Welding positions abound, more available

Published 12:00 am Friday, December 31, 2004

Allen Parsons, a supervisor at LeTourneau, stands in front of a giant rig at the south Warren County plant.. (Meredith Spencer The Vicksburg Post)

[12/27/04]Last week’s keel-laying ceremony for another exploratory oil rig at LeTourneau means welders will be needed for at least the next two years.

About 327 full-time employees plus 150 contract welders work at the company’s Vicksburg Marine Construction Shipyard on the Mississippi River south of the city, and opportunities remain.

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“We’re needing anybody who wants to come to work every day, as long as they can pass the test,” said Donald Cross, veteran chief executive for VMC.

With about 840 total on the payroll, LeTourneau is one of the county’s largest employers and is also one of the state’s largest trainers of welders. On the job, they use torches generating intense heat to bind pieces of steel and other alloys, creating seams as strong as the steel itself.

The company’s school can handle up to 15 students and it takes most students about four weeks to become skilled enough to pass LeTourneau’s test, Cross said. Earlier this month, spaces for about six additional students remained open in the school, Cross added. No prior training or experience is needed to enroll.

LeTourneau is scheduled to ship a rig already under construction from Vicksburg to the Gulf of Mexico in May and have the new one ready for final outfitting in December 2006.

Construction on another rig LeTourneau plans to produce will be scheduled to begin between those two dates. That rig’s completion would complete the company’s current series, called “Tarzan.”

Bo-D Massey, now VMC production manager, is a person who can attest to opportunities available through the training program. He learned to weld in the school in 1981 after graduating from Warren Central High School. He has been with the company his entire career and now supervises all VMC yard operations except engineering.

Five or six of the company’s supervisors also began as welders and moved into their current jobs within about 10 years or less.

“Every supervisor started in a trade,” Massey said, adding that five or six employees who began as welders and are now in their mid-30s or younger have become supervisors.

Student welders are paid $7.50 an hour and graduates make from $9.77 to $16.95 per hour. The state median wage is $13.81.

Industrialist R.G. LeTourneau of Longview, Texas, created a munitions factory here during World War II and afterward began making heavy equipment and other devices, many of which used his mechanical innovations. When the oil boom began, manufacture of giant exploratory rigs started here, unique because of their “jack-up” legs that can be lowered to the sea floor and raise the drilling platform above the waves. More than 50 rigs were built before the boom ended, and LeTourneau was shut down.

That changed about 10 years ago, and the plant opened with new contracts under the parent ownership of Rowan Industries of Houston, Texas.

A supervisor who joined LeTourneau about seven years ago, Allen Parsons, said he has worked on every rig the company has produced since it reopened here in 1995.

Learning to read construction blueprints is a key skill for advancement, Parsons said.

“I do it all the time,” he said.

Another LeTourneau supervisor, Roy Landers, said he learned to weld at Hinds Community College’s Warren County branch.

At HCC, Joe Johnston teaches students in the local high schools how to weld. The program for high-school students lasts two years and covers several different welding processes, Johnston said.

“It’s easy for me to get these guys jobs” in multiple local industries, Johnston said of practically all of his students who put forth the effort to learn the skills he teaches. “I don’t care where you go, welding is needed.”

Hinds sometimes contracts with the school to train new workers.

In addition to LeTourneau, local industries that employ some Hinds-trained students include Cooper Lighting; SpecFab, an Ergon company that was recently purchased from Hebeler; and Warren County’s two suppliers of Nissan’s Canton plant and other auto manufacturers, Yorozu Automotive Mississippi and CalsonicKansei.

SpecFab’s fabrication and assembly supervisor, Bruce Williams, said he, too, learned to weld in LeTourneau’s school and worked there for seven years. SpecFab handles custom specialty fabrication jobs for customers like Ergon and others in the power-generation and various manufacturing industries.

Williams said the company is planning to “start adding people, probably sometime in January.”

Others who have learned welding have started their own businesses. One is Ricky Lowery, who owns Ricky’s Welding and Machine Shop and is celebrating his 25th year in the welding and custom-machining businesses.

Lowery’s business’s newest piece of equipment is a computerized machine that can rapidly duplicate machine parts.

“We can get them back running before they can get (replacement parts) from overseas,” Lowery said.

Lowery’s business has served customers in industries including oil-production, rubber, automotive and construction and has traveled as far away as the Mexican border, he said.

Increasing access to foreign trade and investment has given manufacturers greater access to labor markets in poorer countries. Businesses like Lowery’s, though, are more service-oriented and thus do not compete with labor in such countries, he said.