Want to work at Lockheed? Center offers training to prepare workers

Kinsey Williams can’t wait to start his new job, which he hopes will morph into a career.

Just a few months ago, the 16-year Army National Guard sergeant who served in Iraq and Kuwait was struggling to get the kind of job he wanted with only a high school diploma.

Then Williams discovered the Community Learning Center. After six weeks of training, and graduating at the top of his class, he’ll begin working at Lockheed Martin next week applying stealth coating to F-35 Joint Strike Fighters.

“It means the world to me,” Williams, 33, said about the training he received. He said the instructors and staff “changed his life forever.”

Williams’ success story was celebrated Monday as J.P. Morgan Chase announced a $500,000 donation to help the learning center expand its efforts to provide local industry with the technically-savvy workforce it needs.

The funds will support skills training in high-growth, high-demand occupations, especially aerospace and advanced manufacturing, Chase officials said during a presentation at the International Association of Machinists & Aerospace Workers hall near the gates of Lockheed Martin’s Fort Worth plant.

“This partnership gives us an opportunity to help more people seize the opportunities available for a good-paying job,” said Todd Ritterbusch, managing director and market executive for Chase in Tarrant County, in a statement. “Together we can help close the opportunity gap in our region.”

The grant is part of $2 million that the bank will spend on workforce development in Tarrant County, a company spokesman said. That’s part of Chase’s $250 million New Skills at Work commitment to address the global skills gap.

The donation will have a huge impact in the community, helping many people get high-paying, higher-skilled jobs, said Pat Lane, president and chair of the learning center, a nonprofit that works with major employers like Lockheed, Bell Helicopter and others.

U.S. Reps. Kay Granger and Marc Veasey and Fort Worth Mayor Betsy Price were on hand Monday to sing the praises of the learning center and its crucial role in ensuring that the area has a local workforce that’s prepared for the future.

For example, Lockheed Martin plans to hire 1,800 additional employees in Fort Worth as it boosts production of the F-35. The Fort Worth plant employs 14,000 workers, including about 8,800 on the F-35, and hiring is expected to begin later this year and stretch through 2020.

Veasey said the days when you could find a good-paying job “working the line” with limited technical knowledge are long gone and that workers need to be able to operate complex manufacturing systems and trouble-shoot robotic parts.

The Fort Worth Democrat said that while nearly 3.5 million manufacturing jobs will need to be filled over the next decade, the “skills gap” is expected to leave 2 million of those jobs unfilled.

“While we have made strides in helping match the technical knowledge of workers with the needs of employers, we still have a long way to go,” Veasey said.

Since opening its doors in 2000, the learning center has provided academic remediation and workforce training to more than 5,000 workers.

The center has two facilities, one outside the gates of Lockheed Martin on Clifford Street focused on aerospace-industry needs and a second in Forest Hill on Anglin Drive that concentrates on machining, welding, and construction building trades.

The learning center is in the midst of an $882,000 capital campaign to renovate the Forest Hill structure and has already raised about 60 percent of its goal, said Angela Traiforos, the executive director.

Williams said he’s always been good at fixing things. But his sharpened skills helped him earn the Lockheed Martin job, an entry-level position that pays $20.68 an hour, or about $43,000 a year.

“Eventually, I want to be an aerospace engineer and I would be hard-pressed to do it — if not impossible — without the program,” Williams said.

This story was originally published May 8, 2017 at 5:18 PM with the headline "Want to work at Lockheed? Center offers training to prepare workers."