Loyalist to train skilled workers
by Scott Haines
Educators, businesses and the government need to work together to stop the impending shortage of skilled trade workers, the president of Loyalist College said Wednesday.
Maureen Piercy urged the Belleville and District Chamber of Commerce to generate ideas about how to address the shortage of skilled trade workers.
"We are all in this together. It is very important that we work together and keep talking and take action based on the discussion," she said in an interview.
"It is going to take the efforts of all the key partners together, business education, government, labour, industry, manufacturers associations," Piercy said.
Between last year and this year, Loyalist has added several skilled trade programs. The programs were developed on a basis or workforce need and student interest.
"For instance we are introducing a one year welding program for the fall we have looked at that for a couple of years," she said. "We decided that the time was right, people were telling us that they need this skilled trade in the area, and we have a waiting list for the program so we are delighted with that."
According the Conference Board of Canada, there will be a large deficit of skilled trade workers in Ontario. They said that there will be 360,000 people retiring from skilled trades position by the year 2025. This lack of skilled trades workers, if gone unchecked, will have an impact, affecting Canada's future prosperity by affecting our ability to exports and infrastructure, Piercy said.
"We recognize we better get going now to help provide opportunities for people to gain the experience so they can fill in when people retire and leave the trades," she said.
In order to be sure that there will be no fallout from the lack of skilled-trades trained employees, schools are developing different ways to advertise the skilled trades to potential students. Loyalist has a very broad range of marketing and recruitment. Just last week was Loyalist Days (see story in Campus section). The college also uses newer methods such as viral videos, social media and other new methodologies to help the students understand what the options are, said Piercy.
"We find one of the most powerful things is to get students on campus," she said.
Loyalist College, along with the Loyalist Days event, invited Grade 8 students from the area to visit the school to learn about five skilled trade areas; Culinary, Automotive, Manufacturing, Esthetics and Bioscience.
"They were doing hands-on workshops in these skilled areas. Our students were helping as workshop facilitators so they had a great experience too but when students see what the exciting things they will get to do if they choose to do that as a career, they get hooked, they get engaged then they start looking at the options," said Piercy "It is very important that we provide actual experiences, not just talking to students or showing things even visually, they have to understand what that kind of work is about."
Piercy said one of the barriers to interest in the skilled trades is parents of the baby boom era not being as open minded towards the idea of being a skilled trade professional. There has been a stigma in the past about skilled trade workers.
"Our conception of the skilled trades occupations is 25 years old, unless we are working in the trades. The trades are highly automated, computerized, high skilled and clean, well-paying areas of work, and we need to re-educate ourselves and encourage our students, whether they are our children or our friends' children to think about it," said Piercy. |
