Material Handling Headed for a Workforce Crisis
Not a single one of America’s top players in material handling and logistics wanted their sons and daughters to be working in a distribution center as adults. That was the shocking result of a show-of-hands poll Benoit Montreuil, president of the College Industry Council on Material Handling Education, took during a speech at last summer’s Material Handling and Logistics Summit. The straw poll of industry leaders caused Montreuil to take a hard look at the future of material handling and the workforce issues that will help define that future.
Montreuil believes America’s growing workforce crisis, which he said is not industry specific, is rooted in three issues:
- As Baby Boomers retire, there are fewer workers to replace them. America’s workforce is shrinking.
- America’s next generation of workers prefers white collar jobs to jobs in factories and distribution centers. To cut costs, many businesses are outsourcing labor jobs to foreign countries. Immigrant laborers comprise the largest segment of factory and distribution workers, a trend that is growing.
- Material handling and logistics jobs are perceived to be dull, entry-level jobs requiring little skill and garnering bottom-rung pay.
The obvious short-term solutions are to import more foreign workers eager to work in America under current conditions and for present pay levels, undertake a major marketing initiative to change the negative image of material handling and attract a new workforce, and computerize and automate our operations to minimize manpower needs. However, Montreuil warned that long-term solutions will require a change in the material handling industry’s paradigm.
Next time: The future of the material handling industry.
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July 8th, 2008 at 10:45 am
It’s not that the next generation does not want to work at manufacturing or in a distribution center, it’s because these jobs have remained income flat for the last 20 years. In my shop manufacturing jobs pay about the same as they did in the 70’s in order for the company to compete against foreign manufacturing. How are kids going to support homes and families working at these pay levels after dollar deflation and price inflation? Of course they want to work white collar.
October 20th, 2008 at 9:17 am
The results of this poll have nothing to do with reality of the future of the industry and it’s work force. Every generation wants their children to do better than them (not matter what they do)… ask the same questions of pro athletes and movie stars and you’ll often get the same results.
Reality is most of their children won’t do better them and while most will prefer white collar jobs, most won’t get them and will still enter material handling.