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Program appeals to students who want to get the job done
Wednesday, October 07, 2009
COVER STORY: For some, it's their third career switch in their working lives
By HANK DANISZEWSKI
Foreman says these jobs are going, boys, and they ain't coming back.
-- Bruce Springsteen, My Hometown
Craig Warnock could see the writing on the wall.
After 12 years of working at Ingersoll Fasteners. he was laid off last fall.
The company had been in business for 130 years, supplying giants such as General Motors.
This wasn't a temporary layoff but a permanent closing, one of many Southwestern Ontario manufacturers to go under in recent years.
The numbers tell the story: In 2003, there were 41,000 manufacturing jobs in the London area. As of last year, there were 26,900 -- a drop of more than 33% in five years.
Warnock decided it was time to get out of the shrinking manufacturing sector and learn a trade.
"It was a tough decision. I have four children. But once you make the decision, it's full steam ahead, " he said.
In January, he enrolled in the HVAC (heating, ventilating and air conditioning) training course at North American Trades Schools (NATS) on Highbury Avenue in London.
Warnock is getting help from the provincial Second Career program that provides funding for tuition and living expenses for laid-off workers who are retraining.
Warnock, 34, said going back for retraining was a big adjustment at first.
"I hadn't been in school since I was in high school. In manufacturing, you do the same thing every day and I didn't know if I could handle this," he said.
Warnock said the school's hands-on approach to learning has helped his confidence and he is satisfied he will be more employable when he graduates in December.
"It's one thing to look at a picture in a book and another to come out here and do it."
Warnock has plenty of company. In the past year, enrolment at the private trade school has jumped from 130 to 400 and is expected to top 500 by the end of the year.
Todd Foster, the school's director of admissions, said many of the students are workers displaced from big manufacturers such as the Sterling Truck plant in St. Thomas. Others are coming off jobs in trucking, landscaping and computer technology.
"Since this time last year, when the economy started going down, and the Second Career started up, we saw a spike in enrolment," he said.
Foster said about 40% of the students at NATS are involved in the Second Careers program.
The majority of the students are male, aged 22 to 35, and many are on their second or even third career.
Though the building trades in London have seen a sharp downturn lately, especially in the residential sector, Foster said there are still opportunities in commercial renovation and public works projects.
While many manufacturing jobs may be gone forever, Foster said the need for trades people will rebound in the long term, especially as baby boomers start to retire.
"In the middle of the winter, if your furnace conks out, you are going to need someone to fix it."
NATS has been in London for three years and its parent company also operates the Medix School in London. NATS also has campuses in Maryland and Pennsylvania.
In addition to the HVAC program, the college teaches building trades and electrical technology.
The school has 50,000 square feet of shop space and teaches six-hour morning, afternoon and evening classes to accommodate people who are working or have families. Each program is 43 weeks long.
Foster said there is an emphasis on intensive, hands-on training. He said the environment is different from a university or community college, where the atmosphere is more social and academic.
He said the NATS students tend to be older, serious and motivated. There is no goofing off.
"Typically, a lot of students go to community college to figure out what they want to do," he said.
"These people know what they want and we treat them that way."
Foster said there is still an inaccurate image of trades as dirty, blue-collar jobs. He said the hands-on approach allow students to discover a career they may have snubbed when they left high school.
"If they physically do it for a year, they will figure out very quickly if this is what they want to do for a living."
To encourage a more professional, disciplined atmosphere, students wear school shirts and caps, colour-coded by program.
"We want them to get a job and keep it, so we also teach them the soft skills of employment attitude, attendance and accountability," said Foster.
There are a few conventional classrooms, but even they were mostly built by building technology students as a class project.
Most of learning is done in a big hangar-like building that is a beehive of activity.
Students are building small homes and sheds from scratch, wiring up breaker boxes and taking apart and reassembling HVAC units.
The students also build small garden sheds that are sold to the public for about $800, much below the usual retail cost.
The students also get demonstrations of the latest tools, attend trade shows and work with Habitat for Humanity.
The practical approach is working for Patrick Collison, who was using a mitre saw to construct a building frame.
The Sudbury native spent years helping out his grandfather, who was a plumber, but got little formal training.
Now enrolled in building technology, he is learning fast. "I like the fact that it is hands-on and you're not stuck in a classroom all day. It's like being on a job site," he said.
Two months into the program, he is hoping to get his credentials as a plumber or carpenter and looking forward to a brighter, more secure future.
"I plan to be in construction my whole life. I give it a year or two and it will come back," he said.
Copyright 2010 NATS London
