Skilled Machinists Called a Dwindling Breed : San Diego-Area Employers Say They’re Hurting as Old-Timers Leave Trade

Bob Smith fiddled with a toolmaking machine, one of an array of hulking devices that stock the machine shop at MiraCosta College.

Rolled-up sleeves and grease-splattered forearms portray Smith as a hard worker who takes pride in his job--grooming qualified machinists.

“My machinists can and do make everything,” Smith said. “From the tools that mold your eyeglass frames to the body of your car. Except for trees and some other living things, we make just about everything.”

So, when local manufacturers need machinists, they turn to Smith.

But, these days, Smith can’t fill their orders.

“They call all the time and say, ‘We need some skilled people,’ ” Smith said. “And all I can say is, ‘Sorry, I don’t have anybody for you.’ ”

Declining enrollment in Smith’s class is just another sign that confirms what San Diego manufacturers already know: Skilled machinists are a dwindling breed.

A Stinging Shortage

Throughout San Diego County the decline can be felt, and in some pockets, like the north part of the county--where recent business growth has drained the available labor pool--the shortage stings a little more.

Eaton Leonard Technologies, a Carlsbad machine-tool manufacturer, is a good example. The company has advertised for machinists through help-wanted ads in the local newspapers with little luck. “I think I got six responses for two weeks worth of ads,” said Tom Emerson, Eaton’s machine shop supervisor. “I think that’s pretty lousy.”

LME, an Oceanside-based manufacturer of molds for aircraft parts that moved from Orange County in February, has had similar recruiting problems. “I’ll tell you what the problem is, there’s no new people coming in,” said an LME spokesman who asked that his name not be used. “Nowadays, people think that they’re too good to be in manufacturing.”

So far, the scarcity hasn’t crippled manufacturers, but businesses aren’t waiting for the problem to worsen. Many companies, both big and small, are reviving apprenticeship programs to upgrade employees’ skills. Besides providing management the skilled labor that they need, such programs offer employees incentives too: the opportunity for better pay and advancement.

But machinists are urging manufacturers to do even more. If a crisis is to be averted, they say, management must recruit youth to replace aging machinists now retiring in droves.

“After the Korean War there was an abundance of machinists,” said Ed Maudlin, president of District Lodge 50 of the International Assn. of Machinists. The union represents about 2,000 machinists in San Diego and Imperial counties.

“A lot of people learned the trade under the GI Bill,” Maudlin said. “But those guys have been at it for 30, 35 years, and now, they’re ready to call it quits.”

The retirement of many machinists, coupled with fewer new workers entering the field, has caused an 11% decline in union membership over the past seven years, Maudlin said.

And local businesses that employ machinists have noticed with dismay the downward trend.

Besides advertising locally and nationally, Greene International West, an ordnance components manufacturer, has placed a standing order for skilled machinists with MiraCosta College for the last nine months.

“We’re always looking for skilled journeyman tool and dye makers, and machinists, because we’re finding that they’re getting harder and harder to find,” said Wendy McFerran, personnel director for the Oceanside-based company.

“It’s clear that it’s becoming a dying art,” McFerran said. “There’s simply not enough (machinists) to meet the demand.”

Now, instead of looking for skilled machinists, companies are producing their own. Increasing numbers of manufacturers are retraining current employees or recruiting inexperienced youth with the promise of better pay to work under the close supervision of a mentor--for example, a skilled veteran employee.

Under the training program created several years ago by machinists and the state Department of Industrial Relations, apprentices work full 40-hour weeks learning to operate various machines at the job site, as well as attend a local community college once or twice a week for additional training.

For example, company apprentices who enroll at MiraCosta College take 10 classes such as mathematics, drafting and machine tool operation, over a four-year period. The cost of such an education--about $160 plus textbook costs--initially is paid by the apprentice, who is reimbursed by his employer upon satisfactory completion of classes.

For employers, the apprenticeship program offers two benefits, said V. David Johnson, a consultant with the Department of Industrial Relations who helps manufacturers set up such programs that produce state-certified journeymen machinists. Apprenticeships help employees learn how to work with various manufacturing equipment, not just one or two machines. And they offer financial incentives that could lure young people to the field.

“You can come out of high school without any skills and start out making $7 an hour, which is about 50% of what a journeyman machinist makes,” Johnson said. “And in four years, you can at least double” the initial starting pay. Typically, he said, it takes a machinist eight to 10 years to reach peak salary levels.

Becoming More Marketable

Besides better pay, an apprentice who successfully completes the training, which requires logging 8,000 hours on several machines, becomes a full-fledged journeyman machinist. Reaching that plateau earns machinists state certification, making them more marketable.

“Hey, when you’re 18, have no skills, this is a pretty good deal,” Johnson said.

Eaton Leonard Technologies, like many other companies, is setting up an apprenticeship program. It is similar to one used by Greene International West since early this year, McFerran said. The program, which started with two employees, is successful and has recently added another spot for an apprentice, she said.

“We posted an announcement of another apprenticeship program and got seven applicants, but we could only take one,” McFerran said. “We would love to have taken more but an apprenticeship program takes a lot of time. They need a lot of hands-on training from our supervisors, which diverts them from their work.”

Although apprenticeships don’t solve the immediate shortage, manufacturers who have experimented with the program support it wholeheartedly.

“It’s good for morale and your employees see that there’s opportunities to advance within the company,” McFerran said.

Maudlin, the union spokesman, applauds manufacturers’ efforts to bolster their current work force, but says even greater measures must be taken.

The next step: Recruit the youth.

“Vocational training has taken a back seat to academics and a college degree,” Maudlin said. “I’m not knocking a college education by any means, but it’s not for everyone. All I’m saying is that if you don’t want to go to college, then you should be told of the alternatives that lie before you.”

Maudlin says waiting to talk to high school students on “career days” is too late.

“Too many high school kids who do poorly think at the last minute that they can become a machinist,” Maudlin said. “Well, it’s not that easy. You have to be good at reading comprehension for blueprint reading, you have to be able to do math. You have to let the kids know early, in junior high, that these things will be required.”

Without such recruiting efforts, Maudlin says, the humming sounds of machines could soon fall quiet. At the machine shop at MiraCosta College, the silence can already be heard.

Like summers past, Smith, the machinist instructor, was preparing to teach a night course this year on basic machine tool technology.

“We needed 16 people to enroll in order to hold the class,” Smith said. “Only 12 registered. We canceled the class.”