U.S. manufacturing sees shortage of skilled factory workers

This stretch of the Rust Belt might seem like an easy place to find factory workers.

Unemployment hovers above 9 percent. Foreign competition has thrown many out of work. It is a platitude that this industrial hub, like the country itself, needs more manufacturing work.

But as the 2012 presidential candidates roam the state offering ways to “bring the jobs back,” many manufacturers say that, in fact, the jobs are already here.

What’s missing are the skilled workers needed to fill them.

A metal-parts factory here has been searching since the fall for a machinist, an assembly team leader and a die-setter. Another plant is offering referral bonuses for a welder. And a company that makes molds for automakers has been trying for seven months to fill four spots on the second shift.

“Our guys have been working 60 to 70 hours a week, and they’re dead. They’re gone,” said Corey Carolla, vice president of operations at Mach Mold, a 40-man shop in Benton Harbor, Mich. “We need more people. The trouble is finding them.”

Through a combination of overseas competition and productivity gains, the United States has lost nearly 4 million manufacturing jobs in the past 10 years. But many manufacturers say the losses have not yielded a surplus of skilled factory workers.

Instead, as automation has transformed factories and altered the skills needed to operate and maintain factory equipment, the laid-off workers, who may be familiar with the old-fashioned presses and lathes, are often unqualified to run the new.

Compounding the problem is a demographic wave. At some factories, much of the workforce consists of baby boomers who are nearing retirement. Many of the younger workers who might have taken their place have avoided the manufacturing sector because of the volatility and stigma of factory work, as well as perceptions that U.S. manufacturing is a “dying industry.”

“Politicians make it sound like there’s a line out front of workers with a big sign saying ‘No more jobs,’” said Matt Tyler, chief executive of a precision metal company in New Troy, Mich. “Nothing could be further from the truth.”

The shortage of skilled workers was noted before the recession, but the phenomenon has become more acute with the recent recovery.

Just this week, Tyler said, when a fracking company asked him to make pieces for pipes, his chief worry was whether he could find six new operators to do the work.

“This was never a problem I thought we’d be having,” he said.

The frustrations are shared across the country.

A recent report by Deloitte for the Manufacturing Institute, based on a survey of manufacturers, found that as many as 600,000 jobs are going unfilled. By comparison, the unemployed in the United States number 12.8 million, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

“High unemployment is not making it easier to fill positions, particularly in the areas of skilled production and production support,” the Deloitte report found.

Similarly, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that although fewer machinists would be employed in the future, job opportunities “should continue to be good” because many young people with the right aptitudes were preferring other fields.

Does Linus Omark fit into the Edmonton Oilers future plans?

Ever since he made his debut with the Edmonton Oilers, Linus Omark has held a soft spot in the hearts of many Oiler fans. The diminutive winger has a very special skill set and is arguably the most talented of all the youngsters currently in the Oilers stable. Having just recently turned twenty-five years old, Omark is older then the core group but still fits the mold of what has now become the prototype for Edmonton Oiler forwards.

With the additions of Ryan Nugent-Hopkins and Ryan Smyth being brought into the mix this season, Linus did not get much of shot to prove his worth and has seemed to become nothing more than an after thought for the organization. Considering they sent him down to the minors after only five games, tells me the plan was never for him to be part of the equation this season.

Shortly after being demoted to Oklahoma City, Omark broke his ankle and remained out of the Barons lineup until February 9th. Since returning from injury, he has played four games and has managed to score three times while collecting five points. He is starting to find his groove after missing nearly three months and with the NHL Trade Deadline just around the corner, the talented Swede will surely find himself back in Edmonton. While the kid has warts to his game, he should be nowhere near the AHL and should be learning from his mistakes at the NHL level. Having said that, if Omark receives the call back up to Edmonton and proves his worth over the final twenty or so games, would he have a legitimate shot at earning a regular spot in 2012-2013?

At this stage of the game, it is pretty clear that if Linus were to make this club, it will have to be as a top six forward. Some had thought, myself included, that he could possibly fit as a third line guy who specialized on the power play but with this clubs lack of size upfront, they can not afford the luxury of having a player that size in their bottom six.

