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| Chamber Corner. (Image: StarNewsDaily.com) |
CHAUTAUQUA COUNTY, NY --
Manufacturing Gets the Notice it Deserves (Part I)
Written by Todd J. Tranum, President & CEO of the Chautauqua County Chamber of Commerce & Executive Director of the Manufacturers Association of the Southern Tier
In the late eighties as Generation X, my generation, prepared to leave high school, economists, the media and our educators told us that we were making the great transition to a “service economy” and that manufacturing “held no future.” We were told that manufacturing jobs were leaving the country forever; gone, never coming back. Somehow, the pundits claimed, America would thrive as a service economy.
I was never comfortable with this notion that we could be a great economic power without making things.
My grandfathers made things and they earned a decent living. My Grandpa Funicello hammered out Crescent wrenches, while my Grandpa Tranum built steel furniture and elevators at Dahlstrom Manufacturing.
I was mesmerized by stories about their jobs and looked forward to hearing the presses pound and seeing that huge Crescent wrench over the factory door.
Despite contentious labor-management relations, plant closings, and layoffs, they never spoke a bad word about manufacturing in America. They understood the products they made were mainly exported out of our community in order to bring new dollars into our economy – dollars that paid local mortgages, bought groceries and helped them raise families.
Nonetheless, I pursued a liberal arts education with no real sense of what I was going to do with it. A friend of mine knew he wanted to be a welder, completed his technical education, and immediately got a job. He was an exceptional welder and his skills were in much higher demand than mine.
I graduated from college and struggled a few years to find my path. I do not regret my decisions, because they worked out. But looking back, the economists, the media and the educators got it wrong.
We did not quit making things in America. Manufacturing survived. But we did not prepare for its survival, as so many in my generation and those that followed heard a flawed message. As a result, our nation has a lot of catching up to do to rebuild our manufacturing workforce.
Manufacturing has changed significantly over the past two decades. Technology created the need for fewer employees to do specific jobs, and also made the skill requirements for filling those jobs even greater.
We are now faced with too few young people in the pipeline to fill the manufacturing jobs available. Complicating the picture is the fact that the baby-boomer generation is now starting to leave the workforce.
I am proud to say that here in Chautauqua County we have taken the right steps to reframe this challenge as an opportunity.
In 2000, a group of local business and education leaders started talking about the struggles faced by manufacturers seeking a qualified workforce. Jamestown Community College President Greg DeCinque; Bob Barber, who was Dean of Continuing Education; Lou DiPalma, then Executive Director of the Private Industry Council; and Jay Churchill, Heidi Nauleau, and Gary Johnson, all with the Manufacturers Association at the time, started a discussion among their organizations to determine how they could partner to maximize resources and address the challenges.
Legislator Joe Trusso brought the issue to the forefront as a county policy issue around workforce development, while at the state level our late Senator Pat McGee and former Assemblyman Bill Parment carried the torch, and the Hultquist Foundation and the Manufacturers Association made financial investments to construct the Manufacturing Technology Institute (MTI) at JCC.
I had the good fortune to coordinate the startup of the MTI facility, working on programming and equipment acquisition. With my good friend Tim Piazza, who was then a JCC Professor and is now President of Blackstone-Ney Ultrasonics, and with the continued support of JCC and many others, we opened the doors of MTI in 2003.
To my knowledge there is no other partnership in the United States where a Community College and a privately funded business association have been able to bring their resources together in this way.
MAST and JCC, with help from so many individuals and organizations, worked hand in hand to start this initiative that continues to serve our community. Enormous credit goes to the vision of Greg DeCinque and former Dean Bob Barber at JCC, without whom there would be no MTI to help develop our manufacturing workforce for the future.
Jamestown “Salute to Our Finest”
The Jamestown Community Chamber of Commerce will honor a group of distinguished businesses and their representatives during the 10th annual “Salute to Our Finest” award reception February 23rd at the Lillian Ney Renaissance Center.
Being honored are: Mike Metzger, Community Service Award; Framemasters, Retailer of the Year; the twelve Jamestown area foundations, Service to Humanity Award; Jamestown Rental Properties, Business of the Year; Jamestown Savings Bank Arena, Pride of Jamestown; Jamestown Gazette, New Business of the Year; and Weber-Knapp Company, Manufacturer of the Year.
The reception and hors d’oeuvres buffet will be held from 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. with the award presentation at 6:00 p.m.
The cost is $20 per person and reservations can be made by calling the Jamestown Community Chamber of Commerce office at 484-1101.
State Legislative Breakfast March 9
The Chautauqua County Chamber of Commerce State Legislative Breakfast will be held Friday, March 9 at the Lakewood Rod & Gun Club. This annual event allows local business people to meet directly with State Senator Cathy Young and Assemblyman Andrew Goodell.
Registration will begin at 8:00am, followed by breakfast at 8:30. The cost to attend is $15 for Chamber members or $20 for non-members.
The 2012 State Legislative Breakfast is sponsored by: Cummins, DFT Communications, Jamestown Savings Bank Arena, Jamestown Community College, Jamestown Mattress, KeyBank, Nestle Purina, NRG, OBSERVER, The Post-Journal, Serta Mattress, WCA Hospital, and WJTN/WWSE/WKSN/WHUG/WQFX.
