Out-of-date perceptions keep LI manufacturing jobs unfilled, execs say

Local manufacturers had 7,900 job openings in the past year and struggled to fill them because of a false perception that all factory positions involve standing behind a machine for eight hours a day, executives said Thursday.

While the manufacturing sector is best known for blue-collar production jobs, it also offers white-collar jobs in research and development, logistics, quality control, purchasing, sales and marketing, they said. And manufacturing jobs come with higher salaries, on average, and better health insurance and retirement plans than other sectors of the economy.

“Salaries and benefits are on top of the market” compared with other types of businesses, said Gina Hernandez, Long Island communications director for Novartis AG. The Swiss company employs about 350 people in Melville and Hicksville to produce skin creams, lotions and ointments.

“When you start earning the salary you say, ‘Wow, that’s more than others are making who are just starting out’ ” in non-manufacturing jobs, she told more than 100 people at Stony Brook University.

Hernandez was one of five speakers in a panel discussion about women working at factories. The panel was part of a conference held to mark national Manufacturing Day, which is Friday. The conference was organized by the university, the Small Business Development Center and several trade associations.

Rosalie Drago, regional director of the Workforce Development Institute, a nonprofit group based in Albany, said manufacturing, unlike other economic sectors, doesn’t require a college degree to get a job.

“You can enter manufacturing at any point in your educational journey – directly after high school, associate degree, bachelor’s degree or doctorate – and there’s an opportunity to work your way up,” she said.

Carolyn Barbarite and Zuhal Cevik agreed.

Barbarite credited her previous careers as a paralegal and marketing executive with giving her the skills to invent Javamelts, a coffee sweetener made in upstate Schenectady and sold from Smithtown.

“You can’t start at the top,” she said. If you do, “you cannot identify with people, you cannot problem-solve as well. You have to know what’s going on at the bottom in every aspect of the company to be successful.”

Cevik, who manages $50 million of inventory for aerospace manufacturer AAR in Garden City, said mentors have been instrumental to her career.

“Make sure you have somebody that’s going to cheer for you when you aren’t in the room,” she said.

All the panelists said Long Island’s 3,000 manufacturers are actively seeking workers, particularly millennials. The sector employs 76,000 people.

The panelists said the days of production work being dirty and sweaty are long over.

“It is not the manufacturing of the 1950s and 1960s,” said Anne Shybunko-Moore, CEO and owner of defense contractor GSE Dynamics Inc. The Hauppauge company, which has about 80 workers, makes periscopes and antennas for U.S. Navy submarines.

“There are incredible career paths in manufacturing," she said.

By James T. Madore

james.madore@newsday.comJamesTMadore

James T. Madore writes about Long Island business news including the economy, development, and the relationship between government and business. He previously served as Albany bureau chief.