Apprentice motivation: Free college and a job

Charlotte, N.C. — The mold making sector in the United States has an aging workforce — more than half its workers are over 45 years old.

But at Pfaff Molds LP in Charlotte, the average age is 33.

President Troy DeVlieger credits an apprenticeship program for the influx of youth.

Ten of the company's 35 employees are active apprentices, recently out of high school. Others in the injection tooling factory are 20-something recent graduates of the four-year apprenticeship program.

"One of the things we saw is that in order to develop sustainability for the company, we really needed to go with youth and grow from the ground up," DeVlieger said.

Plastics News recently spent two days visiting three North Carolina plastics companies that are part of a growing program of manufacturing apprenticeships in that state.

As part of a three-part series, we spoke with about a dozen current and recent apprentice graduates to get a picture of how they see the programs.

The big draw, not surprisingly, is a job right out of high school that offers a career path and the promise of decent pay, and free tuition toward a two-year associate degree.

A program around Greensboro, N.C., for example, starts at about $9 an hour the first year, rising to $13.50 in the fourth year. A program in Charlotte has a minimum salary of $36,000 after graduation. Across the state, college tuition for the coursework is paid for by the company or the government.

Participating companies guarantee jobs to apprentices who complete the program, although not all students choose to work with the companies they apprenticed with.

There are no contracts — students are free to leave at any time during the program or after without owing money to the company or the government.

Company executives say they want students to choose to work for them. That also creates an incentive to make the work environment as attractive as possible, DeVlieger said.

"It's really upon us to provide that working environment and also the salary base, the pay base, that they don't want to go anywhere else," he said.

Two years of debt-free college was a big draw for apprentices at Pfaff.

"The biggest thing with the apprenticeship is there's no college debt at the end," said Devin Pierzinski, a first-year apprentice.

In an interview in the factory's conference room, he said he had been looking at studying engineering in college but was worried about the cost: "I'm not from the wealthiest family and money is not something we just throw around to go to college."

His colleague Matthew Brown graduated from Pfaff's apprentice program in 2016 and stayed on full-time as a journeyman mold maker.

While he was in high school, he said he toured colleges with his mother, a middle school guidance counselor. But the college experience didn't resonate with the teenage Brown.

"I wasn't the greatest in my [high school] classes," he said, "I found I had a hard disconnect between learning in class [and] saying you're going to need this algebra three years later."

His mom mentioned apprenticeships and that got him interested.

"I liked working with my hands on a day-to-day basis and going home and having a product that I could be proud of," he said. "Going through the whole process of the apprenticeship orientation, I realized this is something that could actually work for me."

At Pfaff, he's discovered he likes working with people and wants to get into project management. Now he's taking classes toward a bachelor's degree in management at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte, while working full time.

Judging from some other apprentices, though, Brown may be unique in the advice he received. Many students and recent grads don't remember their high schools giving them much information about apprenticeships.

"In high school I was pushed: Get a degree. We were led to believe you couldn't get a decent job unless you had a high degree," said Mike Shinn, who finished his apprenticeship at Ameritech Die & Mold Inc., in Mooresville, N.C., in 2011. Today, he's a mold maker at the company.

"You almost felt like the options were digging a ditch or getting a master's," he said. "That's kind of how I feel like I was taught. Trade and industry wasn't pushed at school.

"I don't think it's a dislike for manufacturing or anything like that; I believe it's more of an ignorance," he said.

Shinn liked the debt-free college aspect of the apprenticeship. He had been accepted from high school into the engineering program at North Carolina State University, but he was concerned about college debt and wanted a job with an immediate career path.

"My family didn't have the money to shell out to pay for it outright," he said.

Shinn said the decision has many positives. He enjoys training young apprentices, he bought a house when he was 21, and his job has been stable while his wife, who has a master's degree in business, works to start her career. The couple just had their second child March 14.

Plastics company executives involved in the program agree that they must overcome misconceptions about manufacturing when talking to students.

"You go talk to high school students about these programs and they've all been brainwashed that the four-year degree is the only path," said Todd Poteat, vice president of manufacturing at injection molder Bright Plastics Inc. in Greensboro.

Unlike Ameritech and Pfaff, which have been in apprenticeship programs for years, Bright only started last year, after it had trouble recruiting employees for a recent expansion.

Bright's first apprentice, Phillip Fuller, is nine months into a four-year, 8,000-hour program that will train him as a process technician.

Fuller finished high school a semester early to get started on his apprentice work and college. For now he relies on rides from his mom and aunt to travel the 15 miles between his home in High Point, N.C., and Bright.

Work and free tuition are a big motivators.

"My mom always told me, 'I can't afford to pay for you to go to college, but you're going,'" Fuller said. "'Either you're going to get a scholarship, or you're going to go regardless.' That's always the way it was drilled into me.

"Mainly because of the way I was raised, we didn't have the time or the means to let things go," he said.

Fuller wants to get a bachelor's in mechanical engineering. While the job is an adjustment — he said it's his first big work experience — there have been some perks.

He gets some good-natured ribbing from coworkers because he's already been interviewed by several local television news programs and the Greensboro News & Record for coverage of the new apprenticeship program, which began this year in Guilford County.

"When I'm here they joke around and say, 'Hey Hollywood,'" he said. "It's been real fun."

Read more about North Carolina's program:

North Carolina plastics firms look to apprenticeships

Pricey apprenticeships help two mold shops compete