My personal experience of the exodus of the baby boomers between the birthdates of 1945 and 1951 is derived from friends in the automotive and manufacturing industries. These retirees have literally been “driven out” by pressures executed upon them by myopic managers who are focused on the bottom line. There is minimal thought about the loss of the knowledge of these people. These boomers can’t stand working where they are because of the incompetent managers promoted over them. These managers are leading by the strength of their position and not by the charisma of leadership. People on this final ride through the cesspool of their company shut down from full functionality months, even years, before they are offered an “out” on some kind of offer. American industry is its own worst enemy.

Respectfully submitted.

Jack Edwartoski, PE

Reply to this comment

I have to agree with both Mr.s Daniels and Edwartoski. Upper management don’t support training of the younger generation and, because of this, I find this future generation not really caring. As a Maintenance Manager I’m constantly at odds with my upper management to expand the department now while they have a chance because in 4 years they will lose myself and my lead mechanical mechanic to at best partial retirement. Management looks at me as if I have 4 heads!

Respectfully.
John Lemmon Maintenance Mgr.

Reply to this comment

I find this article interesting in the fact that everyone looks to play the blame game. It should start at the top with the CEO’s and Contolers of many corporations, they are always looking to maximize their SHORT TERM PROFITS at whose expense, the backbone of many companies, the worker.

But don’t fret, as the baby boomers leave the work force so do the American jobs straight to CHINA. The handwriting is on the wall.

Reply to this comment

Sorry, I don’t buy it that we’re running out of workers. The school system can’t be busting at the seams (IBD headline a couple month ago “50 million students nationwide, most ever”), and we’re running out of workers, you can’t have it both ways.

Reply to this comment

Dear Richard,
You need to look closer at the numbers. There is a new wave of students coming, but they aren’t here yet. They need a great deal of growing & seasoning to begin to replace the “baby boomers.”

Wave? What are you talking about? It’s constantly growing. You make it sound like you’re preparing to eat them, high school kids don’t become master mechanics, they get the low-end jobs. You make it sound like people haven’t been having babies in the last 30 years and there isn’t any workers at all in this country. They’re here and a lot more are coming.

Reply to this comment

We all can play the blame game and point fingers. We should look first at our own homes. The next generation of workers is exactly what we have raised them to be.

If the executive is only looking at short term profits; it’s the way his family runs the home.

If the worker has the I don’t care attitude; he probably is from a broken home where the parents are split and the kids raise themselves, because the parents still haven’t grown up.

We need to reestablish the family and family values and responsibilities. Start by looking at your own sons and daughters and see where they stand.

Let that young worker who does care into the work force and reward him with good pay and you will find he will step up to the career challenges.

Reply to this comment

Interesting discussion. I detect some sour grapes about displacement and disregard of valued experience. I guess that happens alot with “progress”. BUT, industry in its endeavors to cut the bottom line due to competition have fostered this condition. All industrialized nations train their workers at the academic schools and thru in-house training & experience. It was the apprenticeship and in-house schooling programs of the late industrial revolution that lead the way BEFORE college programs existed.

Workers are healthier nowadays and many work long after retirement, by choice or necessity. Social security failure will cause even more to do it. There will be a mutual gain to use workers after retirement for mentorship and difficult non-classical tasks that require hands-on and people-savvy skills.

By the way, there is not a shortage of skilled workers that expect reasonable compensation. There IS a shortage of “low-wage” skilled workers and professionals. So, firms go off-shore using or recruiting workers with substandard wages compared to their USA counterparts.

International corporations that have grown in the USA without the threat of nationalization, a stable workforce, and protective laws, have no allegiance to the USA except to survive in the interest of the institutional investors. Soon, the industries overseas will mature and their workers with gain from those institutions and the experience similiar to the growth and experience of the USA industries over the last 4-5 generations. Then, the natural outcome is declining USA as a nation. It’s coming, the prophesies predict it to a point….China?

Reply to this comment

Warning: Advanced Technology Services and its Survey, should be viewed as propaganda at best.
This company has a history of self serving data; they have done much to destroy thousands of skilled workers and remove them from the labor force.
This is nothing but a fantasy of Mr. Owens, to gain business.
His inept management teams will for a price offer you a team of super laborers to resolve your perceived labor problems.
Look elsewhere for answers.

Reply to this comment

Yes, the downsizing of the American workforce in manufacturing is alarming at best. But I, as a late baby boomer who spent twenty years as a Machinist who went through the apprenticeship program and now am in a supervisory role, see this as a double edged sord.

We hear all about the young generation with their Generation X and Y mindset, but we need to look at the senior seasoned workers too.

I have seen first hand that when a young worker comes into a company, they are often mistreated simply because they are young which drives them away rather quickly.

It is true that not every person that comes into the trades is going to be “The One” that will embrace the skills needed to keep our industry moving forward, but remember that even the senior workers were young and restless too at one time, and not every one of them was the ideal worker either.

I have worked with several baby boomers who amaze me that they have been employeed for as long as they have been.

We, as seasoned workers, need to adopt the Journeyman / Apprentice mindset ourselves and pass on our “Deep Smarts” onto them regardless of what part of the world they come from or what church they belong to or do not.