If we take a look into the Oilers crystal ball, we can safely assume Taylor Hall, Jordan Eberle and Nugent-Hopkins all are locks for top six roles. If Edmonton decides to move Ales Hemsky at the deadline and re-sign Sam Gagner, that would leave two spots open in the top six. One would have to think, that one of those spots will be given to Magnus Paajarvi. The twenty year old would be headed into his third full season and it would seem logical for him to get a full time shot at top line minutes. That brings it down to one vacant spot and the chances of this team not adding a veteran forward to play on the top two lines is basically zero.

Clearly, the situation doesn't look good for Omark but if he were to show that he could be a difference maker on a nightly basis, he would force management to reconsider. If Linus is that good, perhaps they seriously look at moving Gagner + to try and acquire that first pairing defenceman they so desperately need. Not exactly a likely scenario but one that would have to be considered, if it were to present itself.

No matter how you look at it, it appears very unlikely that Linus Omark will be a member of the Edmonton Oilers organization come the start of next season. If the club believes they have better options upfront then the gifted winger, then by all means, ship him out and let the kid try luck elsewhere. The issue I have, is they may very well move him to another team before ever giving him a legitmate opportunity to show what he could do with other highly skilled forwards...and it might be a decision that comes back to haunt them.

Cheryl pours heart into the art of chocolate

ANYONE who has seen the film Chocolat will remember the mouth-watering scenes of bowls full of molten milk, dark and white chocolate being prepared in the quaint Chocolaterie.

Ever since watching leading lady Vianne Rocher, played by French actress Juliette Binoche, whip up trays full of delicious-looking, sumptuous snacks, I have wanted to try my hand at making some chocolate treats of my own.

So it was lucky for me that local chocolatier Cheryl Brighty, whose first chocolate shop opened in Newmarket’s Sun Lane on Saturday, invited me to spend a few hours learning the fine art of chocolate making.

I arrive in the kitchen of Cheryl’s Granby Street home, the headquarters of Artistry in Cocoa, where she makes everything from truffles and chocolate bars to chocolate cakes and hot chocolate.

After pausing to enjoy the incredible aroma coming from a mini-vat of melted chocolate in one corner of the kitchen, I stepped into my chocolatier’s attire of a chef’s shirt, and rather fetching hair net, to start making a set of 24 Amaretto truffles.

These truffles are one of the last batches to be made from Cheryl’s home, now that the Artistry in Cocoa shop is up and running.

The business began about seven years ago, originally known as Amy’s Truffles, as a way to raise extra cash to send Cheryl’s daughter, Amy, on a trip to Peru.

As the trip approached, Cheryl’s regular customers began to worry they wouldn’t be able to buy any more of her chocolates, so she carried on and re-launched as Artistry in Cocoa.

Cheryl tells me we are going to temper the chocolate the “old-fashioned way”, with the same technique used by Vianne in Chocolat, known as tabliering.

Tabliering comes from the French word for table and involves gently cooling down melted chocolate on a heat-absorbing surface, usually a marble slab, by moving it around using a palette knife, the point being to get the chocolate to the correct temperature.

After an expert demonstration from Cheryl, it’s my turn. Suited and booted, and armed with a bowlful of melted chocolate from the mini-vat, I begin tempering the chocolate. I pour some on to a work surface and begin to move it around to thicken it up. Cheryl, who spent many years working as a science teacher in schools in Newmarket, is perfectly suited to understand the science behind preparing chocolate.

She tells me: “As you move the chocolate around, the cocoa butter in the chocolate will crystallise, which is what makes the chocolate set and the idea is it’s warm enough to melt out all the crystals that we don’t want and leave the ones we do.”

Moving the chocolate around is easy enough, but it gets a bit trickier when I have to use the palette knife to move the thickened chocolate back into a mixing bowl, ready to pour into a mould, although Cheryl tells me I don’t need to worry about splashing chocolate all over the place, as it can be scraped off the surface and used again.

I warm the plastic mould using a heat gun so the chocolate doesn’t set too quickly to be able to move around to fill the entire mould.

Speed is the key as I pour the liquid chocolate, making sure it moves in all directions to fill each shape. I scrape off the excess chocolate and tap the mould against the work surface, to make sure no air bubbles remain in the chocolate.

Then, I leave the mould upside down on a baking tray, to allow air to get to the chocolate as it sets.

