Grant to help boost training in manufacturing sector.

Byline: Joe Mosley The Register-Guard

The Lane Workforce Partnership has received a $275,000 state grant to address shortages of skilled manufacturing workers and encourage students and young workers to enter into the manufacturing sector.

Robin Onaclea, business services coordinator for the Workforce Partnership, said the grant will help launch a new initiative to bring trained workers into the employment pool. It is in response to a survey conducted last year that found shortages of skilled workers such as welders, machinists, drafters and engineering technicians at 68 percent of local manufacturing companies.

"There are some pretty dire shortages there," Onaclea said.

The Lane Workforce Partnership grant was one of seven grants totaling $1.4 million that were issued statewide on Wednesday to various workforce education and training agencies.

The grant money, approved by the 2007 Legislature, is the latest element of the Employer Workforce Training Fund that was created in 2003 by Gov. Ted Kulongoski. In five years, the governor's initiative has contributed to the employment training of 27,000 people.

"Workforce development is the single biggest factor in business retention, expansion and recruitment," Kulongoski said in announcing Wednesday's grant awards.

The Lane Workforce Partnership grant will be used to coordinate ongoing efforts of the RV Consortium and the Emerald Valley High Performance Enterprise Consortium, and to assess the need for worker training in emerging job categories such as robotics and mechatronics - a combination of mechanical, electronic and software engineering.

It also willbe used to transform training programs at Lane Community College from what is described as a current "push system" in which students are pumped out into the labor pool, into a "pull system" that is driven by specific needs of manufacturers.

The program alsowill seek to identify and train workers for job categories that are common among local manufacturers, and will create an outreach campaign to bring high school graduates and community college students into targeted training programs.

A summary sheet of information used by the Workforce Partnership's application for the grant indicates that 40 percent of Lane County's manufacturing workforce is in the "preretirement" age range of 45 to 65, and will need to be replaced in coming years.

"A lot of people don't know the diversity of careers that are available in manufacturing," Onaclea said Wednesday.

"If you go into a modern manufacturing facility, computers are everywhere. There are a lot of opportunities out there that young people aren't aware of."