JIM ALGIE - Owen Sound Sun Times - March 4, 2008

Area business leaders talked about the looming shortage of skilled workers Monday morning. In the afternoon, they went looking for potential new employees at Georgian College in Owen Sound.

Gord Lawson, a licensed carpenter for 30 years, has been building custom homes and cottages on the Bruce Peninsula for the past 14 years. He has a lengthening list of clients, but doesn’t know where the next generation of carpenters to build for them will come from.

“If they can get trained and they’re people who care about what they’re doing . . . once they get their ticket they can name their price,” Lawson said in an interview at the college job fair. “Society is going to realize that trades are valuable when there’s nobody around who knows what they’re doing.”

Lawson was part of a Grey Bruce Building Trades Council booth at the college job fair. In the morning, he was part of a group of about 40 area business and government officials discussing strategies for attracting workers for training and for jobs that may go wanting.

Regional training board research identifies a shortage of skilled tradespeople as the leading issue facing the southern Georgian Bay, Lake Huron economy, board executive director Gemma Mendez-Smith said.

Research based on 2001 census data also shows an aging workforce and a continued emigration of young people from the area.

“To be honest with you, I’m scared. I think we’re in trouble as a country,” moderator and Bruce Community Futures Development Corporation manager Gerry Taylor, who highlighted retirement demographics, told the audience.

“In 1991, there were six people in the workforce for every retired person. By 2025, it will be three.”

Employers are growing desperate for workers.

Recruiters for Great Lakes shipping contractors Upper Lakes and Algoma Central had splashy displays at the college job fair. Across the aisle, representatives from Transcontinental RBW Graphics, which recently announced it was expanding its Owen Sound plant, were looking for staff. Several financial agencies, the Canadian Forces, the Ontario Provincial Police, Ontario Power Generation, Bell Alliant, Grey Bruce Health Services and Bruce Power were also at the fair.

Bruce Power has been recruiting for several years and several area employers agreed that company’s wages, which can exceed $40 an hour, are another hurdle to attracting new employees.

There have been times in recent years when Owen Sound custom machining contractor Ron Krueger has felt like he’s training millwrights for Bruce. As soon as they are trained, off they go there for higher wages, he said.

Even the shipping companies, which offer good pay, feel the pressure. Bruce Power can offer nautical engineers a steady home life that sailing can’t provide.

Marine graduates are paid $50,000 to start for a six and a half month work year. Ships captains and chief engineers command six-figure salaries.

Algoma Central crewing manager Brooke Cameron spends most of February and March recruiting new sailors at Canada’s four marine training centres. Algoma needs 1,400 people to crew its ships now and business prospects are upbeat. Cameron says the company can’t meet demand.

“We have a large number of people retiring in the next five years and we don’t have the people” to replace them, Cameron said.

Students are catching on to the skills shortage situation, Georgian College co-op consultant Lise Mollon said. High school students flocked to the event despite the fact school buses hired to bring them from school weren’t running Monday because of road conditions in the morning.

“I don’t think we could have done this eight years ago,” Mollon said of the job fair. “I don’t think we could have had the buy-in from employers.”

Now companies are clamoring for access.

“I was turning people away. We were full,” Mollon said.