We have the same problem here. Can't find any qualified tradesmen, and when you hire a new trainee, once they find out how much work "working" is, they don't want to be there. "It's too hard"... "My feet hurt"... "Can't we go home yet"...
But I've seen the other side of the coin too,
I worked for a few years at a manufacturing plant that makes "name brand" equipment and attachments. It used to be a union plant, but the company shut the whole plant down, and left it sitting idle for years. When they started it back up again, it was non-union, and non-direct hire employees. There are various "reasons" why this was done, depending on which side of the bargaining table you were on, but I don't want to turn this into that subject, so I'll just leave that part out.
I came to work there after this "change" was made, and the new operations started up again.
I will also leave out the name of the company.
Anyway, the way the plant operation was set up, the overseas parent company "owned" the subordinate company. The subordinate company carried the brand name, and "owned" the plant facility, and all the machinery inside. They brought in several labor agencies (temp agencies if you prefer) that would "own" the meat (laborers) that worked in the plant. The subordinate company had a contract with the temp agencies for so much "meat" on the floor per shift, per day, per week, etc. The "meat" (laborers) had an "at will" hiring agreement with the temp agency that they hired in under, and that was it. It was "supposed" to work that you would be hired from "temp-to-perm", and eventually would be a direct hired employee. I never saw anyone get this while I was there.
The temp agencies were constantly hiring, as turnover was extremely high. New hires with no experience, extremely hazardous working conditions, very low pay and very poor benefits. They (agencies) would hire people with no background experience at all, with the promise of, "We will train". However the training consisted of the last person to run that machine, station or function "showing" the new trainee how they did it. If that "trainer" forgot to show a step or sequence, (or more likely, never knew it himself), then the "new trainee" never learned it either. Now factor in the extremely high turnover rate (most lasted less than a year), with each "new" trainee becoming the next trainee's "trainer". So the labor force was poorly trained.
Now the subordinate company owned all the plant equipment inside the building. They had a handful of "management" positions that they held, various department heads, a few engineers, etc, but all the labor, supervisors and area managers were all from the temp services. The Plant Manager's previous job was store manager of the local Home Depot store in town, which he "managed" into running it out of business, and "managed" to get it closed down for good (we still don't have another Home Depot in town, yet the ones in Minot and Fargo seem to be running just fine, thank you). He had no previous manufacturing plant management experience at all.
Since the subordinate company owned all the machinery, materials, and equipment in the building, it fell on them to make any needed repairs to machines, tooling, support equipment, etc. They had direct-hired a few "maintenance techs" to staff the plant with, most worked day shift, and sometimes 1 or 2 would work on the night shift. They would be responsible for both the scheduled maintenance on machines, as well as repairs to any equipment that went down during production. They were also responsible for general facility maintenance, plumbing, heating, electrical, etc. Most of these maintenance guys also had very little experience, one came from an apartment complex maintenance position, and he was about the best qualified of the bunch, while I was there anyway. So these guys had very little experience, and their training consisted of walking up to the broken machine and trying to figure out why it didn't run.
Most of the machines that I worked with were 60's and 70's vintage, with a couple of 50's vintage, and a 40's vintage (punch presses). There was little to no documentation left with any of these machines. What we (machinists/operators) and the few "dedicated" (ie, actually trying to do a good job) maintenance guys would do was to search google, etc, to try to find repair manuals for some of these old machines to help figure out how to repair them. Most of the machines were just flat worn out. We had mills/lathes that wouldn't hold "true", punch presses that wouldn't hit with the same force 3 times in a row, and our favorite was a metal rolling machine that wouldn't make the same curved piece 2 times in a row.
Some of these equipment issues were just annoying, and slowed production. However, some of it was just flat out dangerous and could (and did) get people injured or killed. We had punch dies with cracks in them. Punch presses and brake presses with safety guards/barriers that were missing or disabled (because they didn't work). Or the only way to make the needed part was to disable the light barrier, because the way the piece was held/bent in the brake, the light barrier would interfere. Their "solution" was to disable the light barriers. Welding jigs with no safety shields over them (got one welder killed, and another had his hand and arm literally crushed). Each time these defects were brought up to supervisors, we were told that the (name brand) company was "aware of the problem", or "looking at solutions", and it was "Get back to work". OSHA did not exist in that building. At least while I was there.
The building itself was very dark inside, poorly lit from old sodium based overhead lights that were spaced 20-30 feet apart. Made it very difficult to do certain operations, read prints, read/use dial calipers or tape measures, etc. There were times I was literally using a handheld flashlight to see or read some fine print or make a fine measurement during a machine step. It was also always smoke filled (from the welders). It was like those pictures you see of Beijing, China when they show the severe air pollution there. When we brought up the poor lighting, and poor air filtration, we were told it was "too expensive" to make any upgrades.
