Word: shopped
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...like stepping into an earlier age. The scene is the shop floor of the A & A Tool Co. in southern Connecticut, and the spectacle is of American precision craftsmanship tooling up for the 1980s. The vision is not an encouraging one. Jammed between noisy lathes and oily drill presses stand a dozen men, some far into middle age. Like acolytes of a dying devotion, they practice the art of machinemaking, using skills and techniques that have not changed much in 100 years...
...Tool Co., a precision machining shop with 23 employees and a twelve-month backlog of customer orders in the aircraft and defense industries, is typical of a crisis that is quietly brewing on the shop floors of the nation's plants and factories. From the tiny machine shops of New England to the aerospace hangar sheds of the West Coast, American industry is being squeezed and constricted by a shortage of skilled labor...
...shortage of skilled workers has gradually been building. Even the least academically inclined high school graduates now set their sights on college rather than on a technical education. Says Karl Sjogren, 60, a Finnish immigrant who owns a one-man tool-and-die shop in Redford Township, Mich.: "My son is not interested in this at all. He is an auditor for a big company...
...such jobs require more schooling than many white-collar professions. To become a journeyman diemaker, an apprentice must complete 8,000 hours, or four years, of shop work, practicing on-the-job skills for an average of just $4 an hour. In addition, the apprentice must also finish 600 hours of course work in a vocational school or an in-house training program. As skills improve, earnings pull ahead. In many shops a full-fledged diemaker can make as much as $40,000 yearly, with overtime. Such jobs in the U.S. rank seventh in lifetime earnings, behind insurance and real...
Today's artisans can trim metal to within one ten-thousandth of an inch, using mechanical cuts more precise than the strokes of the finest brain surgeon. During a grueling four-year apprenticeship in vocational classrooms and on the shop floor, the toolmaker absorbs the principles of solid geometry and learns to think in three dimensions. He is expected to read labyrinthine blueprints as well as be aware of the exact levels of heat and pressure that will cause various metals to buckle and break...