Reading, writing and trucking

College gives dislocated workers new skills, hope for the future

By R.W. Clever

 

There was a time when Lonnie Good thought he was on a career track that would take him far in the aerospace industry – specifically at the Boeing Co.

He had taken some ambitious steps in the right direction, most importantly when he received his airframe and power plant certification from the Federal Aviation Administration. For 3 1/2 years he worked at the Boeing Everett plant helping build the 777, the world’s largest twinjet aircraft.

But change was in the wind. In 1997, Boeing merged with McDonnell-Douglas, creating the world’s largest aerospace company. Then came the melding of the two companies’ work forces. And, finally a cut back in the 777 output at the Everett plant.

Good was working on the 777 “replacability of parts” program when the pink slip came. At the age of 41, with a wife, two kids and a mortgage, he was unemployed in an occupation with shrinking potential.

“It was rough,” he recalled, without bitterness. “I was one of the last ones to get cut. Boeing had been cutting back even before 9-11 (attack on New York’s Twin Towers).”

Between 1998 and the autumn of 2001 Boeing reduced its personnel in Washington state from 104,000 to 78,000. Then came the horrible events of Sept. 11, shredding any hopes of an early recovery in an already ailing commercial aircraft industry.

Then Boeing announced plans to reduce employment by another 30,000 jobs over the next few years, crushing faint hopes in the Puget Sound region for a comeback.

Good and thousands of others became what would be officially designated as “dislocated workers.” But in Good’s case it turned out to be not such a bad thing.

For the first time in his life, Good became a college student.

He is one of 140 ex-Boeing workers and a total of 1,159 students at Skagit Valley College who are enrolled in the school’s Workforce Training program. The average age of students at the college is about 30. Just over 200 students this year are classified as “dislocated” workers.

The program is under the supervision of the college’s dean of professional and technical education, Michele Koci. About half of the school’s student body of nearly 5,000 are enrolled in professional and technical curricula and of those 1,159 are in the Workforce Training program.

Koci, 52, sees not just students in classrooms, but fathers and mothers and families trying to adjust to the twists and turns in the economy and keep their heads above water financially.

“The college can help deal with the social impact of job losses in a community,” said Koci.

While Koci had a liberal education she also believed in learning to do what is necessary to support yourself. That’s why she took nursing training early in her career. Her belief in vocational education stems in some measure from the Depression era values passed on to her by her parents.

“It’s important that you learn to take care of yourself,” said the soft-spoken dean.

Koci began her college career as a student at Everett Community College, transferring to Western Washington University to complete her bachelor’s degree. She also got her master’s degree at Western.

She lived in San Diego for a while, working as a trust manager at a bank. Returning to Washington state, Koci taught for a while at the Chehalis Tribal Center. She’s been at Skagit Valley College since 1980.

For the past few years the region’s economic slump has had Koci busy trying to keep the college’s curriculum relevant to the evolving workplace. She communicates regularly with the people at the Economic Development Council of Skagit County and is constantly scouting for signs of shifts in the local economy.

Koci even showed up at a meeting of the Puget Sound Wine Growers Association to assess the progress of the industry in this area and assess future job prospects.

Boeing’s cutbacks have had their impact on Skagit County, where hundreds of aerospace workers found the commute to Everett plant quite doable. But the county has also been faced with a declining job base in the resource industries – fishing, timber and agriculture.

The area has also been hit with the loss of Georgia Pacific, Intalco, National Foods and TTM Technologies – all contributing to the pool of “disclocated” workers.

Persons classified as dislocated workers are those whose industries and/or occupations are seen as in decline and who have no prospect of reemployment in their former jobs. About two-thirds of dislocated workers are men.

Since 1996, the numbers of dislocated workers in Washington state have doubled from 36,000 to nearly 78,000, far exceeding a 1998 state forecast that predicted there would be slightly less than 60,000 dislocated workers by this year. However, the magnitude of the Boeing cuts was not anticipated at the time.

A number of programs have been created through both state and federal legislation to help these workers get retrained for occupations in which jobs are expected to be available in the future.

Most of these retraining programs are run through the state’s community colleges, the true work horses of the higher education system.

In Northwest Washington, the Workforce Training program is run in cooperation among Skagit Valley College, the Washington State Employment Security Department and the Workforce Development Council.

The program provides employment and training assistance, counseling and career planning. It also provides financial assistance for tuition, books, transportation and child care.

To be eligible for the program a person must have been laid off and receiving unemployment benefits or have exhausted their benefits in the past two years.

