After Layoffs, Manufacturer Looks To Training Program
Things are looking up at L.S. Starrett. After two years in which sales plummeted, employees were laid off and whole shifts were cancelled, the Athol tool company is hiring.
But with real economic recovery still far from assured, the company is happy that it can train its new hires with the help of a program that minimizes its expenses and limits the risk of a mismatch.
Provided by the Worcester-based Massachusetts Manufacturing Extension Partnership and funded by a grant from the U.S. Department of Labor, the Mobile Outreach Skills Training (MOST) took 12 workers from local unemployment offices and taught them two full weeks’ worth of manufacturing skills.
Aside from one who went to a different local manufacturer, the trainees are now in the midst of eight weeks of on-the-job training at Starrett.
On Again, Off Again
Joel Shaughnessy, Starrett’s human resources director, said the company has used the MOST program several times in the past, just not for the last few years since its workforce has been shrinking rather than growing.
He said one advantage of the program is that the potential employees must commit to the two weeks of training that they won’t be paid for.
“They have to put a little skin in the game themselves,” he said.
Leslie Parady, the MassMEP project manager who ran the training, said it covers everything from reading blueprints to running a lathe using computerized equipment.
“They have to drink from a fire hose of information,” she said.
Shaughnessy said Starrett is hiring, rather than simply recalling workers it laid off last year, in part because it didn’t lose as many workers as it could have.
The company used a state job-sharing program to keep as many workers as possible on the job, working reduced hours and collecting some unemployment benefits.
Shaughnessy said most of the people stuck with the company despite the reduction of hours. In part, he said, that was because Starrett had been busy before the downturn so workers had been taking significant overtime, and that meant they got relatively high unemployment compensation.
“Most stuck with it,” he said. “You always worry that you’re going to lose some key people because their hours are down.”
Altogether, Shaughnessy said, the number of workers fell from more than 700 to around 625 during the recession, but that includes retirements as well as layoffs. Starrett has recalled some workers, he said, but the current openings are in a relatively specialized area, and they’re second-shift jobs, so the company had to do some new hiring.
He said the relatively low wages of entry-level workers was definitely not an issue.
“I would rather have an experienced operator back than training someone new,” he said. “It’s a long training curve.”
Shaughnessy said most of the new hires do have some background in manufacturing, though at least one is brand new to the industry.
As the new workers move through their on-the-job training, Shaughnessy said, he’s waiting to see not only if they turn out to be good at the work but also if sales keep picking up so that the company can keep hiring.
“I’m still hoping that our recovery is ongoing and will continue,” he said.
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