A shortage of skilled workers:

"State manufacturers have openings, but Minnesotans who are looking for work often don't have the right skills to fill them," said Mark Phillips, Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development commissioner. "

I'm trying to understand how this equates to OWS supporters avoiding moving to Minnesota for jobs they likely do not qualify to fill.

Need a job but don't have the requisite skills?

Just wait until someone comes and trains you.

I'm sure all those OWS protestors know how to operate CNC machines and whatnot. They're just too lazy and elitist to move to where the jobs are! Silly protestors.

Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing jobs?

What ever happened to find-smart-hard-working-folks-and-train-them?

Who do I blame? High school counselors.

It's like their job to shove people off into college even when it may not be the right choice for them.

ALL I wanted to do was take a welding vocational class. I got denied at every turn because I was "smart". I was going to be an engineer. Why would an engineer ever need to learn to weld? Yes I'm an engineer, yes I do lots of my own work on my car and stuff. But there isn't a weekend that goes by where I think "wow, learning to weld would have been a waste of my senior year".

The guys on Howe & Howe tech are my idols.

Another trolling flame thread spewing fire at the growing success of the OWS protests and their counterparts across the world.

GrooveMonkeyZero: What ever happened to find-smart-hard-working-folks-and-train-them?

Training and basic research aren't good for short-term stockholders, so it doesn't happen.

Dig 12 more lakes and it'll be lake Minnesota.

Usually these "skills" are taught in community colleges around here as one year certificates, whether it's CNC or biotech production. Ever had a drug conviction? No financial aid for you, including loans. That right there knocks a lot of people out. The whole "going to college" thing also seems to typically be a huge turn-off for manufacturing workers; I am surrounded by neighbors who refuse to reskill if it means sitting in a classroom or college lab. So they sit around various bars in town and biatch about how the government won't give them their old jobs back.

Linger: tallguywithglasseson: Need better school-to-work, mentoring, trade/craft programs starting in high school.

THIS! The company I work for is hiring for welders/fitters/mechanics and more in NC and TN, but are having problems finding enough qualified people who can also pass the drug tests and background checks required by the companies we work for.

We did just start talks with various local community colleges for help with a job training program. More companies need to step up and do the same.

/if your a qualified welder/fitter etc.. or know one - check craigslist - we've got ads all over the southeast

sounds good. sign me up. i'm a hard worker, never call in, and always show up early. but i'm still going to go home at the end of the day and burn one whether you like it or not.

GrooveMonkeyZero: What ever happened to find-smart-hard-working-folks-and-train-them?

The smart folks deserve more money than the companies are willing to pay them.

/saw an ad for a commercial laundry delivery service job
//$0.50 an hour above minimum wage
///required a bachelors degree "or equivalent experience"
////"Boo hoo we can't find workers."

Cake Hunter: R.A.Danny: Wouldn't it be more helpful if some of these skills were enumerated?

1. Familiarity with power washing equipment.
2. Prior work with hog anuses.
3. Must own car.

Are goat amuses relevant enough? Also..what kind of car?

BolloxReader: Usually these "skills" are taught in community colleges around here as one year certificates, whether it's CNC or biotech production. Ever had a drug conviction? No financial aid for you, including loans. That right there knocks a lot of people out. The whole "going to college" thing also seems to typically be a huge turn-off for manufacturing workers; I am surrounded by neighbors who refuse to reskill if it means sitting in a classroom or college lab. So they sit around various bars in town and biatch about how the government won't give them their old jobs back.

this!

i watched many of my co workers get picked off in the downsizings my company went thru. darn near every one of them refused to learn other jobs to make themselves more valueable. the boss even told every one they were rated by a number of things,mainly the ability to do different things. how you ranked determined who got cut when the bean counters declared a cut must be made.

Petulant Dwarf: Another trolling flame thread spewing fire at the growing success of the OWS protests and their counterparts across the world.

