The forest industry isn’t dead, says Doug Murray. He’ll soon have the jobs available to prove it.
Murray, the general manager Resolute Forest Products Thunder Bay paper plant, says a turnaround in the U.S. housing market and an aging baby boom employment force means his company expects to hire at least 300 skilled trades-people in the coming years.
Resolute, which emerged from bankruptcy protection in 2010 as AbitibiBowater and rebranded itself a year later, plans to add 90 jobs when it re-opens its Ignace sawmill operation in late 2013 or early 2014. Another 80 jobs will likely be created in the forestry sector as a direct relation, part of a $100 million capital investment the company intends to make in Northwestern Ontario between now and 2017.
The company also intends to expand its sawmill in Thunder Bay and is in the midst of a condensing turbine project that should be ready to start up by the fall.
Murray said it’s just the start of good news to come.
“When we look at the fact that our workforce, through all the different aspects of what’s happened here in the last 10 to 15 years, is all at a senior level. Our average age is like 55. People are retiring at 57, so over the next three to four years, 80 per cent of our workforce is going to have to be replaced,” Murray said Friday, after addressing college and high school students at the second annual Confederation College Technology Syjmposium.
“We’ve already started hiring a number of people last year and this year.”
The key is finding properly trained workers to take over.
“We’re going to need a lot of people … It’s going to be like what was happening here in the ‘60s. When the first kraft mill came in, in 1965 and the second kraft mill came in 1975, there was a huge influx of hiring.
“That second influx of hiring in 1975, those are the people that are retiring now. So we’ll have another huge influx of people coming in to replace them. It just so happens that they’re all crunched in, because of the size of the mill now and where we’ve been over the last few years.”
That’s music to Todd Patterson’s ears.
A third-year civil engineering technology student at Confederation College, Patterson organized the skill-trade fair as a way to connect future workers with potential employees.
“It’s very encouraging to me when you hear that the opportunities are in Northwestern Ontario, that if you live in Thunder Bay or want to come to Thunder Bay, you don’t have to leave to find work,” Patterson said.
“And actually you get the feeling that people are going to be moving to Thunder Bay to take advantage of those opportunities.”
Bombardier is another plant where students may find decent-paying manufacturing jobs.
Already employing about 1,200 workers, a company spokesman told Friday’s gathering Bombardier hired 40 skilled workers from the aerospace and welding fields last year alone.
With billions of dollars in contracts to build bi-level and light-rail cars for the Toronto Transit Commission, Emmanuel Piec, Bombardier’s director of technical services, said building local roots in communities where they do business has long been part of the company’s key to global success.
“We believe we can play a role in attracting and retaining college graduates,” Piec said.
The opportunities will be there, he added, as customers demand shorter lead times and faster delivery schedules.
“We need to increase the rate on which we produce our light-rail vehicles and also our Metro cars. We need to be really well organized in terms of manpower. It means we need really high-skilled people and talented people,” he said.
OPG officials also said they expect to be in the market for skilled trades workers in the near future.
