Van Nuys Airport job fair could be a ticket to aviation work
Sergio Suarez has designed battleships, a castle and a jumbo jet. His laboratory holds computers with 3-D engineering software, about 25 colleagues and robotic arms.
Suarez, 17, is a junior at Monroe High School in North Hills. His lab is his classroom. And since his sister became a flight attendant when he was 10 or 11, he’s wanted to be an architectural engineer, specializing in aviation.
“I want to build hangars,” he said. “And later, when I’m, like, in mid-age, I want to get my piloting license.”
Today, Suarez will be among about 1,400 students attending the second annual Aviation Career Day, when about 70 exhibitors will descend on Van Nuys Airport to offer internships and career opportunities to high school students.
“More aerospace companies are in the San Fernando Valley than anywhere else in the country,” said Kenn Phillips, director of education and workforce investment for the San Fernando Valley Economic Alliance. “We need high-quality, ethical employees who can communicate.”
To that end, the alliance and Monroe are collaborating in an unusual partnership between a nonprofit and a Los Angeles Unified School District campus. Monroe will pay the alliance about $5,000 to have aviation companies work directly with its students, who will receive the experience they need for future jobs. In turn, the companies expect to train their own skilled workers.
“There’s a real problem in finding entry-level personnel,” said Barbara Cesar, founder of Aviation Career Day and co-founder of Syncro Aviation Inc., which remodels the interiors of airplanes. “This program is a link between students and jobs.”
Organizers are still working out the details of the collaboration. They hope to begin the program by the start of the coming school year.
For more than a decade, aerospace companies have been coping with the end of the Cold War, which had fueled business. Manufacturers started cutting jobs and closing plants, and as California became too expensive for corporate headquarters, many moved closer to industry hot spots in Texas, Florida and Arizona. Since then, the industry has struggled with an aging aviation workforce left behind when employers moved out of state.
Steve Cormier, chief executive of Chatsworth-based Global Aerospace Technology Corp., remembers when he had difficulty hiring workers and considered moving his firm east. “If I didn’t get good employees, I would have had to move out,” he said. “We have a crying need for skilled workers, and we pay good money, but we just can’t find them.” Cormier said he wanted to shepherd students like Suarez and others in Monroe’s engineering and design program into his company, where employees are paid between $12 and $70 an hour.
“There are households where parents would look at that and say, ‘Hey, that’s a lot of money,’ ” said Los Angeles City Councilman Tony Cardenas.
Cardenas, whose district includes the Van Nuys Airport, said he pushed for the partnership because he believes vocational education can make students rethink dropping out of school and getting into trouble.
“Nothing stops a bullet better than a job,” he said. “The earlier you can inspire a young person to believe that there’s something out there, the better results you’re going to get.”
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