Imagine a Virginia factory in the not-too-distant future. The manufacturing floor hums with the latest in computer-controlled equipment. Managers rely on the Internet for up-to-the-minute internal communications and lean inventory operations. The plant has virtually everything working in its favor, except the most important element of all — enough skilled and experienced employees to keep it running.

Charlie Duncan, shop foreman of Machine Services Inc. in Chesapeake Photo by Mark Rhodes

This specter could prove to be a bigger crisis than all the other problems besetting Virginia’s manufacturing industry combined. Low-cost competitors and onerous regulations pale in light of the fact that between 30 and 50 percent of all seasoned production workers and technicians statewide are likely to retire over the next 10 years, according to the Virginia Manufacturers Association. And finding replacements for these invaluable workers, the heart and soul of most manufacturing operations, is increasingly difficult. Young people typically shun factory work, which they consider too low status and too Old Economy, and parents and teachers have done little to convince them otherwise. "It’s a big concern that affects companies pretty much across the board," says Roy Reynolds, VMA’s vice president of work force development. "It hasn’t bitten most of them yet, but they know it’s coming."

One of them is M/A-COM, a Lynchburg firm that makes semiconductors and other components for the wireless telecommunications and defense industries. The company needs to train at least 50 workers — about 14 percent of its total work force — in the next five years to offset the first wave of retirements. So the firm recently linked with nearby Central Virginia Community College to recruit and train the next generation of technicians, part of an increasing trend of community college-based, work-study programs. In Lynchburg, CVCC consults also with Frito-Lay to identify workers for promotion to higher-skilled troubleshooting and repair jobs. The college is helping another business, nuclear-fuel producer BWX Technologies, assess employee skills for advancement into openings as senior workers retire. Bill Spruill, CVCC’s training coordinator, says, "There is an assessment and training function we are providing, but more and more there is a demand for recruitment. Companies are telling us, ‘We’ve got to get young talent in here and train them the way we want, so they can hit the ground running.’ But it’s really hard to find this next generation."

Virginia is not alone. A recent University of Michigan study concluded that state’s auto industry will lose more than 200,000 skilled workers in the next few years and has little chance of replacing them in time. Nationally, about 60 percent of machine-tool workers will retire by 2010, says Phyllis Eisen, director of the Center for Workforce Success at the National Association of Manufacturers in Washington. Only a fifth of the replacements needed for these high-skilled workers will be ready. Back here in the Commonwealth, the problem affects even the highest-profile firms. Philip Morris is seeking more than 200 technicians this year to run equipment at its Richmond cigarette manufacturing facility. It’s the first significant hiring at the plant in more than a decade, but 40 percent of the plant’s production employees — average age 48 — are expected to retire in the next five to 10 years. To recruit and train young workers, Philip Morris last year invested $500,000 in programs at nearby John Tyler Community College. Communications Manager Kim Farlow says the funds this year will help prepare a new generation of certified technicians to maintain and repair Philip Morris’ high-speed cigarette-making machines. And not a moment too soon. From consumer products to materials manufacturing, companies need skilled workers now. At DuPont in Chesterfield County, where the average age of the firm’s 1,700 production employees is about 45, plant manager Mike Mayberry looks to hire at least 100 workers a year for the next five years. "We project that we’ll have a significant attrition rate over the next several years, so we’re in a period of work force renewal."

Large manufacturers aren’t the only ones concerned about generational turnover. "It’s always in the back of your mind," says Donna Duncan, owner of Machine Services Inc., a nine-employee firm in Chesapeake. The company makes precision parts that go in everything from oil purifiers and high-pressure pumps to helicopter landing gear. Duncan says most of her employees will begin hitting retirement age in 10 years. "I’m very concerned about recruiting. How can we get the younger people interested in the machinist field when most of them have never even heard about it?"

Besides a lack of awareness are negative perceptions about the future of manufacturing, exacerbated by the daily headlines of factory layoffs in under-performing industries such as textiles and apparel. "The key problem is the perception that manufacturing is passé, a dinosaur," says the VMA’s Reynolds. "We need to change the mindsets of parents and educators. These are high-paying jobs that are interesting and challenging and offer upward mobility." Skilled employees with a few years of experience routinely earn between $40,000 and $60,000 a year.

Working with machines can indeed pay well — especially if they are big, expensive, complicated machines. Among the most complex are nuclear power stations. At Dominion Virginia Power, for instance, more than half of the 110 licensed operators of its Surry Power Station will retire in the next 15 years, and a similar shortage faces Dominion’s nuclear plant in North Anna. The jobs pay more than $30,000 a year during training to more than $100,000 a year for senior operators. Yet despite recruitment events at dozens of high schools, Dominion has yet to fill the impending vacancies. Reynolds says that Dominion and other companies may solve part of the problem by encouraging senior workers not to retire as soon. "The big unknown is how many of them will choose to stay on" if companies make attractive offers, he says, adding that Social Security no longer lowers benefits to recipients who work past retirement age.

Such stopgap measures would probably do little to alter the long-term decline in the state’s total manufacturing employment. In 2000, manufacturing accounted for about 400,000 jobs in Virginia, or 11 percent of the state’s non-farm work force. That’s down from 23 percent in 1950, says Virginia Employment Commission Chief Economist Bill Mezger. "At the moment we’re seeing a little bit of accelerated attrition because of the economic downturn that we’re in. Manufacturing overall ... is experiencing something of a recession." But metals, auto parts and electronics are bucking the trend, he adds. "And for the first time in about a decade, shipbuilding is starting to expand. They’re now having some trouble getting people with the skills they need to keep expanding."

Of course, not all manufacturers face a retirement crisis. Tom Jewell, public affairs manager for Westvaco in Covington, says the average age of employees at the paper products maker in 2000 was 45.9, but only about 8.6 percent are expected to retire in the next five years, "so we don’t have the same concerns" as other manufacturers. Mezger and others explain that, generally, the higher the skill level a job requires, the harder it is to find workers. The lower the skill level, the more likely it is that the job has already been shipped to lower-wage Mexico or Asia. "Virginia has a large pool of relatively low-skilled workers from downsizing in the textile, apparel and furniture industries," Mezger says, "but that’s not what these other manufacturers need."

Educators are getting the message, and there are signs that talk about getting more high school students interested in manufacturing and technical trades will amount to more than just that. In Roanoke, for example, the Blue Ridge Technical Academy will open its doors this fall to about 50 students, says Director Al Moyer, who hopes to enroll up to 200 by 2003. As Virginia’s first employer-linked charter high school, manufacturing technology is one of five career tracks the academy offers. The school has developed relationships with Roanoke-area employers from Johnson & Johnson, which recently built a high-tech eye products plant in the area, to Dynex, which manufactures automatic-transmission gears. "We’re looking to grow our own next generation of skilled workers," Moyer says. "We’re trying to build relationships with the business sector to get the kids to see what the jobs entail."

In the meantime, opportunities are being lost. John Sygielski, vice chancellor of work force development services for the Virginia Community College System, says a Virginia mold maker recently had to import German workers because of a shortage of skilled natives. "These are jobs where an apprentice makes $63,000 and, in a few years, up to $125,000." With manufacturers offering better pay and cleaner, safer, higher-tech workplaces than most Virginians realize, Sygielski wants students and parents thinking about career options in manufacturing as early as middle school. "The whole issue is parents — the whole imaging issue, the perception issue," he says. "Our help-wanted signs are going to turn into for-sale signs if we don’t do something about it."