(Bloomberg Businessweek) —
America’s biggest factory boom in generations is running up against a shortage of skilled workers. As manufacturers and technical colleges race to train employees for cleantech plants sprouting up across the country, one group is emerging to help fill the skills gap: military veterans.
Former Marines, Army avionics engineers and Navy technicians once deployed in combat zones including Iraq and Afghanistan are finding second careers at factories making electric vehicles, batteries and solar cells. They’re combining old-fashioned military discipline with new skills honed during active duty such as operating robots and drones.
“Mission-focused, adaptable, strong work ethic, ability to work under pressure and overcome adversity,” says Toyota Motor Corp.’s Jamie Hall, who oversees the hiring of thousands of workers at a new EV battery plant in North Carolina. “These folks have a lot of training and are prepared for those things.” The facility, some 70 miles northwest of the US’s biggest military base, Fort Liberty, has already hired about 90 vets.
The EV and battery industries are a big draw for vets as manufacturers prepare to open dozens of plants in the coming years, even as they face a slowdown in US sales. In Kentucky, Ascend Elements Inc. is building a $1 billion plant to process materials extracted from spent batteries so they can be used in new ones. About a third of the 70 or so workers recruited for the site so far are ex-military, including Cory Radcliffe, who spent more than three years in the US Marine Corps’ unmanned aerial systems task force. The 36-year-old says the skills he picked up working on military hardware are useful in his present role as construction manager, helping map out where machinery and equipment will be installed on the site, which is located some 20 miles away from his former base, Fort Campbell. “How do they interconnect, how do they interact?” says Radcliffe. “It’s constant troubleshooting.”
The so-called Battery Belt, a span that runs from Michigan down to the Carolinas and Arizona, is a hotbed of building activity, thanks to federal incentives designed to speed America’s transition away from fossil fuels. The industry faces “significant” workforce shortages and skills gaps, with engineers, technicians and assemblers among those in the shortest supply, according to a report by the Center for Automotive Research, a nonprofit that tracks the industry. Meanwhile some 200,000 personnel leave the military annually, according to the Department of Labor, with their median age just 27 years old.
Robert Howey has taken his technical know-how from three years in the Navy to a factory in Georgia operated by Hanwha Solutions Corp.’s Qcells that turns out solar panels. The 31-year-old used to analyze ocean and weather data from satellites and sonar to help detect enemy submarines. Now his job is to pinpoint malfunctions in advanced machinery across a plant the size of about two dozen football fields.
Historically, US servicemen and women haven’t had a difficult time finding employment after reentering civilian life. According to data compiled by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, about 70% of military vets wind up in private-sector jobs, led by manufacturing and business services, while almost a quarter go on to work for the government.
Hiring in the battery industry is expected to rise by more than a fifth from 2023 to 2026, according to a survey by the Center for Automotive Research, even as EV demand cools. Plant owners also face stiff competition for vets from military contractors, as the US modernizes its tanks, submarines and aircraft, says Tim Best, who runs RecruitMilitary, a hiring firm in Virginia.
Rob Hill, a retired Army officer who’s a manager at battery maker AESC Group, which is building a plant in Bowling Green, Kentucky, says vets will find themselves right at home in the EV industry. The sector is on the cutting edge of creating new technologies, just like the military, which pioneered global positioning systems and infrared imaging. “It’s a good fit for military minds,” says the 48-year-old.
Still, the cultural shift from military to corporate life isn’t without its bumps. Andrew Walther, who was deployed in Iraq and oversaw soldiers doing such things as handling explosives and fortifying defenses for Army bases, says one of the daunting things he faced was switching from the military’s regimented top-down orders to decisions driven more by consensus. It took him a year into his job at Ascend Elements before he got used to it, the 29-year-old says, though now he sees the benefits. “It’s more collaborative, my voice is heard more, which is just rewarding,” Walther says.
Sarah McManus, 41, who also works at Ascend, says she finds it hard to shake certain habits from her two decades in the military, like peppering conversations with the word “roger” and referencing military time.
Radcliffe, at Ascend, says his greatest fear about leaving the military was losing his life’s calling. But battery-making can be patriotic in its own way, he found.
Every so often he gathers his crew on the construction site to give a pep talk. Climate change doesn’t come up in conversation there, he says. Nor are there any electric pickup trucks in the parking lot. But Radcliffe tells his crew they’re playing a crucial role in helping the US loosen China’s grip on critical supply chains. “Whether you like EVs or not, believe in climate change or not, drive an F-350 pickup or an EV,” he says, “my motivation and purpose here is that the US needs this to be successful.”
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To contact the author of this story:
Saijel Kishan in New York at skishan@bloomberg.net
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