New opportunity

There are American success stories in automation. Lou Morales, who trains young apprentices at the Festo Corp. plant in suburban Cincinnati, understands the negative images associated with manufacturing that cause many young people — often steered by their parents — to shun the sector as a career. Years ago, he showed up at his steel mill at Glen Cove, New York, to find he no longer had a job. It had shut down.

“I’ve never seen so many padlocks in my life,” recalled Morales, 60.

But now he assures young people that their “future is endless” in manufacturing because new kinds of jobs are being created and the skills they are learning are in high demand.

U.S. manufacturing workers, excluding managers, make an average of $44,000 a year, according to government data. That’s just 2.8 percent higher, adjusted for inflation, than a decade ago after years of shifting of jobs overseas or to nonunion states. And it compares with a much higher 8 percent gain for the labor force as a whole over the past decade.

But a typical mechatronics engineer with a four-year degree can earn $97,000 a year; a typical software developer makes just over $100,000.

Festo Didactic, the education arm of Germany-based

Festo, last year launched two-year mechatronics apprenticeship programs in Ohio with Sinclair Community College, and is already expanding its U.S. apprenticeship offerings.

At Festo’s plant in Mason, a northeast Cincinnati suburb, the floors are clean, the aisles uncluttered. The plant remains mostly quiet as workers monitor a sophisticated robotic distribution system that self-adjusts its work flow to prevent backups.

“This kind of factory has nothing to do with the factory we knew in the 1960s or 1980 or even 2000,” said Yannick Schilly, who heads global supply for Festo’s North American business.

At GE Aviation, internships and co-ops with colleges attract younger prospective employees, while veteran workers are retrained.

With a machining background, Terry Cox, 54, works in testing of ceramic matrix composites, which make engines more durable, heat-resistant and efficient.

“It’s the design of the future,” Cox said. “There is a lot of opportunity here.”

But there’s not much demand locally these days for the kind of repetitive tasks, such as sewing-type work, that Herbie Mays has done. He picked through personal papers on his dining room table one recent morning, grumbling about jobs going to Mexico.

“I guess those people overseas who make $12 a day, you can’t compete against them,” he said. But he acknowledged there are “plenty of jobs out here . ... What you have to do is get training or education.”

He’d like to do that, but he also needs work to supplement his benefits. He sighed. “I’ve been fighting to figure out the best thing to do ... and haven’t came up with no answers.”

Rugaber reported from Virginia Beach and Washington, D.C. Contributing to this report were Associated Press business writer Yuri Kageyama in Tokyo, AP writer Jan M. Olsen in Kalundborg, Denmark; AP videojournalist Mike Householder in Detroit, and AP photographer John Minchillo in Cincinnati.