Where Factory Apprenticeship Is Latest Model From Germany

GREER, S.C. — For Joerg Klisch, hiring the first 60 workers to build heavy engines at his company’s new factory in South Carolina was easy. Finding the next 60 was not so simple.

“It seemed like we had sucked up everybody who knew about diesel engines,” said Mr. Klisch, vice president for North American operations of Tognum America. “It wasn’t working as we had planned.”

So Mr. Klisch did what he would have done back home in Germany: He set out to train them himself. Working with five local high schools and a career center in Aiken County, S.C. — and a curriculum nearly identical to the one at the company’s headquarters in Friedrichshafen — Tognum now has nine juniors and seniors enrolled in its apprenticeship program.

Inspired by a partnership between schools and industry that is seen as a key to Germany’s advanced industrial capability and relatively low unemployment rate, projects like the one at Tognum are practically unheard-of in the United States.

But experts in government and academia, along with those inside companies like BMW, which has its only American factory in South Carolina, say apprenticeships are a desperately needed option for younger workers who want decent-paying jobs, or increasingly, any job at all. And without more programs like the one at Tognum, they maintain, the nascent recovery in American manufacturing will run out of steam for lack of qualified workers.

For the rest of the article at the New York TImes website, click here.

A wakeup call for manufacturing
BY TERRY KOSDROSKY
April 19, 2012

A recent uptick in U.S. manufacturing has optimists hoping to end the lost decade that saw steep employment drops across the sector.

Today, productivity is up, a relatively cheap dollar is boosting exports, and the wage gap between the U.S. and China is shrinking. Some companies are even repatriating operations from overseas.

But a huge portion of U.S. manufacturing—as much as 40 percent, experts project—hangs in the balance as firms assess whether to stay in the country or move elsewhere. It all comes down to pending policy decisions, according to a study by the University of Michigan's Tauber Institute for Global Operations and consulting firm Booz & Co.

[To read the rest of the article, check out the article posted at the University of Michigan's Michigan Today.
URL: http://michigantoday.umich.edu/story.php?id=8217 ]

Below are two informative videos that focus on the benefits of skilled trades. The first, Trading Up, features testimonials from workers who built Miller Park Stadium in Milwaukee, WI. Traiding Up 2 covers the BIG STEP program, a pre-apprenticeship tutoring program that helps prepare individuals for apprenticeships in the construction trades.

Trading Up:

Trading Up 2:

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan held an event at Des Moines Area Community College to release and promote Investing in America's Future: A Blueprint for Transforming Career and Technical Education.  This Blueprint outlines the Obama Administration's proposal for reauthorizing the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act.  The plan focuses on increased collaboration between secondary and post-secondary schools and institutions; better alignment with industry to ensure training meets occupational demand; the establishment of common performance measures; and competitive funding opportunities to reward success and innovation. Don't have time to read the entire document? Grab the  Blueprint Summary instead!