Ahh, welcome to the small boat and commercial marine industry (basically kayaks to 150’). Your last paragraph perfectly encapsulates our situation. We’ve had decades of youth going into university instead of trades, which I’m not saying is a bad thing, just we haven’t had the numbers. And we are a very niche trade so low numbers to begin with.
I work at a small trade school as the training coordinator and this is something I come up against every day. Our employers locally desperately need people but have no one to spare for training. It’s a really vicious cycle. As an example we are running a pre-employment program in January for youth. It’s a great program, 8 weeks long, the students are paid by the govt, they get employment readiness skills, tool skills, job shadow at four different businesses for a day each, and then have a two week work experience at one of the locations. The employers get paid too! Out of 18 original employers, 10 have backed out citing too busy. Yet they are all scrambling to hire people.
I’ve been in this industry for almost 30 years. I’m off the tools now because I want to support my fellow workers and have them learn the safe way to work, also my knees haha. But seriously though, we’re all struggling with way too much work and not enough people, and the experts are retiring.
I work at a small trade school as the training coordinator and this is something I come up against every day. Our employers locally desperately need people but have no one to spare for training. It’s a really vicious cycle. As an example we are running a pre-employment program in January for youth. It’s a great program, 8 weeks long, the students are paid by the govt, they get employment readiness skills, tool skills, job shadow at four different businesses for a day each, and then have a two week work experience at one of the locations. The employers get paid too! Out of 18 original employers, 10 have backed out citing too busy. Yet they are all scrambling to hire people.
I’ve been in this industry for almost 30 years. I’m off the tools now because I want to support my fellow workers and have them learn the safe way to work, also my knees haha. But seriously though, we’re all struggling with way too much work and not enough people, and the experts are retiring.