services.

Textiles, once a signature craft of Philadelphia industry, teeters on the brink of extinction, with 178 companies left in a city that once housed many times that. There are hopes of sustaining the sector - mainly by connecting it with a younger generation of more design-oriented artisans. But to do so, the textile-manufacturing sector must overcome a daunting calculus: Are enough skilled workers available in the Philadelphia area to keep the existing companies alive long enough for the young entrepreneurs to grow enough business and expertise to sustain them?

Charles Allison Jr. is CEO of CWBiofuels in New York and a member of the Partnership for a New American Economy The level of uncertainty and despair stemming from Washington makes it hard to be optimistic about our nation's future. Three years into the recession, jobs have still not come back, and to many, the future still looks bleak. But Congress can change that outlook. It can put America back on the road to job creation. And the necessary steps do not require large capital investment, new spending, or higher taxes.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. - John Russo's chemical lab in North Kingstown has been growing in recent years, even in the deflated economy, and he expects to add 15 to 20 more positions to his 49 employees over the next year. But Russo, president of Ultra Scientific Analytical Solutions, is struggling to fill openings that require specialized training in a state where the jobless rate in May was 10.9 percent, the third-highest in the nation. "It's very difficult to find the right person.