Koci works with an advisory group of more than 200 people from the Skagit business community who help the college anticipate those areas for job growth two years ahead and beyond.

“We want to make sure that the jobs we’re training people for today will be there when they finish the program,” she said.

Koci is as enthusiastic about the truck driving classes as she is about the strong computer and information technology courses offered at the college. She also lights up when she discusses courses like diesel mechanics and auto shop.

In fact, Skagit Valley College is one of the few in the state to offer a complete program of heavy-duty truck driver training. The driving and diesel mechanic’s programs are so popular that they are continually booked up with long waiting lists.

Koci said a number of ex-Boeing workers have been through the truck program and have gone on to get jobs in the trucking industry.

The trucking program’s “professor” is Gary Thompson, a one-time long-haul trucker who came off the road 17 years ago to become the program’s first teacher. He shares not just his knowledge, but his love of the road.

“Trucking has always been magical to me,” he said. “We’ll always need the trucker. That truck has got your groceries, your household goods, your toilet paper…”

In his classroom the emphasis is on doing. In the first 12 weeks of the program the student learns how to shift gears, pull a trailer and secure a load. In the second phase, Thompson takes the students on the road, running all the way to Fife and back on Highway 99, which has 139 signals, each one an opportunity to practice downshifting and upshifting.

The trucking program has a modest-sized motor pool, many of the tractors restored from old hulks. But Thompson’s pride and joy is the nearly new rig contributed to the school by PACCAR – a $140,000 gift. The tractor has all the conveniences, CD player, refrigerator, microwave and a comfy couch in the cabin behind the cab. It did have a television set, too, but Thompson took it out, thinking it an unnecessary distraction.

By the end of the third 12 weeks, Thompson’s students have not only mastered driving, but have learned what the federal codebooks require of them. They know how to keep logbooks, handle bills of lading and other paperwork details of the business.

“When they leave here they’re not entry level anymore,” said Thompson.

During the Christmas holidays the trucking students get real experience by delivering food to area food banks. Thompson says the success rate for getting his students jobs is virtually 100 percent.

Lonnie Good opted for the college’s paralegal curriculum. But he also found that he enjoyed taking courses like history and English as well as participating in extra-curricular activities. Also, as a self-described “computer illiterate” when he started classes in 1999, Good has seen his computer skills blossom.

A one-time “hunt and peck” typist, Good’s typing speed has accelerated to more than 50 words per minute. He can now do Excel spread sheets, build a website and research databases online.

Good is about to complete his program and is already interviewing with prospective employers.

Koci says that computer literacy is taught in virtually all the school’s professional and technical courses. Even in auto shop students learn to use computers as diagnostic tools. Today’s motor vehicles are, in fact, run by computers.

Don Poe, who was laid off by a large general contractor last year, is another “dislocated” worker who has made the most of the Workforce program at Skagit Valley College. At 55, his studies have pointed the way to a new career as an environmental technician.

As developable land becomes more scarce and projects carry an increasingly heavier burden of environmental mitigation, Poe sees a role for himself.

“It’s a way for me to stay involved in construction work, but to also have a positive impact,” said Poe.

The two-year program involved courses in biology, but also required that Poe improve his computer skills. He did an internship with a fisheries enhancement group and has just completed a project on spartina, the invasive grass that chokes out some of the state’s estuaries.

Poe proudly mentions his 4.0 grade average and looks forward to completing his last quarter this fall when he will plunge into the world of statistics.

Skagit Valley College officials keep a close eye on the labor marketplace and try to gear up programs aimed at training people for occupations where shortages of personnel are identified.

It seems that a good chef can always find work. The school’s culinary arts program is approved by the American Culinary Association.

The school’s nursing program is highly regarded and it is a field that faces a chronic shortage of workers.

Susan Tinker, SVC vice president of educational services, says the school is developing a new program to train bilingual licensed practical nurses.

“And through our distance education program we can eventually take the whole degree program on line,” said Tinker.

Koci believes that as the economy worsens, the demand for more technical training programs will increase. She has seen a doubling in the numbers of dislocated workers signing up for job training at the school. The jump over last year’s number has challenged the college’s budget.

“This year we were budgeted for 169 dislocated workers, but we actually had over 200,” said Koci.

Community colleges all over the state are struggling with tight budgets strained by enrollments in excess of what was anticipated.

Koci, too, has heard from her counterparts at other colleges and all of them are seeing more dislocated workers this year than their budgets anticipated.

“This tells me that this is such an important time for people to receive training for the future,” she said.