Basic Training

While the Association of Equipment Manufacturers’ (AEM) I Make America campaign is invaluable to the efforts to return American equipment manufacturers to a position of strength by creating jobs for skilled labor, there are other operations — especially for laborers that are also veterans. Take for instance San Diego’s Workshops for Warriors, which is training armed services personnel in the welding and fabricating skills they will need to get jobs in these same manufacturing industries — industries that are starved for truly skilled labor.

For Hernán Luis y Prado, president of Workshops for Warriors, the mission is twofold: Serve a veteran community that suffers almost double the unemployment rate of civilians, and reinvigorate the American workforce with skilled and talented labor who once served this country on the battlefield. For Workshops for Warriors, that all starts with training.

“Years ago, everyone went through industrial arts as a teenager,” says Luis y Prado. “Now you have liability concerns, safety concerns and a lack of quality instructors. Our manufacturing capability is eroding. We are losing the elements that maintain the American juggernaut of innovation, and that’s something we’re looking
to change with Workshops for Warriors.”

Starting a Revolution

Luis y Prado himself has served in Afghanistan, Iraq, Kuwait and Bahrain. Born in Argentina, he immigrated to the United States at the age of 2 and joined the Navy as soon as he graduated college.

“I always felt grateful to the United States for all of the opportunities that it gave me, so I enlisted in the Navy and started out as a Hospital Corpsman,” he says. “After years attached to mortar squads, machine guns, heavy weapons and the Marine Corps’ Super Squad, I obtained my commission as a Surface Warfare Officer through Officer Candidate School.”

While in college and in the Navy, Luis y Prado studied electrical and mechanical engineering, machining, CNC and MIG, TIG and Stick welding processes. His work with returning veterans started informally while stationed in Bethesda, Md., at the National Naval Medical Center.

“We’d have various guys and gals over to our home and they’d start tinkering in our garage,” he says. “I like to tinker, so we had a lot of equipment. Injured and non-injured, Vietnam vets, vets recently returned, all who wanted to learn so that they could go to future employers and say ‘Yes, I know how to weld. I know how to machine. I know how to use computer-aided design.’”

As many in the military are, Luis y Prado was shuttled between various stations throughout the United States, including Rhode Island and Mississippi. While in Mississippi, he was further thrust into the industrial world while working on massive Navy vessels, including welding, ship husbandry, fabrication and industrial machining.

Luis y Prado and his wife, Rachel, wanted to formalize the training they had begun working on with vets by establishing a permanent facility. In researching places to set up shop, they discovered that San Diego was not only the home of one out of every seven vets who leave the Navy, but where one in four vets is homeless, and the region’s unemployment rate for vets in the 18-35 age demographic is almost double the unemployment rate of the civilian population.

“America is declining in manufacturing, yet we have thousands of vets who are competent, responsible, drug-free, know how to show up on time and take initiative. We’ve got to take this and make something positive out of it, and that’s why we started this program,” says Luis y Prado.  

Building a Workshop for Warriors

Luis y Prado now leases a 7,500-sq ft facility from San Diego welding distributor WestAir Gases & Equipment where he’s able to set up numerous work areas to focus on specific skills, including welding, sheet metalworking, CNC plasma and diesel and gasoline engine repair. Workshops for Warriors now has five full-time instructors and eight volunteers that include welders, ASE-certified mechanics, contractors and underwater welders. The shop offers a flexible curriculum that includes formal classes and informal training sessions to help fit the schedules of its students.

“We’ve got the capacity to train 48 students each year in our welding program, 48 in our machining and milling programs and 24 students in computer-aided manufacturing design. We also ensure that every vet we put through here has a job at the end of this. We have contacts in the military, on every base here on the West Coast and in almost every large shop that deals in structural metalworking, fabrication or machining. They are always on the lookout for quality employees.

“We provide a vocational village that provides the perfect opportunity for success. We have highly trained instructors, excellent American machinery, tooling and supplies. And we’ve got a collaborative and secure environment where people can transform ideas into reality.”

In terms of welding and the construction industry, Luis y Prado makes sure his students have the skills to succeed, whether that’s in equipment manufacturing or field work. Workshop for Warriors’ features a welding fleet developed in part with Appleton, Wis.-based Miller Electric Mfg. Co.

“Welding is pivotal to America’s role as a manufacturing leader,” he says. “If we don’t have homegrown welders who are capable of industrial and construction welding, we have to rely on outside welders to build our high-rises, our factories and our ships. Welding is a cornerstone and every one of our students learns basic welding. They know how to weld I-beams, how to install footings, how to weld 7018 fillet welds on three-eighths-inch plate in vertical overhead, how to make carbon steel butt welds.” 

In addition to training, Luis y Prado partners with local businesses to bring work in to the shop that gives students a practical application to perfect their skills. This includes deals with companies like Republic Services to perform dumpster repair and construction, and building custom welding carts for a local fabricator. He challenges companies that manufacture products overseas to use Workshops for Warriors as a way of not only pulling those services back to the United States, but also helping train an under-served portion of the American workforce: returning armed services vets.

“Every product we make generates revenue, provides commercially viable training for a vet, and most importantly, empowers these vets to go out into the workforce and strengthen the American manufacturing machine. It’s really an amazing transformation.”

Chuck Taber is a district manager with Miller Electric Mfg. Co., based in Orange County, Calif.