Don't sweat it, man. OWS has basically won at this point. It's game over for all those fat cats. Victory is ours! The letter saying my student loans are forgiven should be coming any day now.

What's amusing a goat have to do with hog butt holes. You lost me Captain Fat Finger.

Nuclear Monk: Cake Hunter: R.A.Danny: Wouldn't it be more helpful if some of these skills were enumerated?

1. Familiarity with power washing equipment.
2. Prior work with hog anuses.
3. Must own car.

Are goat amuses relevant enough? Also..what kind of car?

Try that again..

What's amusing a goat have to do with hog butt holes. You lost me Captain Fat Finger

Mike Rowe did a speech at TED about the culture's anti-work ethic. Mostly we've lowered the honor that comes with a hard day's work. I grew up in Michigan, a manufacturing state, and even there was a strain of people disparaging skilled labor for college.

My high school had turned the annex, formerly the location for shop classes, into more classrooms and shipped all the courses far away to one of the old middle school (all high school in the district did the same). You'd have to pick which half of your day you wanted to spend being bussed out there. They had also decided that was the same school to ship the troublemakers into special classes.

When you warehouse the troubled kids in the same place for auto, construction, wood and metal shop, you send a signal to the skilled craft kids of what their skills mean to society.

And here I am, an unemployed Minnesotan wanting a job, waiting for callbacks.
I am really hating when they put in the job requirements that you have 5 years of experience for a product that has only been out for 3 and disqualify you when you point that out.

Anyone need an IT person or a chemist?

Apple reference?

You must say that I'm young, you must say I'm unlearned

Any jobs for floggers on the Tri masted schooner with passing gear?

In our area Crown Lift Truck Corporation is needing to hire dozens of people. Floor jobs start at 14+ an hour. They also need about 70 people with various technical skills (don't know the salary range for these), and cannot get enough applicants to fill the positions.

So train them. Or do you expect the public sector to do that for you?

I know dozens of people who can't get an interview because they're "overqualified" -- which is a technical term for "you're older than me" or "you have more experience than me."

nopokerface: Need a job but don't have the requisite skills?

Just wait until someone comes and trains you.

THIS. I work in a corporate IT and am always learning new skills on my own time and my own dime. COBOL was never going to be around forever, and neither will Java/.NET. The best employee I've ever had taught himself coding without a single day in college. So get off your asses and teach yourself a useful skill so you can quit whining and then all our jobs aren't sent overseas due to a lack of candidates.

On the flip side -- the playing field for US workers will never be level until all outsourced jobs are held to the same level of quality and safety that the ones in the US are. Do you think Chinese manufacturing plants worry about OSHA? This is a perfect place to institute some tariffs or other protectionist fees...but our government is in bed too tightly with corporate interests to make that happen. Capitalism is not inherently bad...anyone that says that just flat-out does not know what they are talking about. But the government has to be able to regulate businesses properly in order for it to not get out of whack. This bastardized version of both that is going on now is causing the rise of both the Tea Party and the OWS for a reason.

darkscout: Who do I blame? High school counselors.

It's like their job to shove people off into college even when it may not be the right choice for them.

ALL I wanted to do was take a welding vocational class. I got denied at every turn because I was "smart". I was going to be an engineer. Why would an engineer ever need to learn to weld? Yes I'm an engineer, yes I do lots of my own work on my car and stuff. But there isn't a weekend that goes by where I think "wow, learning to weld would have been a waste of my senior year".

The guys on Howe & Howe tech are my idols.

Try going to a high school in an agricultural area.
"We'll sign you up for Agricultural Sciences, how's that?"
"What happened to computer science, like you promised?"
"Oh, you were the only student for that, so we canceled it. Besides, you won't need it working on a farm."
"What the hell are you talking about? I'm not going to work on a farm!"
"There's no other jobs in this area, and never will be."
"I don't plan to stay here!!!"