I have seen too many young men come into shops and who were driven right out because they were not embraced by the senior workforce, so we the elders, have a responsibility ourselves, as well.

I say this as someone who, again, went through a formal apprenticeship and received his Journeyman’s card, and that recently finished a graduate degree in Management and is now in a position to influence the opportunity we are all looking for, that the hiring process needs to look deeper for those who have the insight to carry on our long-standing reputation as the strongest manufacturing country in the world.

Furthermore, once we have those few chosen ones, to transfer our years of experience and allow them to retrofit those experiences to fit the modern methods that we know we need to have to remain competitive, resilient, and adaptive to a changing environment.

Reply to this comment

My father served in the Sea Bee’s and became a construction company superintendent. He got his training from the military. He organized unions in the south when Korea was over. A very bad time to do that. He is retired now and deserves it. My generation was a mixed up mess. We couldn’t figure out if the war in Viet Nam was good or bad. We lost our patriotism and our unionism in about one generation. Isn’t that some kind of record? We stopped most of our apprenticeships when we stopped going union. Today’s lack of enthusiasm for the mundane work/factory job is not because of the generation gap. It is due to the fact that WE as a corporate nation have, through demanded technology aimed at ending the mundane/factory worker, have caused our own downfall. Look around! Don’t you see the incongruity in our society. High school kids that don’t know how to count change. Why should they, the technologically advanced register is there crutch now. The all important bottom line was responsible. Less time. Less errors. People (engineers with master degrees like my neighbor) that aren’t working created these machines, then we as a corporate nation shipped off the drawings to a third world country and said you guys build it. Cheaper that way. Our Corporate Nation has cut out the middle man. That’s you and me and all the people that take pride in our work, and try to earn a living amidst our so called globilization. Yes, there are a lot of disenfranchised younger adults that think the way to a buck is the shortest way, and they wouldn’t think of getting their hands dirty. Their solution is an attitude that says to management, WHAT’S in it for me? Not every body in a factory gets UAW wages, pity poor us. Our younger generations have this attitude about us and we have an attitude about them. If only this world were perfect. As a non-union NONworking individual that has been a laborer and a facility maintenance manager, I was once told by my father in the early Seventies that he wouldn’t work for less than $15 per hour, I look at what I make today and wish I was making what he did. A sign of our times also? Gone are those days of apprenticeship and low wages with the understanding that you could work up the ladder by learning your craft and giving back to your employer. Welcome the days of our throw away society. Don’t fix it, get a new one. Don’t build one with any kind of quality,—–Outsource it!@$#!@%@#^&#$. Makes me kinda angry. Check your edges on your sheet metal, have you deburrred them, or did the Corporate Manager tell you to skip that step. Is your Ford or Chevy or Dodge made with parts that came from a worker in the USA or was it outsourced also. I just found another part on mine that was made somewhere else. Had to replace it of course. Look at the clothes you wear, Betch your last bottom dollar, that they weren’t made here. When is the last time that you were at an antique auction a saw a hadcrafted item, and said to yourself GEE why don’t we see things made like that anymore?

But we all know that, don’t we!!!!

Why as a nation are we doing this to ourselves? Who is running this nation? Certainly not you or I.

Can you blame this younger generation from shying away from WORK? We don’t even support ourselves anymore. Will taxation of Corporate outsourceing be the answer. No, because they will just add that on to the price of whatever it is.

Think about it, we have just built (took about 30 years) a better mousetrap, but we are running out of mice.

We have set up a maze and can’t find a way out.
Is the technology yet to come the answer? I hope so.

For My Kids sake!

The citizens that I know are scratching there heads and hope so also. By the way, I’m not working now, e-mail me if you have a job that pays a livable wage. Keenanranch@netzero.net

Reply to this comment

You just know there have to be a cadre of overstuffed lawyers and green-eyeshade bean counters leading this brain child of economic wonder.

Reply to this comment

It’s interesting to note that so much has been talked about Baby Boomers working in manufacturing plants. No one seems to discuss those working in consulting engineering companies. With so-called Generation X students coming from engineering colleges, experienced engineers sometime have to face the reality of the matter that newcomers have the advantage of knowing computer programs, etc. At the same time, jobs are offered to the inexperienced students graduating from colleges, while experienced still look for jobs. This I call the disparity on the part of upper management. Why hire experienced engineer while they can efford to hire two for the salary of one?

I feel sorry for fresh college graduates, since they have no job experience. But at the same time, I feel as though I can do a better job but inexperience gets the job.

This is all due to the fact of what’s the bottom line for the company. Today management expects you to know all at no cost to the company. You need to go and get training, etc. It’s so disappointing. When will management wake up to keep the balance?

Reply to this comment

the company dean worked at (same for me) has gone through 2 bankruptcies … layoffs in the hundreds.

the manager previous to dean tried,one on one,to teach intricacies of metal fabrication & assembly to supervisors,who in turn,had to get the lessons across to hourly folks.This proved unsuccessful.

Dean printed up a training matrix for each work station, and coaxed, wheedled, and used good leadership to explain the concept of labor cost, and how cross training in every work station would make for a more technically adept
and flexible work force. This worked and was proven to work real well. The economic slowdown and company’s internal problems ended with successes.The new owner has recalled 14 of 250 laid off workers.

Reply to this comment