The owner of a Northbrook factory said he doesn’t even want to admit how much he spent on a new robotic system being brought on line this month. But he says it’ll be worth it to make Bernhard Woodwork more competitive and help solve a staffing problem that $27 per hour hasn’t fixed.
“It’s a matter of survival, to keep the business cost-effective. And I can’t even find people for an apprenticeship program here in-house,” CEO Mark Bernhard said of the company at 3670 Woodhead Drive. “For the most part, we have long-term employees, 12-15 years at least, all older, and we’re going to lose a lot of people” to retirement.
He says he can’t find enough quality employees, even through a union-run carpentry apprentice program that rises from pay of $10.84 an hour to journeyman’s wages of $27.09 in four years. Health insurance premiums are paid 100 percent.
So now, wood will be loaded directly from trucks onto a conveyor, which will carry it through a computer system from Italy’s SCM Group that will perform up to eight operations at a time. The boards will then be stacked, ready for assembly or more detailed work.
Bernhard said he employs about 40 journeyman, five apprentices and five laborers, and no one will lose jobs due to the robotics system. He needs everyone, he said.
“There’s such a stigma against people who work with their hands,” Bernhard said. “You talk to any of the trades, and it’s the same thing.”
The three heating, ventilation and air-conditioning companies that share Northbrook’s Sky Harbor business park with Bernhard rarely take down their help-wanted signs. They say they have to fight other firms, based as far away as Wisconsin, for skilled employees.
But Vince Sticca, the man who runs the apprentice programs for the Chicago Regional Council of Carpenters, said that the employees are there, should someone want them.
“Sometimes Mr. Bernhardt takes the people, and sometimes he doesn’t,” he said of his apprentice candidates.
Bernhard said it’s not that simple.
“A lot of them are not good apprentices, that come out of there,” he said of those provided by the union consortium. He also said some aren’t good fits for his company.
“Most live way on the South Side, Joliet, you name it, only a handful on the North Side,” he said. “You have a guy going from Joliet to Northbrook, that’s not a good chance for a long-term employee.”
He said he needs people to stick around because apprenticeships are a big investment. The new worker doesn’t get as much done as a journeyman, and “basically that apprentice is slowing down one of your journeymen for the first couple of years.”
Though the entire consortium’s apprentice program has an enrollment of about 3,000, the Local 1027 Mill Cabinet apprentice program that supplies Bernhard only has 40 people at any one time, said the union’s Jimmy Martinek, who runs it. He said Bernhardt refuses candidates not only due to geography but also due to their outlooks.
“The majority of his employees are family guys, guys that love being cabinetmakers, not guys who think it’s just a job,” said Martinek, who worked for Bernhard for 21 years before heading to the union.
Bernhard heads a 53-year-old business that specializes in woodwork walls, cabinets and fixtures for commercial buildings and luxury houses. He said his company is a leader in the finely-crafted high-end work, but when a job includes “boxes” – simple cabinets – it’s hard to compete with cheaper companies. That’s where the newest automation comes in, he said.
It preserves the hand labor for the high-end work, and “there’s a lot of money out there,” he said. He pointed out a work station where flat, thin wooden electrical switch-covers were being carved out of the wooden panels that will surround them, so electrical outlets will become an almost seamless part of a wall.
Journeyman D. J. Burns was doing that job as he watched over an apprentice, Ebba Schmid, and a new journeyman, Oscar Gonzalez. He said that the switch-plate job was the kind that ensures automation can’t push out people like him.
“There’s always going to be a need for cabinetmakers,” he said. “A CNC machine can’t build this. No way.”
Schmid, of Chicago, said she was referred to the apprentice program by Chicago Women in Trades, an organization that helps women get apprenticeships. She said she took the nine-week “pre-apprentice” program, then began her apprenticeship, which requires her to go back to school, free, for one day every three months.
Some of the problem attracting employees is perception, said Steve Silca, one of the last high school shop teachers in the area. He’s taught at Glenbrook South in Glenview for six years, and at Ridgewood High in Norridge for seven years before that.
He said that one of his star Glenview students did a great carpentry job on a $2 million house over the summer.
“His parents are both cabinetmakers, but he’s not going to become a cabinetmaker,” Silca said. “He’s going to be getting a college degree. For teenagers, going into the trades is not very sexy, even if their parents are in the trades.”
He said that “Norridge is not as much of a high-rent area, but even at Ridgewood, male students were not thinking about becoming a carpenter, electrician, plumber.”
Bernhard plant manager Jeff Morris said the disinterest is national.
“Everybody wants to sit down at a desk and make six figures,” he said.