Next, I fill an icing bag with a chocolate and Amaretto mixture that Cheryl whipped up earlier and pipe it on top of the chocolate layer in the mould, being careful to get just the right amount. Another layer of chocolate is poured over the Amaretto mixture to complete the truffles and I leave them to set.

A few minutes later, I feel a sense of triumph when I tap the mould against the work surface and out pop some not quite perfect, but pretty good, Amaretto truffles. Before my chocolate creations are wrapped up with a red ribbon for me to take away with me, I’m allowed a cheeky taste of the sweet chocolates with a kick of Amaretto.

Six Characters in Search of an Author

"Pirandellian" isn't officially an adjective to describe a strange blending of fact and fiction, but good drama students should get the reference if they've ever studied Italian playwright Luigi Pirandello's massively influential 1920s drama Six Characters in Search of an Author.

And if any of those drama students failed to grasp exactly what Pirandello's suspenseful and disturbing play meant on the page, then they (and any other open-minded theatergoer) should rush to see The Hypocrites' wonderful new world-premiere adaptation by Steve Moulds.

Six Characters… is famous as a mind-bending play within a play to challenge an audience's perception of what is real and re-enacted and how dreamed-up characters can become frighteningly real and achieve a sense of immortality. What's wonderful with Mould's adaptation is how he brings it so cleverly up to date and customizes his script to fit the demands and character of The Hypocrites as a scrappy and critically-admired Chicago theater troupe.

Set amid leftover elements from The Hypocrites' acclaimed revival of The Pirates of Penzance, Six Characters… ostensibly begins as a "put-in rehearsal" demonstration to show invited supporters (you, the audience) how the company goes about its artistic business. Actors like John Taflan and Laura McKenzie are late or not fully memorized, while the authority of replacement director Brennan Buhl and his stage manager Ryan Walter frequently get tested.
Into this disorganized demonstration arrive six ghostly characters from a blended family (Ted Evans, Stevi Baston, Michael Molito, Samantha Gleisten, Ada Grey and Larry Garner) with some demanding help from an author to dramatize their conflicting stories of woe. Once you get past their lengthy exposition, the six bickering and unsettlingly quiet family members offer riveting accounts of what brought so much shame and ruin to their unhappy family.

Hypocrites artistic director Halena Kays handles the comic and dramatic shifts in tone marvelously in an environmental staging cleverly designed by Lizzie Bracken around the remnants of Tom Burch's zany Pirates of Penzance set of partial wooden piers, round picnic tables and a plastic swimming pool.

Adding immeasurably to the creepiness of the piece is Maggie Fullilove-Nugent's initially harsh and then ghostly lighting design mixed with Kevin O'Donnell's sound design that turns up the tension. Costumer Alison Heryer also has fun with the hip young actors before going nearly black and white for the distressed family.

With Mould's Six Characters…, The Hypocrites has once again taken a theater classic and reinterpreted it to make it dramatically fresh and insightfully new. Six Characters… will make you laugh up-front, but later haunt you into thinking about the thin barriers of facts and re-created fiction.

Paper alloy could replace plastic in laptops, gadgets

Ever since Greenpeace started releasing its Greener Electronics Guide, a number of high profile manufacturers have removed many of the harmful chemicals from their products. But one material that’s tough to replace is plastic. It’s cheap, very hard-wearing, and easily molded into complex shapes. The problem is, it isn’t very environmentally-friendly as it doesn’t degrade very quickly.

A solution is on the horizon, however, and you may be surprised to find a replacement has been found for plastic made of paper. That’s right, in the future the laptop you buy may not be encased in plastic (or metal). Instead, it will use an environmentally friendly paper alloy.

The new material is actually called Paper PP Alloy. It is made using a combination of recycled paper and polypropylene–a thermoplastic that is widely recycled while remaining hard-wearing. Because it uses only materials that can be easily recycled it is a desirable replacement for plastic. The Paper PP Alloy can also easily be molded, even using injection molding, meaning if you can form a shape in plastic you can probably do the same with paper alloy.

The alloy has been developed by PEGA, who say that even the manufacturing process is similar to that used for plastic. All we need now is for tech manufacturers to jump on board and start using Paper PP Alloy in their products. And it doesn’t just have to be laptops. Think of anything that needs a casing, or ships with plastic parts, and paper alloy forms an alternative.

