Kaiser Unions Hesitant To Give Up Hiring Preference But Company Puts Higher Priority On Skills And Education Than Family Ties

One of Kaiser Aluminum Co. management’s biggest tasks in creating the changes it says are vital to the future of Mead and Trentwood is to get the company’s unionized work force to embrace those changes.

On that account, the company still has some work to do.

Joe Thorp, president of United Steelworkers of America Local 338, is a product of the Kaiser generations. He followed his father to Trentwood.

“When I was hired 20 years ago,” says Thorp, “there wasn’t much testing. You took your physical and you walked onto the job.”

Thorp says both Local 338 and Steelworkers Local 329 at Mead have done what they can to see that Kaiser continues to give hiring preference to the children of employees.

“And all things being equal, they do,” Thorp says.

Gary Micheau, Trentwood’s human resources director, agrees that given two candidates with equal qualifications, the Kaiser offspring will get the job. But the qualifiers today are education, experience and aptitude.

“It used to be pretty family oriented out here,” says Jerry Miller, president of Local 329, “and I think that was an asset. But all that’s changed.”

Kaiser officials like Micheau and Al Galioto, his counterpart at Mead, say their message to current Kaiser employees is the same they have for the public school systems throughout Washington. If you want your kids to get jobs at Kaiser, then be sure they are equipped with the skills and education that manufacturers need.

Kaiser, Boeing, Hewlett-Packard and a group of other Washington manufacturers have formed an organization called the Manufacturing Technology Advisory Group to promote the skills they need in the work force.

Through research, the organization developed a group of core competencies for manufacturing and has written a curriculum for colleges and high schools designed to develop those competencies.

Pilot programs will be offered in a few high schools and community colleges in the Seattle area next year, and Kaiser is trying to convince some Spokane schools to do the same.

The course work includes not only the technical and mechanical skills manufacturers need, but the communication and group dynamic skills that will be just as vital in the manufacturing plant of the future.

For now, though, many of the veteran employees at Mead and Trentwood are still waiting to see whether all the testing and varied job requirements and emphasis on teams is really going to make a difference at the plants.

“We’ve got a smaller work force doing more work out there,” Miller says. “Teams aren’t going to change that. Just because you want something to be so doesn’t make it so.

“I don’t know if teams are good. But that’s why we’re listening. Until we learn more, its a tough question to answer.”

Thorp says the new emphasis on testing and qualifications is more a product of the current labor market than anything else.

“Some of our older people who didn’t go through all this scrutiny have adjusted very well to all these new things,” he points out. “Some of the best team workers they’ve got at Trentwood are people who have been here for 20 years.”

He notes that Kaiser had hundreds of applicants for this year’s new jobs at Trentwood and Mead.

“That’s the real reason they can afford to be so picky right now,” Thorp says.

“There’s an overabundance of labor, and it’s their turn. When there’s a shortage of labor, it’s our turn, and they don’t worry about nitpicking things.”

, DataTimes