Words of wisdom from Frank Hasenfratz

The Globe and Mail had a brief interview with Linamar Corp founder Frank Hasenfratz today. I'd link you to it but getting around their paywall is rather time consuming, and I think I can give you the gist of his wisdom without the link. I suppose I could start paying, but hell, I pay enough for their paper when I pick it up at the corner store. I shouldn't have to pay them twice.

But back to Frank.

Frank is one of those old school capitalists who made his money the old fashioned way; by working really hard at making things other people were willing to pay for. In his case it's been mainly auto parts, with a variety of other precision machined goodies thrown into the mix.

During my high school years Frank's original factory, one concession over, right beside his house, was the employer of last resort for high school drop-outs and others on the lower rungs of the employability ladder. While I was a high school drop-out I always had the good fortune of finding better paying gigs than what Frank had on offer.

That story took a turn in the 1980's when Frank took his company public. He offered pre-IPO shares to his employees and quite a few took him up on it.

And quite a few of them became millionaires.

But that's quite beyond the ken of Frank's interview with the Globe today.

On the subject of training skilled workers, Frank had this to say; everybody pays lip service to it but nobody does anything about it.

Exactly!

That's what I've been saying for at least 25 years! In Canada, about 20% of companies who employ skilled trades have any sort of training/apprenticeship program to develop skilled workers. The other 80% of employers are content to poach them from the 20%.

And what sort of a leadership role has government taken in creating a skilled work force? Aside from the aforementioned lip service, absolutely nothing.

In fact, the government bends over backwards to accommodate employers when they apply to bring foreign trades into the country.

Meanwhile, well over a million Canadians are unemployed.

I'm aware that working as a welder or a carpenter isn't everybody's cup of tea, but for the sake of our future, isn't it time we got serious about this?