Educational Alliances
Two aviation maintenance managers partner with technical colleges to address the technician shortage
BY Monica L. Rausch, Associate Editor
June 1999
They are plastered throughout newspapers and trade publications and on the bulletin boards of technical colleges: job notices for aviation maintenance technicians and craftsmen. With growth in the aviation industry comes some growing pains, which maintenance managers are experiencing. The work is there, but the workers aren't.
"The good news is that technical schools across the country are responding in various degrees to this demand (for technicians/craftsmen)," says Kurt Herwald, president of Stevens Aviation.
Stevens employs some 350 technicians and craftsmen at various facilities in Greenville, SC; Lexington, KY; Dayton, OH; Nashville, TN; and Denver, CO.
Stevens, as well as Midcoast Aviation, which employs 473 technicians and craftsmen at three locations in Little Rock, AK, and St. Louis, MO, are teaming up with technical schools to build a future supply of employees.
We talked to Herwald and Gary Driggers, vice president and chief officer of operations for Midcoast Aviation, about these new partnerships and about the factors that may have caused this current dearth in technicians and tradesmen.
A Multitude of Causes
The technician shortage became acute for both managers in the last two
years. "In '97 it really started reaching epidemic proportions,"
notes Herwald.
"You started seeing the airlines start extensive campaigns in trying to hire away technicians, mostly from general aviation." He says Stevens took its business out of Atlanta, GA, because the strong air carrier presence there drained their supply of technicians.
However, Herwald says hiring by the airlines isn't the only factor that's making technicians scarce. Aircraft manufacturers are raiding the slimming ranks of technicians to hire them on the manufacturing side.
Competition is also coming from outside the aviation industry. Maintenance managers are finding that they have to compete with industries such as car manufacturing and the computer industry. Herwald reports that when BMW opened a plant in Greenville, an estimated one-third of his technicians interviewed for supervisory positions.
"They were going to hire them as supervisors, figuring, I guess, that their aviation background would certainly have instilled a culture of quality and attention to detail. They're absolutely right, unfortunately," he notes.
Avionics repairmen are especially hard to find, he says, since the computer industry often woos them away. "There are minimal schools that actually train avionics repairmen, and the ones that do ÉYou're always hearing all these anecdotes about how the whole class was hired by a computer repair company," says Herwald. "And the money that the telecommunications and computer industry can offer these people is really greater than what this industry can realistically afford to pay, given the prevailing rates in the market."
While all this is happening, many of today's technicians are reaching retirement age, adds Herwald, since a bulk of them came out of the military in the 1960s during and after the Viet Nam War.
Going to the source
At first, both Stevens and Midcoast responded to the technician shortage
by "stealing" technicians from their competition, say Driggers
and Herwald. "That's really not solving the problem," notes
Driggers. "It's just shifting the problem around."
Adds Herwald, "In the long run, that's destructive to the industry, and in the short run, if they were willing to move from Texas to here for three (more) bucks an hour, you can bet they're willing to move to Seattle for another three bucks an hour."
Driggers realized that a strong economy and a booming aviation industry meant that hiring practices couldn't continue as normal. "There was going to be a continuing need that we couldn't fill in any capacity based on the way we've been doing business up to this point in time."
The two managers decided that to meet this challenge they would have to go to the source of technicians: the schools.
Driggers says that overall, schools for technicians as well as craftsmen and aviation electronics just aren't graduating enough students. "There's not sufficient graduates to go around for the size the industry has gotten to be," he says. "The airlines' requirements every year are greater than the total number of technicians that are graduating from school, kind of leaving general aviation out there to fend for themselves."
After "lamenting over the fact that we probably should have done this a lot earlier," Driggers says he and some of his maintenance managers now visit junior high and high schools in the area on career days to talk to students about the aviation maintenance industry. He also pays young technicians to go back to their high schools, too. The idea, he says, is to promote aviation maintenance as a career field.
"Now that doesn't pay immediate benefits," says Driggers, "but that's some of the seed that we have to sow right now, I think, and try to reap those benefits at a later day....we're hoping at least this effort will inspire more people to get involved in this business."
Driggers also invites employees to bring sons and daughters to work to get their interest piqued.
A joint effort
Both Driggers and Herwald are also working with technical colleges to
help their recruiting and training efforts.
"We found that we and the educational facilities have got a common goal," says Driggers. "They need students, and we need employees. Jointly forming up to make this sort of thing happen has been good for us."
Belleville Area Junior College and Midcoast are partnering to hold night courses. Both supply the instructors, and the courses take place at Midcoast's facilities, says Driggers. Besides providing extra courses, "that gives us the opportunity to identify certain students that we want to hire," he explains.
"It's allowed us to make sure that the schools are teaching skills that we need today, not skills that we needed 10 years ago. And it gives them an inside look at our operation because they want to teach what's practical, too."
Herwald says that for Stevens, besides A&P mechanics, craftsmen such as those who do woodworking for interiors, or painting are also in short supply. He's currently working with trade schools and high schools to develop a cabinetry program that will train students specifically for that work. In six months, he hopes to get his first batch of employees from that.
The trick in working with technical colleges, says Herwald, is just establishing an ongoing relationship with them and learning what they can do or aren't capable of doing. He found, for instance, that often there is not enough turnover in the avionics industry in each individual state to support a program. Therefore, some state technical schools' charters, which call for them to train employees for work within the state, won't allow them to add an avionics program. Faced with this problem in South Carolina, Herwald posed this question to the local state technical school: "What if we can come up with just a couple course options that you can tag onto the end of electronics program?"
That proposal was met with enthusiasm, he says. Extra classes are possible even if a full program isn't, he says.
Herwald is also taking advantage of the opportunity to attract under-represented classes into the aviation maintenance field. Stevens has established a scholarship through the local trade school that's offered annually to an incoming student, with a preference on minorities.
"We wanted it to be absolutely a minority or woman, but for legal reasons couldn't do that, so we made it as a preference," he explains. "I think that we as an industry or at least this company has an opportunity to try and meet some social objectives during this period of time ... There's a community out there that doesn't really know (this industry) exists."
He says the company also works closely with the schools to suggest ways to recruit minorities and women into the program.
All in all, partnering with technical schools, says Driggers, may be a slow return on invested time and money, "but often times if you get involved with these schools and try to help them do their job, as they get good graduates they can help send good graduates your way."
Current Employees: Benefits and Schooling
Keeping those already employed is just as important — and as tough — as
recruiting, say Driggers and Herwald. Both have boosted wages and benefits
at their companies.
"All of us in this business now are very aware that for many years technicians have been undermarketed," says Driggers.
"It's probably one of the biggest jobs we have our HR (Human Resources) department doing is surveying (salaries) not just in our industry, but like industries, the kinds of businesses we lose people to, to make sure we're competitive."
Midcoast also has increased the company's contribution in its 401k plan over the last three years. Stevens has a strong 401k plan as well, says Amy Knowlton, director of human resources.
She adds that the company also offers tuition reimbursement for any classes that an employee wants to take that are "beneficial to the company." This program was always in place, she says, but now there's more latitude in the types of classes technicians can take. English, for example, may improve a technician's communications skills, she says, so that fits under the program.
Driggers says his tuition reimbursement program also offers a lot of latitude in course descriptions.
"We're finding that people have a desire to have a higher education level, so we're perpetuating that," he explains. "We figure that everybody that works here is potential management ... As the company's growing, we're needing people in all those areas. And we'd much rather have our own people become qualified for those jobs than have to go to the outside and hire."
