By Ana Campoy
BAYTOWN, Texas--Heather Betancourth, a representative from
Chevron Phillips Chemical Co., told a crowded room of community
college students what they wanted to hear: Her employer needs to
fill 3,000 positions in the coming years. Starting salaries can top
$100,000.
But here in the greater Houston region, dangling six-figure jobs
is no longer enough to find qualified applicants for many
positions. So the company has a scholarship program that covers
community-college tuition, Ms. Betancourth elaborated, and pays
interns around $18 an hour to work at its chemical facility.
Chevron Phillips, a joint venture between energy giants Chevron
Corp. and Phillips 66, is among dozens of companies that are
spending millions of dollars in the nation's fifth-largest
metropolitan area to train a local labor force that they say is
unprepared to hold the jobs they are creating.
It is a sizable private-sector effort to address a gap between
available jobs and the skill level of the local population--one
that speaks to the national challenge of narrowing income
inequality and reviving the sagging middle class.
"This is something that was necessary to ensure the supply of
workers that we need," said Peter Cella, Chevron Phillips's chief
executive.
Well-paying blue-collar jobs abound in Houston and other parts
of the country, but employers complain that it's hard to fill them
due to a lack of technical training required to do them. The
mismatch is pushing companies in some areas to take an active role
in workforce development, a necessary step to improve the
situation, said Joseph Fuller, at senior lecturer at Harvard
Business School who has studied the issue.
Identifying a generational problem, the Greater Houston
Partnership, a regional business association whose major backers
include Exxon Mobil Corp., Royal Dutch Shell PLC and BP PLC, is
going back to pre-kindergarten, spearheading an initiative to
improve early-childhood education.
Dow Chemical recently launched an apprenticeship program in
Houston, at a cost of $100,000 a participant, which it hopes will
generate workers to run its new plants.
In northeastern Ohio and western Pennsylvania, some 100 firms
are backing the Oh-Penn Manufacturing Collaborative, which was
created by local employers to market careers in that sector and
revamp the curriculum of local training programs to produce
graduates ready for the area's machine-building jobs.
In Chicago, Skills for Chicagoland's Future, a nonprofit
placement agency, is helping local employers find candidates, and
then splitting the bill with them to train them.
The problem is perhaps more pressing in the Houston area, which
over the next three years is expected to generate nearly 60,000
middle-skill jobs in the petrochemicals and construction sectors as
plants expand and older workers retire, according to a study
commissioned by the Greater Houston Partnership. Many of them pay
two to three times the minimum wage.
But while a high-school diploma might have been sufficient to
land factory work in the past, many of the Houston jobs require
technical training that students aren't getting in public school.
Many students aren't even aware the jobs exist.
The result is that many jobs in greater Houston aren't being
filled by local workers. The metro area's poverty rate rose to
16.4% in 2013 from 16.1% in 2005 according to U.S. Census data,
even as the area's economy expanded by 38% during that period,
outpacing the country's biggest cities.
At Meador Staffing Services, which helps Houston area employers
find workers, 60% of job seekers are disqualified. Many fail a
basic-skills test that measures abilities like how to use a ruler,
the company says; others have a criminal record or test positive
for drugs.
Those who fulfill the requirements are highly sought after. Mike
Tupa, operations manager at a Pasadena, Texas, plant owned by
detergent maker Sun Products Corp., said the labor market for plant
operators is so tight that a recent hire didn't even make it to his
first day of work because he was lured to another job before
then.
"It's a dog-eat-dog world to make sure you can stay competitive
in the pay and the benefits," he said.
Part of the problem behind the skilled-worker shortage, he and
others say, is that until recently local high schools were
channeling students toward four-year university degrees instead of
technical careers.
But while more than 75% of Texas high-school graduates enroll in
higher education, less than 30% of those who start college earn a
bachelor's degree, according to the latest statistics compiled by
the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, a state agency.
Sali McNeal is among the workers trying to bridge the skills
gap. After high school he went to college to become an engineer,
but dropped out, ending up driving a forklift at a scrapyard. Now
Mr. McNeal, 26, is about to obtain an associate degree which could
more than double his income. He already landed an internship with
Chevron Phillips.
But his struggle points to the difficulties underemployed
workers face striving to move into the middle class. To pay for
college, he's working a weekend job selling car parts. During
weekdays, he often stays up until 2 a.m. to study, all while
raising three children.
Local community colleges are trying to lower those kinds of
barriers. Part of a $1.5 million Exxon Mobil grant is going toward
scholarships for workers in need of training. Colleges are also
offering night classes for working students and creating short
courses to quickly qualify them for better-paying jobs.
Despite that kind of help, a key challenge remains: Many
Houstonians can't afford to stop working to gain new skills, even
if it means higher pay in the future, community groups say.
"The issue is that folks need to work to pay the rent and
support their families," said Matthew Cox, director of family
education programs at Houston's Memorial Assistance Ministries, a
nonprofit that offers worker training.
So Chevron Phillips is trying to enlist potential employees
earlier, at the high-school level. Part of that is marketing to
convince students dead-set on a white-collar job to consider one in
manufacturing. That includes handing out sunglasses to students at
job fairs and producing promotional videos, like one that shows a
Chevron Phillips employee driving a convertible Porsche.
Together with Phillips 66, the company also financed a $1.6
million "Petrochemicals Academy" in Sweeny, Texas, where local
high-school students learn how to run a petrochemical plant while
earning credit toward an associate degree. More than 60 students
have enrolled in the program, which is a collaboration between the
two companies, and the local community college and school
district.
Mariela Lopez, a senior, signed up for petrochemical courses,
but she's planning to become a professional photographer after she
graduates.
"Just in case it doesn't work out, I'll have the plan B, which
is going to the plant."
Write to Ana Campoy at ana.campoy@wsj.com
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