Manufacturing’s grim battle to survive

Manufacturing in Ontario: Locked gates and job losses alongside a skills shortage make up the new manufacturing landscape.

Tara Walton/Toronto Star file photo

As vice-president of research and development for Datec Coating Corp., Mary Ruggiero has experienced first hand the problem of trying to find the right kind of qualified and experienced engineer who could help the Mississauga-based startup grow and prosper.

But as a parent, Ruggiero is also very aware how hard it will be for her daughter, a third year engineer student at a top ranked Canadian university, to find a job in her field when she graduates.

Huh?

The skills mismatch facing Ontario’s manufacturers is complex and difficult to understand. And it doesn’t just affect university graduates and engineers. There are skills mismatches among information technology experts, tradespeople and technicians, whether they’ve gone through apprenticeships or community college.

And if it doesn’t get resolved soon, some people say, the whole province will continue to suffer economically.

“How are we going to pay for everything in Ontario when we traditionally paid for everything with manufacturing? We don’t have a resource sector in Ontario,” said Nigel Southway, chair of the Toronto chapter of the Society of Manufacturing Engineers. “Manufacturing has a multiplier effect. It’s one of the best ways to spur other activity. For every job in manufacturing, there’s probably three indirect jobs. A guy who flips burgers, a doctor, a taxi driver.”

In a nutshell, what’s happened is Ontario’s once powerful manufacturing sector has shrunk to the point where the pool of available talent is very limited, Southway said in a telephone interview Tuesday.

Experienced employees who lost their jobs when manufacturers began to move their plants to Asia have since found other work, perhaps in the public sector.

Community college programs that led to jobs on factory floors saw enrollment dry up.

And employers got stretched so thin they couldn’t afford to invest time and money in training or development.

“It’s a chicken and egg situation,” Southway adds. “You’ve got no skilled people because nobody’s been going into the industry. As the market declined people relocated to the public sector or other career opportunities. The guy you would have hired is no longer there.”

Take Datec as an example.

The company, whose founders pioneered a new process of generating heat through specialized coating materials, is currently looking for someone who not only understands chemistry but has contacts within the paint industry and also knows how to commercialize a new product.

“Some of those skills can’t be acquired in school. It requires industrial experience,” said Ruggiero, who trained as a materials engineer. “We like to hire new graduates but in some cases that’s difficult. They don’t land here running. We’re a small company and don’t have the resources to spend a lot of time training them.”

Her daughter, who is studying mechanical engineer at one of the country’s top universities, will be facing stiff competition when she graduates, Ruggiero says.

After years of hearing engineers would be in high demand, it seems there’s an oversupply in some fields, she said.

In some ways, what’s happening isn’t new.

Manufacturing has always been cyclical, rising and falling in good and bad economic times. During upturns, there were always some employers who couldn’t fill all the available positions right away.

But competition from cheap imported goods, combined with a high Canadian dollar, is making it tougher to recover this time.

Indeed, some advocates fear Ontario may never regain its industrial strength unless it takes concrete steps to make it happen.

“The U.S. gets it,” said Southway. “They understand the power of manufacturing. They have no choice in some states. They’re going to put manufacturing back onto their map.”