Portland Community College | Portland, Oregon

Students Retraining in a Tough Economy: Erin Martin & Josh Mortensen, Welding

Photos and story by James Hill

They have to twist and contort in tight, small, claustrophobic places in floating vessels high above the Willamette River. Make no bones about it: it’s rough and tough work. And Vigor Industrial apprentice welders Josh Mortensen and Erin Martin absolutely love it.

“When I’m out there welding all day and it gets to quitting time, you have to make me put the torch down,” Mortensen said. “It’s fun and you get paid.”

Since May 2009, both graduates of the Swan Island Training Center, the two welders work on ships on the dock, putting in tough 8-hour days. These two are the first PCC students hired for the ship repair yard since the training center started two years ago. Every year, nearly 60 students take classes at the center, which places it at near capacity.

Vigor Industrial and PCC joined forces in 2008 to open the Swan Island Training Center to help meet demand for workers. Skilled welders are a key labor component for manufacturing companies and, locally, there is a shortage of well-trained workers in this vital trade. Companies on the east side of the Willamette, such as U.S. Barge, Vigor, Service Steel and Columbia Wire & Iron, have the potential to expand their workforce by taking advantage of the training opportunities that the Swan Island Training Center provides.

Frank Foti, chief executive officer of Vigor Industrial, said they started a training program 10 years ago but the industry took a turn for the worse, and Vigor had to close its Shipyard University. He added that the company tried to be its own teachers, which he admitted was too much to handle. In a crisis to find qualified workers, Foti and others turned to PCC.

“Our businesses crashed at the same time,” Foti said. “But this is a rebirth for this place and we’re so excited to see this happen. This is totally not possible without Portland Community College. This time we were fortunate to find a partner that teaches for a living, and who teaches what a whole market needs, not just what we need. We are one customer for PCC and not the only one.”

The PCC lab environment at the shop gives the welders a good insight to what will be expected of them on their jobs, a mere 100 yards from the front door of the training center.

“Out here, you end up in positions where you can’t stand the way you want, can’t look at it the way you want and can’t even use the arm you want to weld,” said Mortensen. “You have to learn to do all this positioning that we weren’t prepared for.”

Mortensen had been performing backbreaking work in construction without retirement or health benefits. Mortensen enrolled in the PCC welding program at the recently opened Swan Island Training Center in North Portland’s shipyard.

“That’s how you are going to get a job is to get down there in the field, meet some people and see what’s going on,” he said. “I was doing a lot of labor work and that doesn’t last forever. I started doing some research on welding and found that there’s a big demand for welders, salaries are going up and the outlook for the demand was just going to rise.”

At the shipping and receiving warehouse job, Martin she was previously at, she watched coworkers weld parts and she became intrigued. Because money was tight and she needed to provide for her child, Martin left her job to follow welding as her next career path.

“It sounded cool,” she said. “It was always guys doing it, but I wanted to do what they were doing. I wanted a better skill trade to support my son and I. If I didn’t know this stuff from the training center I would not have made it out here.”