I personally worked all around the machine area, and in the fabrication area. I ran punch presses, brake presses, cutting lasers, plasma cutter, cutoff saws, vertical mills, 3 axis mills and lathes. That all changed one day when I was injured while trying to save another worker from being very seriously injured (he was about to have both arms crushed). He was running a hydraulic cutoff saw, and I was running the one next to him. We were cutting raw steel stock down to part size to be sent on to a machine to mill them in some cases, turn them, or weld them in others. Anyway, we used forklifts to set long pieces of steel stock onto roller beds outside the building. Then we had roll up windows that we opened up in the side wall of the building, and used the outside motorized power roller bed to roll the raw stock into the infeed of the hydraulic saw, where it's clamps would grab the stack and pull it inward to the saw. Once you had the stack of raw stock clamped in the saw's hydraulic infeed clamp, you were usually ok. Only thing you had to worry about then was if the stack slipped against the clamp jaws a little as you moved it forward to cut each piece. The "dicey" part of the operation, was getting the stack to sit on the outside roller bed without falling over, and then getting it actually rolled in and clamped in the saw's hydraulic clamp, without any of it falling over.
Some stock was fairly easy to work with, wide, flat and pretty stable once you got it stacked on the feed rollers. Some was just a hassle, small stock, etc, pain to get it all lined up and stacked so it could be clamped. The "worst" one was when we went to cut 3"x4" steel solid bar stock. It came in 12' lengths, and it's dimensions made it very "tippy" on the rollers. This is what my co-worker was trying to get set up the day I got hurt. He had the stack on the outside rollers (we learned to be *very* good forklift drivers), and was bringing the stack in to set the infeed hydraulic clamp on the saw. I came over to help him for this part, because like I said, this bar stock was "dicey" to work with. As he's setting the clamp position, a couple of the bars in the stack started to shift sideways. Out of reflex, he put both of his hands against the side of the stack to try to "save" the stack from falling over. He's on one side of the stack, and I'm across the other side of the infeed bed and stack. I hear him say "oh, sh.." (or something similar), and his glove is caught, and the whole stack starts to shift his way. Without even thinking about it, I shot both my hands/arms over the top of the stack, grabbing as far down his side of the stack as I could, and with every ounce of my being, I heaved the stack my way. He was able to get his gloved hand free, as the stack came over my way and fell sideways on the infeed table. Since 8 feet of this bar stock was still outside the building, and coming through the window, it stayed on the roller table/saw infeed table. But I could tell I was hurt, and hurt bad. I was now the proud owner of a nice pair of bilateral hernias. I could feel my ripped abdomen muscles, and I had to sit down.
As I was sitting there waiting for everyone to come "look at me", the plant "safety officer" came by. He told me that the last guy that got hurt on the saws (before I was hired) was from the exact same cutting operation, same part, same saw setup issue. Only he was working by himself that day, and he lost an arm when the stack crushed his arm.
I was out 2 months, came back to "light duty", and they set me down (I was the only one allowed to have a stool to sit on) in front of a vertical mill, where I spent most of the remainder of my time there.
Both times I was nearly killed, were from forklift operators. They (temp services) hired a bunch of Somalian folks (not being political, but that is really where they were from) to come work in the plant. They used to love to run the standup electric forklifts as fast as they could. None of them had speed governors on them, and even though you were only supposed to drive them at "walking speeds", they would literally fly around the factory floor, and go skidding and drifting around the blind corners. It was a very loud place to work, and you couldn't hear the electric ones coming. I was nearly pinned to a corner support column twice, both times I was missed by inches, by these guys flying around the corner they couldn't see around, and there's me, walking down the lane (in the designated, painted "walk path"). I did see several of these guys hit corner pallet racking, resulting in the racking coming down like dominoes. One of these times, there was a person in the next racking isle that didn't dodge the falling parts and racking fast enough, and they got very seriously injured (they lived though). There were also no racking "stays" in the horizontal pallet support bars. So if you were picking a part off a shelf, and you raised up too far and hit the shelf above, it would lift it off the pins, and the upper shelf would fall down off the rack. Watched that happen several times, and only once or twice did anyone get hurt then. But the "brand name" company wouldn't spend any money to redo the racking with proper safety "stays", as it cost too much money.
We had a fire in the building once (while I was there). It started in a welding vent hood. It filled the whole welding and fabrication areas of the factory full of smoke. You literally couldn't see 6' in front of you. They (the brand name company) ordered one of their maintenance guys to unscrew and open the side access cover of the still burning hood system, with smoke pouring out of it, and reach inside and pull out the burning filters, and carry the whole burning mess outside with shovels. They (the brand name company) then ordered the temp agencies to order all their workers back to work. The fire department hadn't even showed up yet, and the whole half of the building was full of smoke (you literally couldn't see). I was standing next to an open door when the first responding fire crews showed up. They were in full respirators, smoke is just pouring out of the open door, and one of them stops and asks me why I'm just standing there. He tells me to get out of the building. The look on his face was priceless when I told him we were all ordered to go back to work. He's looking around in disbelief, with his respirator on, as we are all forced to man our machines and continue working.
As I said, OSHA didn't exist in that building.
I left a short time after the second time I was injured (hernias again). I figured it was only a matter of time before I was seriously injured or killed.
I don't work in that trade anymore.
But we still have trouble finding good help.
