Planning begins to meet emerging demand for labor with arrival of battery plant

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The Stellantis/LG Energy Solution plant won’t produce its first battery until 2024, but the task of filling the 2,500 direct jobs and countless more created in the supply chain has economic, educators, businesses and government officials rushing to keep ahead of the cresting wave of labor demand.

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“We know there’s going to be labor shifting,” said Invest WindsorEssex CEO Stephen MacKenzie.

“For a plant this size and all the spinoffs, you have to be proactive and start planning now. I’m totally confident we’ll be able to provide the workforce for LG.

“However, we’re taking a holistic approach and making sure we have supports and strategies to help our existing firms too.”

This will be a wide net we’re casting for talent

Next week LG is expected to provide a list of positions and the skill sets the company requires for their workforce.

St. Clair College and the University of Windsor will use that information to craft new curriculums and programs to make sure the region is producing the right graduates with the required skilled sets to meet the demands of the region’s transforming economy.

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Canadian Association of Mold Makers chair Jonathan Azzopardi said education is the long-term solution to producing enough talent, but a multi-pronged approach is required to deal with the labor requirements for the near and medium future.

He noted when Stellantis’s Windsor Assembly Plant added a third shift of about 1,200 workers, the supply chain lost a significant number of employees.

“Manufacturers have to tap into talent pools we traditionally haven’t drawn on enough,” said Azzopardi, who is president of Laval Tool. “We have to recruit more women and visible minorities to consider careers in manufacturing.”

However, Azzopardi said the best short-term solution is immigration. He notes that thousands of skilled trades workers poured into Windsor following the Second Word War and that flow continued well into the 1970s.

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“That’s something we need again,” Azzopardi said.

“What we’re experiencing in manufacturing now is what the greenhouse industry dealt with 20 years ago. I think we need to look at that solution and what countries like Taiwan have done.

“They have agreements with other countries that allow workers to flow freely back and forth.”

CAMM and Automate Canada are working with the YMCA to develop a new provincewide program to address the skills trade shortage by connecting newcomers, industry and service providers. The provincial and federal governments are funding the program through the Outreach Worker Ontario Newcomer Trades Program (ONTAP).

The Windsor YMCA is overseeing the program in Southwestern Ontario.

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“We have an excellent relationship with the three groups and we’ll provide assistance to navigate the process,” said Ronnie Haidar, an outreach worker for ONTAP in Windsor.

“We look at how we can fill the gaps.

“We educate newcomers on the skilled trades and direct those who already have foreign-acquired skills for equivalency assessments, help inform service providers about resources and make connections to employers.”

Haidar said the YMCA is ready to roll the program out fully once funding is received.

MacKenzie agrees immigration and repatriating Canadian workers, who cross the border to work in the US, will be important pieces of the labor puzzle.

In addition, he expects the battery cluster that is forming locally will draw skilled workers and university graduates from across Ontario and Canada.

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“We’ve got the magnet in the battery plant that’ll be the catalyst for a new sector of the economy,” MacKenzie. “This will be a wide net we’re casting for talent.”

MacKenzie added retraining workers is also a key component of building the labor force. LG has committed itself to participating in such training.

MacKenzie said the company will send cohorts of new hires to its other battery plants for experience to launch the Windsor operation.

To assist local firms to prepare for both the opportunities and challenges to come, MacKenzie said they’ve hired the German companies PEM and P3, which have experience the battery space, to audit local companies and conduct seminars on how to compete for business and retain and recruit talent.

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“We plan on working with companies directly,” MacKenzie said.

“When we talk about recruiting talent, we’re talking for all companies not just the battery plant.”

MacKenzie noted the labor force was one of the region’s strengths in winning the battery plant bid.

A Deloitte study of labor costs and the available workforce within an 80-kilometre radius of Windsor identified the value, quantity and quality of the talent pool. The post-secondary institutions cataloged their expertise and the annual volume of graduates in engineering, science, math and IT.

Tying it all together was data showing overall labor costs in Windsor would be significantly lower than in the US

“We had data from Statistics Canada and US government sources to compare costs for an average manufacturing employee (in 2020) and we were about 30 per cent lower overall,” MacKenzie said.

“It was after that meeting on the labor force that we thought we’ve got this plant.”

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