Young workers retool for success
Training centre partners with industry to fill demand for skilled tradespeople
A few years ago, Sarah Pare was enrolled in the music program at the University of Windsor and working at a butcher shop to help pay for tuition.
She ended up dropping out of school.
“It was just too expensive to try and pay my way through it,” the 24-year-old said Tuesday. “I needed to figure something else out and get a job out of it.”
That something else turned out to be the St. Clair College Skilled Trades Regional Training Centre where Pare trained as a CNC machinist. St. Clair marked the one-year anniversary of taking over the training centre on St. Etienne Boulevard from Valiant Tool & Mold. It brought back graduates like Pare to share their stories.
“I love my job,” Pare said of being a CNC machinist for New Tec Tool Ltd. “I love going to work every day. Not everyone can say that.”
Pare said she heard about the centre through friends.
“I knew nothing about it,” she said. “I didn’t even know how to hold a drill.”
The training centre works in partnership with local industry.
“We’re producing parts for 36 companies locally,” said Mike Ouellette, the centre’s general manager. “The students are getting real training making these parts on the latest tooling equipment. They come in green as grass and leave as a CNC programmer. It’s a great fit because it saves industry a lot of time and training.”
Ouellette said the local industrial workforce is set to lose 40 per cent of its talent pool over the next four to five years due to retirements.
“I can’t give them enough people,” he said. “Industry needs programs like this.”
Jeff Lemmon graduated from the centre in December 2016 and started at Centerline Ltd. in Windsor the next month.
“I had been out of school for a bit in a couple of dead-end jobs,” Lemmon, 28, said. “This is more career driven. I want to keep moving up.”
Lemmon had previously graduated from the University of Windsor with a degree in biology and followed that up with a teaching degree.
“Unfortunately there are no jobs in those sectors,” he said.
The ‘earn while you learn’ program offered at the centre pays students $14 an hour and supplies them with a tool box and tools valued at $1,500.
After taking the 46-week training, many step right into full-time jobs.
Chelynne Schram is a 5-axis machinist at Cavalier Tool. She enlisted in the Canadian military at 17, right out of high school.
“I didn’t do the trades in high school, but a friend brought me to his shop and said, ‘This is what I do,’ ” the 26-year-old said. “I looked at the machines and thought ‘this is cool.’ ”
Schram enrolled at the training centre almost four years ago when Valiant ran it, and has been working in her field since.
The facility just added two cutting edge 5-axis machines to its stable.
Equipment upgrades over the last 12 months “ensures our curriculum remains relevant and state-of-the-art,” said St. Clair College president Patti France. “This is just the first year of what we know will be decades of success for this centre.”