"He passed the Siemens plant on Westinghouse Boulevard every day on his way to school without thinking much about it. Now the gas-turbine manufacturing plant is his future.
“I felt like a big privilege was given to me,” he says. “It’s basically your life plan set out for you.
They pay for your education, and a job is waiting for me.”
Torres and the other six apprentices, also from Olympic, started orientation Monday at the Westinghouse Boulevard plant. They can’t work at the plant until they turn 18, but their learning begins immediately.
“Honestly, this is going to be life-changing for the majority of them,” says
Pam Howze, Siemens’ training and development manager. “A lot probably weren’t going to be able to continue their education.”
Principals at Olympic’s five schools helped identify potential apprentices, says
Mike Realon, the schools’ career-development coordinator. School officials explained the opportunity to the students and their parents and helped them prepare for interviews.
In all, Siemens is investing $165,000 per apprentice, Howze says. But after three years, it will have fully trained employees. Other employees usually have to go through time-consuming retraining.
Siemens selected students with good grade-point averages, class rank and attendance records, she says.
Operations managers on the selection committee “felt good about the process and the level of candidates,” says
Mark Pringle, Siemens’ operations director.
An apprenticeship program won’t work well if a company can’t promise employment at its end. That’s not a problem at
Siemens Energy. The company has about 1,100 employees at its gas-turbine manufacturing plant. Pringle
expects to have 1,600 employees at year end and close to 2,000 within two years.
Turnover is only about 2%. But, Howze adds, about 40% of the machinists are eligible for retirement.
Siemens considers the apprenticeship program a community investment in work-force training. Apprentices will learn math, computer and technical skills at CPCC, augmented with time in the factory, Pringle says.
Machinists need programming skills to control machinery that transforms raw steel into complex shapes. “It may take a week, 24/7, to get it in the shape we want it,” Howze says. “The tolerances can be as thin as a sheet of paper.”
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