If a well-known manufacturer does embrace paper alloy, they will certainly benefit from the eco-value it offers in terms of marketing. Who knows, maybe a future iPad will ship with a paper alloy back.

Fans weigh-in on Diablo 3 difficulty

It looks like the eagerly anticipated Diablo 3 will not be a diluted version of the last one and more apparent to the settings found in the first game which is a welcome sign for some gamers. This news comes as a video of the difficulty shows the developers saying that you definitely will die playing this version, in fact they promise.

As the upcoming fantasy horror-themed action RPG is getting plenty of attention from websites and gamers alike, AusGamers writes about the competitive challenge involved in Diablo 3 and that the video talks about the higher difficulty which means more participants will have to play together to get a result. Comments have suggested that the beta version may have a decent difficulty scope but the leveling up and new skills are nothing to get excited about. Questions have been asked about whether the difficulty will adapt to those who are not dying or if it is just set as standard.

In the video they promise us that it will kick our ass in anything above normal mode and in Nightmare, Hell and Inferno mode it starts getting so hectic that you will need your gems and enchants to boost up your defense so just rushing in will get you killed. On Gaming Blend we are asked to hold on while they let us in on a story that is involved in the new Diablo title as apparently there was not much of that going on in the previous encounters.

The basic principal of clicking and looting is still there but Blizzard has made the story side one of their concerns in this game and starting in New Tristram there is a new town built from the ruined village of the first Diablo. In the beta helping the guards see off the zombies and communicating with the villagers starts the game off quite well and the characters seem to be doing more than in the previous titles.

There is more emphasis on finding your companions as opposed to just hiring them and when rescuing a certain character you will find yourself on a mission to assist their needs as well as your own, as a form of give and take. Tooling a companion up to partner you on an adventure allows a bit of interaction and a bond, there is also an opportunity to take a rest from the adventure and read into the characters history for an ideal way to get a more in-depth impression of the game. Overall, the story-driven experience was welcomed even though endless search for loot will always be a main objective and the good thing is that the story aspect compromises none of the action involved.

Some gamers feel that the previous games did have viable stories if you took the time to read them instead of skipping them, which is probably what the author was implying. To get your own impression on what the developers are saying take a look at the video below. Let us know what you think of the difficulty in Diablo 3?

Inanities capture culture

As I look back on my more than six decades on this planet, I often wonder what happened to us, those with whom I have traveled through this specific time and unique space? I remember the 1960s and ’70s; there was turmoil and conflict, yet many were politically active, environmentally aware and pushing for positive change. Much was accomplished. Civil rights and environmental issues were addressed, and new laws emerged, making our nation better, healthier and more fair.

Overnight, it seemed, political and commercial interests co-opted and captured this freshly created common culture, the music changed and other less benign forces merged with and came to dominate the message and messenger. Whether it was from exposure to the beguiling light of one too many disco balls or the “greed is good” message from the Reagan era, society’s direction and mood was distinctly altered.

In 1977, I went shopping for a new vehicle. At the time, with the country’s focus on energy conservation, the diesel Volkswagen Rabbit, with its 50 miles per gallon, was much sought after. Determined to get one for myself, I ventured out to the local VW dealer, only to find that because of demand none were available. Not many years later the nation’s citizenry, after being bombarded with the message to consume and recreate, were tooling around in behemoth SUVs and clambering for ever expanding McMansions.

What happened to the emerging awareness that actions have consequences? For a short time, there was a glow, an underlying perception that with forthright long-range planning and cooperative action, it was possible to pass on to future generations a healthy, livable world. There was hope and expectation in the prospect of a sustainable relationship with the earth, all other life and its processes. Where did this feeling, this hopefulness go?

Now, with inane chants of “drill baby drill” echoing in our national consciousness, we are beginning to hear other voices. A strong undercurrent of unease is awakening those who are tired of being used, ignored and lied to. Look around, what we see is not pretty. To protect corporate interests and provide more profit to those already awash in material wealth, workers are locked out, the environment is compromised and unjust wars are waged in our name.

Will we continue to sleepwalk through life remaining unaware that the dream we have been sold is unraveling? The future holds the prospect of major societal change with the direction of change not clear. We, the human beings of this planet, will decide one way or another. With our collective future at risk, it makes you wonder what our legacy will be and what our children’s grandchildren will think of us.