The Fabricator - November 2013

More Thoughts on Innovation Needs Manufacturing

Editor’s Note: In the Readers’ Forum section of the October 2013 issue of The FABRICATOR, we included some thoughts e-mailed to us by manufacturers who disagreed with a thesis from a University of California at Berkeley professor who suggested that manufacturing is not as good at generating quality job growth as high-tech industries. Here we include some more reader comments responding to this coverage originally found in the August 2013 edition of the “Fabricating Update” e-newsletter. (To subscribe to the “Fabricating Update” or its sister e-newsletters, visit http://www.fma-communications.com/newsletters.

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I have been in the welding business/industry for more than 50 years. I have seen the manufacturing jobs shrink in our country by leaps and bounds. In my county alone we have lost more than 20,000 such jobs in manufacturing and related crafts. I worked for a bridge fabricator that employed around

100 workers in a plant that was next door to a plant that produced massive power plant parts. Both plants are now closed.

This is not totally due to the “high-tech” industry, but in part it is. Shipping the jobs overseas and to Mexico and Canada caused most of our manufacturers to drop out of the game. The quality has gone down in many of the products that were produced in our area, but, unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to matter much. My inspectors have rejected jobs from other countries that would not meet the ASME or AWS requirements for fabricated products.

Perhaps the saddest part of this scenario is the loss of skilled workers who are no longer mentoring the youngsters that would fill the positions that are left in the manufacturing industry. Several pipe fabricators are searching for the “old-timers” to train for the oil and gas boom in our area. Most of the retirees are not willing to go back to work, even for the high wages they are offered.

R. Carlisle “Carl” Smith

St. Albans, W.V.

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