A personal take on the jobs boon;
As stated the companies are turning a blind eye on those without full degrees for any postitions be they maintenance or operations. At Ameren and Excelon they are putting their own trainees through College for associate degrees in maintenance and RP categories, they are looking to aid the development of an operator sub category there as well.
I do not see the need of a degree to bend wrenches or run a mill if you have 5-10-15 or even twenty years experience and along with that I see a great number of very qualified individuals left outside the fence as the 1-2 year grads come out of trade schools with a piece of paper and little to no capability are hired. The qual standards need to become industry standardized, there is too wide a variation from company to company and plant to plant. Used to be Navy time got one in regardless, now it is a requirement at some plants yet the ex-Navy personnel numbers decline each year. The boon of new plants may change this as the workforce quantity tightens and the available numbers drop rapidly. There is already consternation on the part of existing plant management as to loss of qualified individuals to new plants and they are fast building 'lists' to attempt to slow or stop the jumps. Sidebar inter-company no-hire agreements already unadmittedly exist, these will grow as these new plants do come up.
A major concern for our industry is retirement, most if not all the plants have a genre' of employees at the same age span: 48-55 and they will come to their retire age long before there is sufficient replacements trained and hired, what will the companies do? Some are moving to raise or even drop early out retirement packages, some are eliminating pensions and cash balance plans altogether to force retirables to stay as their 401K plans are just insufficient. At 52+ I may be one of the unlucky ones and be forced into staying.
Another point to make is controlling INPO, there needs to be some pressure for industry wide continuity/standardization for training and qualification as well as penalties for INPO management being too easy on their parent plant systems and too harsh on those these companies wish to buy up. Partisan politics have entered where it has no place and this needs to be corrected before it gets much further or as the media catches on the industry will get another black eye.
