Grant revives Tech job training program

LYNN – The E-Team Machinist Job Training program got a boost Tuesday when Secretary of Housing and Economic Development Greg Bialecki personally delivered the news of a $47,000 grant.”This allows us to finish out the class,” said Program Director Tony Dunn. “This is huge.”The E-Team program is a free machinist training program that teaches basic machining and manufacturing techniques. Bialecki, who toured the program run at Lynn Vocational Technical Institute, said Lynn is on the right track.”It’s very exciting,” he said. “The story of what’s happening in Lynn.”LVTI’s manufacturing program was mothballed in 2009 due to budget cuts and the E-Team suspended classes in 2011 after several years of relying on federal tax dollars to support the program. But state Sen. Thomas McGee then led a legislative drive to secure $90,000 in state money to revive the program.Mike Munday from Arwood Machine Corporation in Newburyport, who has hired several E-Team graduates, said it’s been tough for the last 15 years, and particularly the last five, to find employees with the skills to work in his manufacturing plant.”There is a huge gap in manufacturing,” he said. “The average age in my shop, including the young ones, is 54. We will have a huge problem in the next few years without training.”Robert Peterson is an LVTI graduate and an E-Team graduate, and said he can not speak enough about the program.”To be completely and utterly honest, I was strong armed into doing this,” he said. “My mother was a machinist with GE for 30 years, my grandfather was a planner for GE and my father is a welder. It’s in my blood.”He said he knew from the first couple classes that he was in the right place.”This program is just so awesome, you learn so much and you get to build stuff,” he said. “It’s hard to speak about just how this program is so awesome.”Manufacturers began shipping plants overseas years ago but Bialecki said that tide is turning, and Lynn is lucky in that it never lost all of its manufacturing base. The program, along with machine and metal shop classes in LVTI, are taught almost primarily by men retired from the field.”If it had been another 10 years before the lightbulb went off, it would have been too late and all that manufacturing knowledge would have been lost,” he said. “But now we have something to build on. The timing is perfect.”Along with the E-Team, Workforce Investment Boards from nearly all four corners of the state also received grants from Bialecki’s office, including $500,000 for the Metro North Regional Employment Board.Superintendent Catherine Latham was on hand for the presentation, along with City Councilor Peter Capano, a huge proponent of both LVTI’s and the E-Team’s programs, School Committee member John Ford, also representing state Rep. Steven Walsh, and a representative from McGee’s office.”I want to thank Secretary Bialecki for making the E-Team program possible,” Latham said. “I’m married to a tradesman, a plumber, so I know the value of the trades.”