Training Alaskan miners: operators participate in recruiting and selecting students.

• Author: Swagel, Will
• Position: SPEICAL SECTION: Mining

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As the price of gold and other commodities rises and falls, so do employment opportunities in the mining industries in Alaska. While commodity prices are off recent highs, global development continues to drive strong demands for the metals and other minerals needed for manufacturing and construction.

Entry-level jobs in large underground or surface mines tend to pay family-level wages and provide full benefits. For more than 30 years a partnership between mine operators, the state and federal government and the University of Alaska has provided pre-employment certification and training so those coveted jobs--as often as possible--are filled by Alaskans.

"The Alaska Department of Labor is saying that--with all the new mines opening up (in Alaska)--we'll need a couple of thousand miners and 3,000 engineers and support staff over the next three years," says Mike Ball, director of the UAS Center for Mine Training in Juneau. Bell says that across the border in British Columbia and the Yukon, mine operators are expected to need up to another 13,000 workers.

Rigorous Process

The enduring image of a miner on the Last Frontier may be Prospector Bill panning for gold nuggets, but today's Alaskan miner is an operator of expensive, computer-assisted equipment who must adhere to stringent safety and environmental regulations. Training for such skilled workers is a costly investment and Bell describes a system where every student who graduates in offered a job.

First, mine operators are canvassed for their needs. "All training is on demand," says Bell. He says the mine operators participate in every aspect of recruiting and selecting students for the training program.

"We ask them, 'if we were going to train, how many people could you hire?'" says Bell. The Alaska Department of Labor and Workforce Development will then do an advertising campaign, which will generally lead to 150 to 200 applicants. Of those applicants about 25 are interviewed further. Twelve to 15 applicants will make the final cut.

These students will spend the first week of the five-week course on safety issues, and then the rest of the training is about working in the mine. Students take classes, work on high-tech simulators of mining equipment, and--in the case of those studying for jobs in underground mining-spend time working at a training facility in the Alaska-Juneau (or A-J) Mine.

"They go underground into the mine and learn to move rock and how to work in...