Ask farm machinery dealers in Western Canada about labor, and they all say the same thing: Qualified mechanics and technicians are in short supply.
“We’re having a heck of a time finding people,” said Scott Medd, general manager of Miller Farm Equipment in Shoal Lake, Man. “It’s hard to find a qualified parts person, but the biggest challenge is in the service department.”
The shortage of qualified workers is becoming so bad that “you either have to steal somebody by offering them tremendous amounts of money, or you have to inherit people” who move into the area, he said.
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Medd said businesses that aren’t looking for anybody right now are “on pins and needles” in case their employees decide to leave. Other businesses are hiring apprentices to fill the gap in journeyman workers. Medd has three.
Lionel LaBelle, the managing partner of Saskatoon Farm Equipment, always has three or four apprentices in training.
“Everybody in our industry is having a problem,” he said. As a director of the Canada West Equipment Dealer Association, LaBelle said an afternoon session at the group’s last board meeting dealt with the shortage of skilled labor.
“I think our industry in particular has been hard on (workers) over the years,” he said. “We haven’t done a very good job of nurturing them and paying them to keep up with the economy.”
Gone elsewhere
But now the agriculture industry is on an upswing.
“We’re starting to realize we need to pay these people more, and we are paying them more, but in the meantime, these people left,” LaBelle said.
He said the dealer association is visiting trade schools and high schools to raise awareness of the jobs in the industry.
That’s exactly what Weyburn Agro Sales owner Tom Stephenson thinks has to be done.
“I think as an industry we don’t promote it enough in the schools. I don’t think a lot of farm kids are aware there’s pretty easy jobs to be had as technicians in their industry.”
Stephenson is also short on staff: “If I could have a couple of journeymen right now, I’d hire them.”
Alberta has fewer service technicians than it would like, said Doug Pearce, dean of agricultural technology at Olds College.
“I would suggest that every machinery dealership in the province of Alberta has one or more vacancies.”
Olds College runs four programs to train service technicians. Pearce estimates about 85 percent of graduates from the agricultural mechanics diploma program will work at dealerships.
The remaining programs are apprenticeships, and Pearce expects all of about 115 students to return to dealerships where they are training.
But it still won’t be enough to fill all the vacancies.
Assiniboine Community College, in Brandon, Man., graduates about 30 students a year between the farm machinery and heavy mechanics programs, according to Dan Collins, chair of the trades division.
“Of those 30 students, probably only seven or eight of them go into apprenticeship,” he said. “The remainder either go back to the farm or end up doing something else.”
Both Collins and Pearce said the schooling cycle runs opposite to the job market. When there are no jobs, courses have waiting lists. When jobs are available, enrolment is low because people are working instead of training. And right now the job market is booming.
Collins also said part of the problem is in secondary schooling.
“I tend to see it as teachers in high schools who have traditionally been trained in universities trying to steer their students that way as well, so they don’t always say this is a really good first choice career.”
