Steel Workers in Canada / There are going to be jobs

“There are going to be jobs. There’s going to be good quality jobs,” said Dr. Peter Warrian, a senior research fellow at the University of Toronto and leading Canadian expert in the steel industry.

In fact, Warrain projects that the steel industry in Canada will need more than 20,000 new workers in the next five years to replace retiring staff and fill new jobs.

But getting those jobs will be different than in the past. Traditionally in Hamilton, all it took was a high school diploma to get a job at a steel mill and sons followed fathers into the mills. Now, workers need to be skilled.

And it may not be easy for the industry to find people with the advanced skills it needs.

“There’s a shortfall, so part of this is, what are kids in high school talking about because they’re making course selections that are important to what happens to them later,” he said. “Virtually everybody who works at a steel mill going forward will have a $70,000 plus job, but they’re going to have at least two years of community college before getting into it.”

He said high school guidance councillors, teachers and colleges need to get this through their heads.

Why so many jobs? A good part of it driven by demographics in the industry that has a bulge of workers in the 50s and 60s with 30 years experience.

At ArcelorMittal Dofasco in Hamilton, they’re preparing to hire 1,500 employees in the next three to five years, a rate that\’s double what was happening in past  years.

“We will have to replace most of those people,” said Rob Parker, Vice President Corporate Administration and Human Resources at AMD. “We will have a requirement for highly skilled technologists and engineers and many other occupations. It\’s a pretty significant knowledge loss.”

Dofasco currently employs 5,200 at their Hamilton operation.

Chosen excerpts by Job Market Monitor. Read the whole story at 

via Steel Shutdown: Why steel offers workers a bright future – Latest Hamilton news – CBC Hamilton.