Louisville Magazine

JUL 2013

Louisville Magazine is Louisville's city magazine, covering Louisville people, lifestyles, politics, sports, restaurants, entertainment and homes. Includes a monthly calendar of events.

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A 2012 Georgetown University Public Policy Institute report shows 29 million jobs paying a middle-class wage — more than $35,000 — exist in this country and don't require a bachelor's degree. Nearly half, instead, demand an associate's degree or occupational certifcate, education that used to fall under so-called vocational training, now dubbed career and technical education or CTE. Tat vocabulary swap occurred in 2006 with the reauthorization of a federal law named after Carl D. Perkins (a Kentucky congressman) that sets aside funds for CTE. It signals an efort to rebrand, shed the trenchant image of lazy kids getting tossed to voc ed after classroom failures. "Traditionally, vocational education has been for those kids. Still is, whether we call it vocational or career and technical," Stone says. "Oh, yes, philosophically we think it's a great idea, but my kid's going to college. Tat's just so deep." Te manufacturing industry fghts the same battle. According to the Manufacturing Institute, 79 percent of Americans feel a strong manufacturing base should be a national priority. But two-thirds of parents would encourage their kids to avoid seeking manufacturing jobs. Last year at Jeferson County Community and Technical College, Salinas heads to her gray Toyota pickup that wears a metal back bumper she welded. Te truck rattles to a start. She rolls down her window, pops her left elbow out and heads toward Preston Highway, the wind rufing a few curls that have escaped their ponytail. She has just two weeks left in high school. Don't you worry, don't you worry child. See heaven has a place for you… a male singer growls from her radio speakers. A few years ago, Salinas thought she'd become a veterinarian. But that posed daunting collegiate and post-collegiate expenses. She loves art, too. But quickly tired of classes. "I don't like drawing vases all day," she says. Don't you worry, don't you worry child. See heaven has a place for you… Fickle likes and dislikes defne the teenage years. But Salinas feels confdent she's found her niche in manufacturing. She enjoys leaving work with a bit of sweat on her neck, fngers blackened. "I never played with dolls," she says. "I was a mud kid." Don't you worry, don't you worry, child. See heaven's got a place for you … "Tere's always a demand for people (in) manufacturing," she continues. "Everyone says, 'Oh, it's going overseas.' We're letting them go overseas, not taking advantage of opportunities." "Traditionally, vocational education has been for those kids. Oh, yes, philosophically we think it's a great idea, but my kid's going to college. That's just so deep." — James Stone, director, National Research Center for Career and Technical Education students chose health majors (another rapidly growing feld with the potential for good pay) over the construction, machine tool and engineering programs by three to one. Part of this challenge stems from manufacturing's instability. Every time the economy sours, news vans inevitably line up outside the local factory to report on mass layofs. When it improves, press releases celebrating jobs fy out. "Manufacturing isn't dying," says Ken Carroll, president of the Foundation for Kentucky Industry. "It's changing. Evolving." He goes on to use, perhaps, the buzziest term in industry at the moment — "advanced manufacturing." Manufacturing has matured since the era of one worker screwing in a bolt 400 times a day. Computers and robots, for better or worse, now tackle much of the work. Te modern manufacturer must know how to fx and operate robots, how to utilize computer software to design equipment. Still, the word's also rooted in marketing. James Reddish with Greater Louisville Inc. works closely with area manufacturers who want the image polished. "It's safe," he says. "It's not 1950s Pittsburgh. How do we make it an area where people see value and want to go?" W alk into Jefersontown High School and the clanging of metal chimes just of to the right. Te school has arguably the district's strongest engineering and manufacturing programs. It's about 11 in the morning. In the school's expansive machine tech room, erratic blue and orange light shows project onto walls and gas tanks. Sparks fy. Electricity scratches at the air. When the clock hits noon, Salinas sets down her welding torch, leans back from a V-shaped joint she's trying to perfect, lifts her red welding hat and heads to work. As an nth/works apprentice, students go to school half the day, then spend four hours at the plant. She walks past the lunchroom packed with squealing teens. Friends will have to wait until this evening. She credits her parents, originally from Mexico, as passing down a strong work ethic. Her dad's built his own contracting business. "I'm more of a hands-on person because of him," she says. It's a short fve-minute walk home. Salinas already has her steel-toed boots on. After sliding into her nth/works T-shirt, she grabs beans and rice that her mom, who works as a baker at Walmart, has packed for her. 62 LOUISVILLE MAGAZINE 7.13 Salinas is entering manufacturing at a boomerang moment. Jobs are returning, though modestly. High fuel costs and companies not wanting to lose proprietary secrets to China or Mexico have inspired the trend. A recent Washington Post article reported that since January 2010, the United States has added 520,000 manufacturing jobs, a respectable number, but an estimated six million manufacturing jobs were lost between 2000 and 2009. Locally, the industry's showing promise. Some 6,500 manufacturing jobs have been added to the Louisville area in the last year, a 9 percent increase over the previous year. Te city landed second on a list of manufacturing "boom towns." At General Electric's Appliance Park, three new assembly lines produce energy-efcient water heaters, refrigerators and front-load washers. New products made by 3,000 newly hired local men and women, bringing the total number of workers up to 6,000. But in the early '70s, Appliance Park bustled with 23,000 workers. Over the last few years, another major employer, Ford, also expanded, investing $600 million in its Louisville Assembly Plant, adding 1,700 workers and relocating about 1,000 more from other shuttered Ford operations. It's tough, though. Cheap labor overseas has squeezed wages here. Te entry-level assembly line worker who could support a family in the 1950s would have to do so now at anywhere between $12 to $15 an hour. But especially at the smaller manufacturers, like nth/works, where a range of jobs exist — not just an assembly line worker and the people who fx malfunctioning machines — there's opportunity to move up. As Salinas nears the plant, she rolls past Daymar and Brown-Mackie, two for-proft colleges. She fgures if she hadn't found nth/works, she would probably go to JCTC. But she's not sure what she'd study. About 25 percent of JCTC's students don't have specifc goals in mind. Tat aimlessness often precedes dropping out. Close to 70 percent of JCTC students who enroll fail to complete a two-year program within three years. (A large number of part-time students may contribute to that.) Salinas parks her truck on a patch of rough grass and punches in an employee code. As she enters the plant, keys jangling from a hook on her jeans, she's un-phased by the robust, arrogant greeting of machines. It intimidated her at frst, especially after a safety video showed a frozen piece of meat obliterated in a die machine. Now, it's cool. Tere have been times when, welding helmet on, shoulders squared over a piece of steel, torch spraying

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