This article is listed with permission from the Spartanburg Herald-Journal as written by Gary Glancy, staff writer, and printed on October 26, 2009.

SCC's Union branch hones skills for
in-demand jobs. 

Spartanburg Community College will soon open its new QuickJobs Development Center in Union, which school and local officials are hoping will eventually curb an unemployment rate of 20 percent there.

The recently completed 14,000 square-foot facility on Highway 176 -- an estimated $2.3 million project funded by a grant from the Department of Commerce and a Community Development Block Grant -- will house three technical programs: welding, pipe fitting and Manufacturing Skill Standards Council certification.  Classes are scheduled to begin by mid-November with the programs going into full swing in January, 2010. 

Dr. Just stands in the welding lab pictured on the right.  Officials say welding is a high-demand field.

Most of the students are recipients of scholarship money from an "individual training account" through Upstate Career Source, which operates under the direction of the Upstate Workforce Investment Board.

Career Source received $2.7 million from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to provide grants for a training program that would help unemployed or underemployed workers from Cherokee, Spartanburg and Union counties upgrade their skills in areas of actual or anticipated high demand in the Upstate, said Debra Giordano, project director for Career Source.

Spartanburg Community College is one of several locally approved training providers in the program, through Career Source's QuickJobs partnership with the South Carolina Technical and Community College System.

David Just, SCC's vice president for corporate and community education, said companies such as the Union center's new neighbor, LSP Automotive Systems, are looking for a local pipeline to help fill jobs at their plants, "so it's a win-win for everybody."

Just said the Manufacturing Skill Standards Council program, developed and endorsed by the National Association of Manufacturers, gives trainees national certification they can take to prospective employers.

"This gives entry-level workers some type of credentials," Just said, "so if they went to a company with that credential, the company would at least have the knowledge of what that person's competency level would be."

Spartanburg Community College has a similar program at its Tyger River campus in Duncan, and Just said many of those students could find employment upon graduation through BMW's full-time employee supplier, Tier One Solutions.

With BMW's impending expansion in the Upstate, "all these suppliers are going to need about 600 new jobs," Just said, "and these aren't temp jobs — these are jobs that are with these companies, and you are on the payroll of that company and not a temp agency."

Just said classes at the Union facility will start out as a 12-week program, but the college will have the ability to accelerate it into eight weeks if need be.

"The companies have given us a schedule of when they need to start hiring people, so we're kind of planning our classes so that we can have job fairs at the end of each program," he said.

Spartanburg Community College also will share the Union facility in a partnership with the University of South Carolina-Union, which will offer general education courses in the building for students to take as they fulfill transferable academic requirements while taking SCC's technical courses.

Joe Richards, interim department head of SCC's welding program at the central campus in Spartanburg, said the center will be a big help for people in Union.

"That's how I got started," he said. "I (graduated SCC) in 1977 and went to Catawba Nuclear (Station, near Rock Hill). That was the first job I ever had as a welder, and I've been welding for 33 years."

Richards' program is not only maxed out — with all 48 of his welding booths filled for both the day and evening sessions — but there's a waiting list.

Richards said he's got six recent graduates lined up to go to work at Duke Energy's Cliffside plant.

Just, who called welding a "hot area to get into," said as the Cliffside construction site peaks, it will employ up to 2,000 workers.