Yeah, high school sucked for me in a different way than for most.

Kasira: I'm sure all those OWS protestors know how to operate CNC machines and whatnot. They're just too lazy and elitist to move to where the jobs are! Silly protestors.

You either evolve with the market, or remain jobless. That's how capitalism works.

A good number of these OWS protesters are young and can still learn new jobs. CNC operations and other forms of industrial/manufacturing employment require relatively little time investment when it comes to education compared to the college degrees most of them already have. There's really no excuse for them NOT to give it their best shot, if they can. If they can't, then it's a different ballgame, but I don't think Subby is too far off in his/her assertion that at least some of these protesters won't take perfectly good jobs just because it doesn't fit their aura or whatever. I'm 20 and go to a major state university. Those people ARE out there, and a lot of them are within 6-7 years of my age.

We've gotten employment confused with fulfillment. The two go hand-in-hand to an extent, but they're not completely intertwined. An unemployed person who can't afford to enjoy life would be far more fulfilled with a job they don't like and some pay than no job and no pay. You can tell just how desperate people are by how willing they are to sacrifice a few wants for pressing needs. During the Great Depression, people would travel hundreds of miles any way they could (even on foot) just because of a rumor of a job. When they got there, they would sometimes face the challenge of adapting their skill sets to the task they were hired to do, but being sore from hard labor beat being dead from starvation. Some OWS protesters have tried everything, but I have a hard time believing that ALL of them are at the end of their rope and think that drastic corporate change is the only way to solve their problems. Those people need to get over the fact that the jobs out there don't exactly fit them and apply.

Ed Willy: Mike Rowe did a speech at TED about the culture's anti-work ethic. Mostly we've lowered the honor that comes with a hard day's work. I grew up in Michigan, a manufacturing state, and even there was a strain of people disparaging skilled labor for college.

My high school had turned the annex, formerly the location for shop classes, into more classrooms and shipped all the courses far away to one of the old middle school (all high school in the district did the same). You'd have to pick which half of your day you wanted to spend being bussed out there. They had also decided that was the same school to ship the troublemakers into special classes.

When you warehouse the troubled kids in the same place for auto, construction, wood and metal shop, you send a signal to the skilled craft kids of what their skills mean to society.

The need for "skilled trades" in manufacturing in 2011 is zero. The need for intelligent people able to run extremely complicated and expensive CNC equipment is high. The guys failing into shop class don't cut it.

As far as the "cultural anti-work ethic" goes, that's a load of horseshiat. Almost everywhere you go in this country the only thing that matters is how hard you're working. Just look at the deluded idiots over on the the53.tumblr.com (new window) bragging about working two or more jobs just to put food on the table as if being royally screwed over is something of which to be proud.

There's no honor in being able to brag about being more miserable than the next guy.

Omnivorous: I know dozens of people who can't get an interview because they're "overqualified" -- which is a technical term for "you're older than me" or "you have more experience than me."

My mother spent over a year looking for jobs and was disqualified for this very reason. She had a goal to apply to five jobs per week and to interview weekly if possible. She drove all over the state. She had a criminal justice, sociology, and English degrees. (She picked up the sociology degree as she went back to school to finish her criminal justice degree and with transfer credits picked up sociology).

She finally gave up, moved to another state and was hired for a position that she was actually "overqualified" for but she worked there for several years.

/People with degrees need to eat too!

This thread is awesome. Especially the part about training for hog enemas.

By the way, if you object to Chinese regulations, do you seriously think an iPad would be available for $499 if the Chinese version of OSHA were like the U.S.? Also, I bet if you ask an average Chinese worker, that factory beats the shiat out of 30 million dying in a famine under Mao Tse Tung.

Chinese standards of living have soared, but as consumers we would ideally be able to identify products manufactured in sweatshops to avoid them. the problem is that there are so many parts manufactured in so many factories taht it's nearly impossible to know.