by Joe Wilhelm Jr.
Staff Writer
The good news for job seekers is that there will be plenty of employment opportunities available in Jacksonville. The bad news is that the availability will occur over the next 5-7 years.
Both private and public industries are bracing for the retirement of a substantial portion of their workforces, and some industries are worried that the hiring pool won’t be replenished at the same rate as people will be retiring.
“It’s startling, the amount of industrial knowledge that will be going out the door in the next 5-7 years,” said Barbara Hamilton, CSX contract staffing and training. “That will be hard to recover from because this is an industry where you don’t learn quickly. You gradually acquire knowledge through training and experience.”
CSX Corporation is a transportation company providing rail, intermodal and rail-to-truck services. The Jacksonville-based company that employs about 34,000 people has created a transportation network that connects its customers to ports, production and distribution centers and markets across the Eastern United States.
The company is faced with losing 40-45 percent of its management staff of about 4,000 employees over the next 5-7 years, but they are creating programs to recruit and develop the employees that will fill those positions. CSX is also working to develop a workforce that reflects the diversity of the communities in which it operates.
“The majority of our employees have traditionally been white males,” said Hamilton. “It’s a heavy industry. Riding on trains, maintaining tracks and building structures and maintaining and building equipment is physically demanding work. Railroading wasn’t a career that appealed to women. We have begun to change that culture and in 2000 four percent of our employees were women, but in 2006 that number jumped to six percent. Management is 22 percent women.”
CSX has developed more than 20 inclusion groups and councils which promote diversity. They are involved in community service and recruitment for CSX. Councils are created geographically, and are located in Jacksonville, Atlanta, Louisville, Florence, Chicago, Huntington, Baltimore, Tampa and other locations. Inclusion groups are part of the councils and they have been created for African-Americans, Asian-Americans, Hispanics, Young Professionals, Women’s Network, Military, Working Parents and Adults Caring for Elders.
The Jacksonville headquarters also hosts an annual inclusion forum each spring, which allows CSX employees to participate in a series of executive and leadership panel discussions, social networking events, workshops and study circles.
“They say that creating a culture of inclusion is a journey,” said Michael Ward, CSX CEO. “At CSX, we’re committed to fostering innovation, collaboration and risk-taking. We’ve built coaching and inclusion into our core competencies and as a result, we are now seeing this new culture emerge.”
The company is recruiting in different ways in an effort to prepare for the transition including management training for current employees and college recruitment programs to give students a chance to see if CSX “is the right fit for them.”
The company has also been losing union skilled laborers to retirement in large numbers for the last decade and Hamilton hasn’t noticed an increase in skilled laborers to replace those that have reached retirement.
“Due to the economy, we haven’t been hiring union workers during the last nine months because we’ve had to furlough some of our workers,” said Hamilton. “Once the economy picks up, we will be very, very competitive for that limited market of skilled labor. We’ve kept good relationships with those we’ve had to furlough because when we open the spigot again, we want to hit the ground running.”
Private industry isn’t alone with worries about an aging workforce that looks to retire soon. JEA, the eighth largest community-owned electric utility in America, is also preparing for the retirement of a substantial portion of its workforce.
“Our employee outreach includes Workforce readiness programs and working with the engineering program at the University of North Florida,” said Gerri Boyce, spokesperson for JEA. “Participation in the apprentice programs hasn’t been as good as it has been in the past because people can’t afford to spend the necessary time to learn the skills of the job before they can make the bigger money once they graduate.”
A generation gap may also affect the restocking of skilled labor, according to a spokesperson from a workforce development agency.
“The next generation of workers that has been raised playing video games instead of being outside with dad helping to fix the car is going to have a tough time with physical skilled labor,” said Candace Moody, vice president of communications at Worksource. “On the other hand, the skilled labor that does have the experience with machinery may find it difficult to adjust to using computers in jobs they used to do by hand.”
As unemployment rates continue to climb, job seekers may want to consider delving into one of the many repair fields, Moody suggested.
“You can’t offshore a repair job,” said Moody. “People will always need someone to fix things, so there is always going to be job security in that field.”
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