-OCTOBER 16, 2019 - VOLUME 55, EDITION 01 - E UGENE, OR-
Help wanted: manufacturers
Photo Credit: John Adair
Eugene mayor speaks at career expo Kyra Roesle Reporter
On Tuesday, Oct. 8, a cramped basement room at the LCC campus was visited by Eugene Mayor Lucy Vinis. Surrounding her were not only flashy robotic arms and heavy-duty production equipment but there were also a handful of local manufacturing professionals and recruiters. The reason for the gathering was seemingly simple: help convince unsure students that joining the manufacturing, engineering or factory labor market is a choice career move. With the energy, incentives, modern technology, and the mayor eagerly promoting the programs, one would think this was a sure success. However, it is not as easy as it looks. The ASME — American Society of Mechanical Engineers — and the Society of Manufacturing Engineers programs, which have lived a tenuous 25 years in Eugene, have struggled with recruitment. They’ve already got the market cornered on state-of-the-art technology, equipment, facilities, and even workers rights and benefits — all that’s left is populating these buildings. Their current, greatest challenge: the turnover rate. “Boomers are falling out left and right,” said worried SME board member Glen Bjurling, “and where are all of our replacements?” Mayor Vinis delivered a speech in service of these new goals and challenges. Between the shiny, gyrating metal arms and massive, sleek 3-D printers, the mayor spoke in support of the program. “We have not served our children well,” she said. “We have had three generations of kids that have not been encouraged or introduced to good factory jobs. These are lucrative, moveable jobs that teach transferable skills, all we need are people to want them.” It was not always the case that Lane was in such dire straits for eligible workers. In the early 1970s the Lane County area was rife with wood manufacturers. When the era changed from wood products to mainly plastic or metals in the late 1970s, a new face of industry emerged: the “dirty metal polluters,” as one SME board member put it. In order to dodge environmental, labor and local laws that prohibited some of the dirty tricks that had become a common, crucial characteristic of early manufacturers, companies just sent their businesses elsewhere. In the span of 30 years, the Lane manufacturing economy had hit a slump. Scant few wanted to work in places that were not clean, moral, sustainable, or safe.
When the ASME and SME programs were born, they took all this into careful consideration. Factories needed to offer more to the community in which they lived. They needed to meet the demands of the city and the people. With strict guidance from the local governments and willingness to meet these demands, local and large manufacturers have since cleaned up their act. They are reportedly more safe and clean than their predecessors; run-off, carbon footprint, visual, air and groundwater as well as landfill pollution have all been addressed and managed since the 70s. Regulations such as the Good Citizens Act, State and Federal Right To Know, the EPA and local liability ensure they behave.
By endorsing and investing in these programs, Mayor Vinis believes the prospective candidates will be incentivized to replace outgoing workers. With more money behind vocational outreach, education, training and internship offers, the slow climb to repopulating the local factories will be hastened. “This isn’t just the big manufacturers like Patterson Pacific, JCI or Parker-Hannifin,” said SME board member Glen Bjurling. “Lane county has close to 600 local manufacturers that benefit from this program and give back to the local economy.” Lane County hosts 567 manufacturing and production companies who, according to the Bureau of 2019 labor
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President pitches four pillars President Hamilton discusses her plans for the next year. David Galbreath Editor-In-Chief
Coming into the 2019 fall term Lane Community College’s president Margaret Hamilton is ambitiously pursuing her goals for the 2019-2020 school year. Her goals are for planning the future longevity of LCC. She has broken down this plan into four points she calls “lifts.” One primary lift in the plan is to reevaluate the deferred maintenance that is proving to be costly to the college. Concrete is chipping, the roof isn’t going to last, and Building 17 is almost uninhabitable to me. We really don’t have a grand entrance-way. I could go on and on to the tune of — let’s just say — 100 million dollars in deferred maintenance. That’s just stuff to be fixed,” Hamilton said. Hamilton has made it clear that her plan is not to cover up blemishes around the school or simply “paint” over the walls, but to fix what is broken.
News / pg 3
For the past two years, Hamilton and the administration have been refining a long term plan to renovate LCC’s main campus. She is asking for a bond from the county to fund this project and will have a master plan to pitch to the voters. Hamilton explained, “You’ve got to have a vision of what the campus should look like for the next 20-30 years.” Currently, the bond she is putting on the ballot will equate to a sum of 120 million dollars. This number may change after the Board of Education votes on her proposal. “The number one lift for this college is going out for a bond, asking the voters to help us reduce the deferred maintenance [and] moving toward the long term facility master plan,” Hamilton said. The bond will be voted on in either May or November depending on the vote for the proposal. Number two on her list of “lifts” is governance. The governance system is over a decade old, and it’s aging like any system, because it hadn't been paid any attention to,” Hamilton said. She added that during the
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Features / pg 4
Sports / pg 8
