[stepfordfemme]

Originally Posted by ruby_woo

Finding people who have experience working on a production sewing floor, cutting floor, etc., isn't easy. To be blunt, these aren't really jobs that Americans and Canadians are being trained for anymore. The average person working in our factory is a 50-year female Chinese immigrant.

Here's a question though, aren't these jobs that would in fact say 20 years ago, train their employees-- without the expectation that these employees come in ready with experience?

I think this is a big shift in the labour market that large companies like to complain about labour pool shortages as a way to outsource and bring in immigrant workers.They don't wish to spend large amounts of money in order to train new workers. In the past companies TRAINED employees in order to keep them, create loyalty and shape the workers that they need. The expectation wasn't that employees came ready suited for the work.

And there's cost. Our 200+ factory employees mostly make above minimum wage, have health care benefits for their families, we maintain the factory to comply with all safety standards, we have lots of parties, start all employees with 3 weeks vacation, and we just renovated the lunch room and it looks fierce.

I think people do want these jobs, but I am also from the generation where young people are applying to what seem to be "entry-level" jobs where they require insane amounts of experience/education for what is "skill-level" work. I can think back to a job that I applied to a few months ago which required a university degree for an admin assistant job!

The burden is now on the employee to fund and pay for their training to even get a job in the first place. I think that this impacting greatly why people would bother to invest a ton of money to get trained to do skill level work. I think that this was a burden that never happened to previous generations. There was a sense of company loyalty, that a company could give you a path for advancement. Don't even get me started on trying to get a company to help you to get trained to benefit them! Whole other thread right there.

I'm not trying to de-rail a thread here & I truly appreciated this post.I have some friends in recruiting and I see their frustrations as well. I believe that supporting local companies that don't outsource will foster better jobs in our communities. Skilled workers are a tenet to a solid economy, so as consumers we need to support companies that do encourage keeping jobs & manufacturing in our own countries.