Carlos Cardoso, right, President & CEO, Kennametal, Inc. listens to a comment from Tighe King, left, Perform Group, LLC, at a meeting of the Governor's Manufacturing Advisory Council.
Editor’s Note: This is the second in a series of articles examining the state of manufacturing in Pennsylvania as part of the Team PA-led Governor’s Manufacturing Advisory Council.
Carlos Cardoso is on a mission on behalf of manufacturing.
Part of that mission is to serve as co-chair on the Team PA-led Governor’s Manufacturing Advisory Council, which has been charged by Governor Corbett to make recommendations to the Legislature and him on ways to strengthen that industry sector.
Noting his are industry-driven concerns, Cardoso’s priorities run the spectrum from addressing burdensome regulatory constraints to workforce development needs to making permanent Research and Development tax credits.
“We need to strike a balance between protecting the environment and not overburdening business, which makes us uncompetitive,” Cardoso said. “I am a proponent for protecting the environment, but I also feel we need to have common-sense regulations.”
Concerning the issue of workforce development, Cardoso said school systems are ill-equipped to prepare students to meet the demands of a 21st century global economy. Cardoso, President & CEO of the Latrobe-based business, Kennametal, Inc., said his company has available positions but not enough people qualified to fill those openings.
“We need to reinvent our technical schools so we can ensure we are graduating kids from those schools that have the necessary abilities and the necessary skills (to be workforce-ready),” Cardoso said. “In K-12, we definitely need to, again, reinvent that so we have kids equipped with the science and math tools needed to succeed in life. K-12 should be laying the educational foundation for a child and college should open the door and open students’ mind so they can do and be whatever they want to be in life.”
Cardoso said Pennsylvania-based businesses are overly taxed, which cripples the commonwealth’s economic competitiveness with other states.
“We need to create an environment where companies are not punished to have their businesses in the state,” Cardoso said. “Our reality is that our political system rewards what I call the ‘vocal minority.’ We try to govern for the vocal minority instead of governing for the quiet majority. We need the political will to work on behalf of the quiet majority, and engage the silent majority in the political process.”
As an individual who has spent nearly all of his working life in manufacturing, Cardoso is one of the industry’s biggest cheerleaders and spokesmen. Cardoso labors diligently to change misconceptions about manufacturing and promotes his industry to young people to show they too can have successful careers and earn family-supporting wages.
“As manufacturers, we have a responsibility to educate our young people about the exciting career opportunities in our industry and help build the manufacturing workforce of the future,” Cardoso said. “Our goal with this program is to provide the opportunity for exploration and discovery about the great jobs in manufacturing and engineering.”
Addressing misconceptions surrounding manufacturing is apparently needed, according to a recent national survey commissioned by Kennametal.
The survey shows that much of America still views manufacturing as a stagnant sector that is losing jobs. Only 9 percent of the 1,000 polled believe manufacturing has been a bright spot in the economy over the past three years, and only 11 percent believe the sector is growing.
“People think we don’t make anything anymore,” Cardoso said in a recent webcast announcing the survey results at the National Press Club in Washington. “They’re wrong. We do. It’s time for the industry to reintroduce itself to the American public.”
Cardoso said the survey was conducted to gauge people’s perception of manufacturing.
“We felt if we approached this from a perception perspective, in conjunction with the statistics that we have been showing for decades, that we then could wake up people and make a bigger difference,” Cardoso said. “I feel the survey shows that manufacturers have a lot of work to do.”
The poll also found that:
• 17 percent think manufacturing has a positive outlook in the future
• 68 percent feel the perceived lack of manufacturing jobs is more significant than the lack of training required to fill those jobs
• 71 percent said they would not recommend a career in manufacturing to young Americans
• Conversely, 65 percent believe manufacturing jobs are desirable and are considered well-paying and high-tech, and 70 percent believe manufacturing jobs are important for domestic job creation.
The reasons Cardoso spends so much time working to improve manufacturing are quite simple.
“My biggest interest is really to see, first of all, America succeed and for us to have an environment where manufacturing can thrive because I really believe manufacturing drives the middle class,” Cardoso said. “My passion and my desire are to see the middle class in this country thrive. We can’t have a sustainable political and social/economic environment without a strong middle class.”
“Secondly, I have lived in the state of Pennsylvania for 10 years and I have met and worked with a lot of great people in this business,” Cardoso added. “When you think about Pittsburgh, it was one of the great industrial centers of the world, and Pennsylvania was one of the top states for manufacturing. We deserve – and have the right – to be one of the top manufacturing states again.”
Read more about the first meeting of the Governor’s Manufacturing Advisory Council.
More background and the composition of the Governor’s Manufacturing Advisory Council members.
