Factory Work

Factory Work

Once "dangerous and disappearing" Colorado manufacturing jobs are now plentiful and tech-driven. This two-part series looks at what’s being done to fill these jobs, from training teens to automation.

18-year old Genesis Gomez carries a tray of white cylinders on a factory floor.

Jennifer Coombes

KUNC

News

With thousands of factory jobs unfilled, Colorado companies train up teens

Leigh Paterson

Colorado has a workforce problem: thousands of manufacturing jobs are unfilled. For years, employers have struggled to find people who want this work and have the right skills. The first installment of KUNC’s two part series, ‘Factory Work,’ examines one fix: getting teenagers interested in manufacturing.

“So we're really trying to get back into the schools, get back into reaching people at a younger age. Let them know that these opportunities to make a really good living, really good wage, exist in manufacturing.”

Sean Grubb, the director of technical training at CoorsTek

Genesis Gomez works through the technical steps to create necking dyes, or the molds that will create the top of aluminum cans, at Coorstek. Gomez is a part of the apprenticeship program and will learn various skills at the plant for the next year.

A stack of ceramic cylinders sit on a cart and wait to become necking dyes at the Coorstek plant.

As the process becomes more automated, Ready Foods owner Marco Antonio Abarca has retained and trained employees in the advanced processes. Ready Foods, a Denver factory that provides beans and salsa to around a quarter of the area's market, uses a mixture of human labor and technology to refine productivity and efficiency.

Jennifer Coombes/KUNC

News

Once ‘dangerous and disappearing’ Colorado factory jobs are now plentiful and tech-driven

Leigh Paterson

Colorado is confronting a manufacturing workforce problem: not enough people have the right skills or the interest in doing these jobs. So, many companies are turning to automation and speeding things up. In the second installment of our series, ‘Factory Work,’ KUNC visits with the people and robots that are getting the job done.