By BRITTANY MURRAY
The Exponent Telegram
BRIDGEPORT, W.Va. — Workforce and education were the main topics of discussion among experts of the aerospace industry during a roundtable held with Gov. Jim Justice and Secretary of Commerce Woody Thrasher on Monday evening at Bombardier Aerospace.
Officials from the West Virginia Aerospace Alliance, Bombardier, the North Central West Virginia Airport, the Mid-Atlantic Aerospace Complex, Lockheed Martin, Pratt & Whitney and Aurora attended the roundtable discussion.
“I thought it was terribly informative for the standpoint of opportunity,” Justice said.
Justice said he was thrilled to hear about all the opportunities available in North Central West Virginia’s aerospace industry.
“I surely knew that this was here, but I didn’t have a clue of the opportunity that was really here, and so it’s my job now,” he said. “In many ways, it’s very similar to many things in West Virginia. People on the outside don’t have a clue, really, of how great West Virginia can be in so many different ways.”
Justice thinks it is his job now to help change people’s perceptions about West Virginia.
Many officials who spoke during the roundtable mentioned the low turnover rate in the region’s aerospace industry, with most firms seeing around 4 percent.
“West Virginians have always been great, and we’re true craftsmen,” Justice said. “The fact is, their turnover rate is half of what it is everywhere else in the country, and that doesn’t surprise me in anyway, shape, form or fashion.”
Stephen McCoy, general manager for Bombardier Aircraft Services, said he sees workforce and education as key issues for the industry.
“I really do believe it is (the biggest issue), not only for today, but for the future of the industry,” McCoy said. “We have an aging workforce, and we need to feed the workforce with the younger people.”
Getting that younger workforce is difficult when fewer than 200 FAA certified schools exist nationwide, and only one of those is located in West Virginia, said Tom Stose, director of the Robert C. Byrd National Aerospace Education Center — the state’s sole FAA-certified school.
“That’s why I travel all over the state,” Stose said. “I have students from Charleston, Parkersburg, Martinsburg and Weirton. We bring them in from all over.”
However, McCoy doesn’t think the role of education needs to be left entirely to the Robert C. Byrd National Aerospace Education Center.
“I believe that we don’t do a good enough job in letting the community know we’re here and what we do here,” he said. “We also have some work to do. We can’t just depend on the educational facilities to feed us; we need to do a better job of advertising.”
McCoy said the roundtable was extremely important for sharing ideas and helping the governor really understand what the industry’s issues are in order to move forward.
“We need a plan to move forward of how we’re going to, No. 1, feed this industry here,” he said. “There’s probably about 2,500 to 3,000 jobs here, and there’s opportunity if we look at the whole airfield for another 1,000 jobs.”
Those numbers will continue to increase as the current workforce ages further.
Other officials stated they were beginning to see a second generation develop in the aerospace industry.
“It is very exciting and very encouraging, but we need to see more of that,” McCoy said. “It was mentioned that a lot of the jobs in the state are coal mining jobs with second-, third- and fourth-generation coal miners in any given family. I would love to see that happen in the aerospace industry.”
After attending such a successful roundtable meeting, Justice said he hopes to gather the group together again within the next few months.
“As soon as we get this budget crisis over and get a passed budget,” Justice said. “Three weeks after that, once the dust settles, I’d like to get everyone in a room together and see what we can do to promote these industries.”
For now, Justice said he plans to take the new information back to Charleston to persuade legislators not to cut funds for the aerospace industry.
“We’ve got to reward those who are bringing opportunity to us,” he said. “We can’t do this by across the board cuts, where you take 2, 4 or 5 percent across the board. Things like that don’t help us in this in this state at all.
“What we need to do is convey the good messages, and in the bleak areas, we need to help them in every way to where they’ll have good messages, as well,” Justice said. “I’ve got to convince the people of what we’ve got going on here, and I can get that done.”
McCoy, however, isn’t stressing much about the budget just yet, because many of the job opportunities available are already funded — they simply need the workers.
“I wouldn’t be concerned with the stiff budget itself,” he said. “I’m more concerned with the broader aspects of how they’re going to be dealing with the workforce, which really isn’t a budget issue.”
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