Computer Focus Causes Shortage of Welding Skills

Computers and progress may go together like hand and glove. But ask Gary Pelkey, and he will tell you that computers have also depleted the ranks of skilled welders at a time when journeymen’s jobs go begging for qualified workers.

While computers may be the main culprits, Pelkey also blames school officials, and the emphasis they place on computer training, for contributing to the shortage of welders. Usually, people go looking for jobs, but today, welding jobs are looking for people, he said.

“High schools stopped offering metal trades classes when they began emphasizing computer training for kids. I was at a conference recently where we learned that today only one out of every 10 high schools in the nation offers metal trades instruction. It’s terrible,” said Pelkey, president and business manager of the welders’ union at Solar Turbines.

Dave Voigt, manager of steel trades training at the National Steel & Shipbuilding Co., agreed with Pelkey’s.

“You may as well forget the high schools. We’ll probably never again see welders who started their training in high school. But you can’t find them any place else, either. (San Diego) City College has a real nice (training) facility. However, we don’t get any welders from there. There just aren’t any students who want to learn welding. Everybody wants to learn about computers,” Voigt said.

To emphasize the need for qualified welders, Voigt said he would hire 50 journeymen welders “today, right here on the spot” if he could find them.

However, Voigt and Pelkey are not talking about old-fashioned stick welding, where a welder holds a 15-inch electrode (rod) in front and patiently runs a bead across a surface. Like computers, welding technology has made tremendous strides in the last 20 years.

Stick welding, used to piece together thousands of ships during World War II, is all but a dinosaur in America’s shipyards. Today, flex-core welding is quickly making stick welding obsolete, and the newer process is a more highly skilled and sophisticated trade. About 80% of all welding performed at Nassco is flex core, said Voigt.

Flex coring requires the hands of an artisan, the rhythmic fingers of a pianist and superb hand-eye coordination.

“It’s like painting. You can’t be too slow or too fast. You need excellent hand-eye coordination and you have to be rhythmic. Flex-core welders are artists in many respects,” Pelkey said.

In the flex-core process, a hollowed steel wire, ranging in size from .035 inches to 3/32nds of an inch, is fed from a 15-pound spool through a triggering device. The device uses electricity to melt the wire into a bead or “weld puddle.” A tiny pocket of gas is formed inside the hollowed wire, which helps solidify the weld puddle.

Flex-core welding is most commonly used in shipyards.

“The flex-core process is one of the best things that’s happened to shipbuilding,” said C. R. Turner, Nassco’s chief welding engineer. “It increases productivity and offers a scientific element not found in stick welding. It’s very much an art and a science. A good flex-coring job gives a welder a certain pride in his work.”

In stick welding, up to 40 pounds from 100 pounds of electrodes ends up being wasted because the rods have to be discarded when they are 3 to 5 inches short. By comparison, in flex-core welding, about 90 pounds from 100 pounds of wire is actually used in the welding process, Turner said.

Another major attraction of flex coring is the versatility of the process. Welders can weld at virtually any angle and position with precision.

Nassco executives used to recruit flex-core welders off the street. On occasion, company officials would also try to raid shipyards on the Gulf Coast and other parts of the country for experienced welders.

“But we had several things working against us. No. 1, there just aren’t that many qualified flex- core welders around,” Voigt said. “Secondly, the high cost of housing in San Diego scared away many qualified workers from Gulf Coast shipyards. We had welding jobs open, but nobody to fill them.”

That began to change in 1989, when Nassco began its own training program for employees wanting to learn flex-core welding.

Since the program began, the shipyard has trained 12 classes, totaling 180 workers. Turner and Voigt, who helped establish the training program, estimated that it costs the shipyard $7,000 to $8,000 to train each welder.

“We finally got to the point where he had to train people in-house. We simply weren’t getting any welders from the outside. Nobody was training them. . . . We came to the conclusion that we couldn’t hire enough qualified people, so we started our own training program,” Voigt said.

To underscore the desperation with which Nassco looked for flex-core welders, the company would provide free scrap metal and loan equipment to local trade schools that offered welding classes. Despite the company’s generosity, trade schools could not attract welding students.

Besides Nassco, the only other place that trains flex-core welders that is remotely in the area is the Center for Employment Training in El Centro.

Center director Patrick Rodriguez said the school has close ties to Nassco.

“We worked with Nassco to develop our welding training classes. The company provides us with scrap steel and has loaned us three flex-core guns. We actually work pretty closely with them,” said Rodriguez.

Rodriguez said the center is now training 45 welders, and 25 graduates of the Imperial Valley school have been hired by the shipyard.

More than half of the shipbuilding welders at Nassco were trained by the company. Workers go through an intensive five-week course, and must work an additional 18 months as trainees before they are elevated to journeyman.

Applicants are carefully screened and must get a supervisor’s recommendation before they are accepted in the training school, Voigt said.

Blanca Resendiz, 29, worked as a secretary at several automobile dealerships before going to work at Nassco three months ago. She started out as a helper, earning a little more than minimum wage, before enrolling in the training class. After completing the welding course, Resendiz will have an opportunity to earn up to $11 an hour.

“Sure, it was much easier working at a desk before. But I just wasn’t happy. This is something I’ve always wanted to do. I’m working with my hands and enjoying it,” Resendiz said.

Turner, who has more than 15 years experience in shipbuilding and has studied shipbuilding operations in Finland, Korea and Denmark, said he “will rank our trained welders with anybody’s, anyplace.”

“Flex coring is a skill that is in high demand in America’s shipyards. Once a person is trained in flex core, he literally does not have to worry about finding a job in the future,” Turner said.

Job security is a reality that is not lost on some workers trained by Nassco. Because the shipyard is employee-owned, wages tend to be lower than at other yards. In the Bay Area and East Coast, for example, flex-core welders can earn more than twice the going rate at Nassco.

Consequently, Nassco executives have learned to swallow hard when workers trained by the company quit to go work at other shipyards.

“You go to great pains to train people in the very elaborate process of flex-core welding. They become highly skilled with a very marketable trade. It’s very frustrating to lose a worker that you trained to another yard,” Turner said.

He said he does not know how many workers have quit to work someplace else after being trained by Nassco.