What profiles will a battery factory like the one projected in Sagunt need? It is presumed that chemical engineers and automotive experts, but also workers in the automotive sector, among many others.
It is one of the questions to which Seat-Volkswagen is expected to answer soon, as confirmed by the companies and the Polytechnic University of Valencia (UPV), which was one of the elements, as is well known, in deciding the election towards the Valencian Community. and that it is very involved in designing university content that can train its future staff.
In fact, José Francisco Montserrat, vice-rector for Internationalization and Communication at the UPV, assures that they are waiting for the car company’s Human Resources department to specify “exactly the number of profiles they need”.
Meanwhile, calculations are made. At the moment Seat-Volkswagen has estimated the number of vacancies that the plant will generate at more than 3,000, but there will also be indirect employment: almost 20,000 positions. Last week’s presentation of the project at the CEV headquarters aroused the interest of many companies that could become suppliers if they pass the filter of the car company. And with it, generate more employment.
For this reason, the Association of Entrepreneurs of Camp de Morvedre (ASECAM), the Sagunt City Council and the UPV have been meeting in recent months to see the training channels that will open the door of the Sagunt gigafactory. And among them the most convincing is Dual FP.
“The Dual FP is an advantage because you see the person within the company and you can imprint the culture of the company itself, also because of the German nature of the company it would not be an unreasonable option. In Germany it works very well, so I think it will be the best option”, says Cristina Plumed, president of ASECAM.
And it is positively valued by the AVIA automotive cluster, which recently met with the mayor of Sagunt, Darío Moreno, to assess the “collaboration possibilities” between both entities, in which its president, Mónica Alegre, pointed out that among the associates of AVIA there are already companies located in this region, such as Pilkington, so “it is a natural relationship”.
They also estimate it this way from the Polytechnic University, where they believe that it would be a training option to give an outlet to the unemployed in the region, and not only to the highly qualified. Montserrat, in fact, emphasizes to La Vanguardia that in this idea “there is very good public-private collaboration to carry it out”.
For its part, the Department of Education has spent a year working “side by side” with the Technological Institute of Energy (ITE) and with the Department of Sustainable Economy in adapting the Valencian FP system so that it can provide technical and technical personnel superior trained in electric battery technology to the new gigafactory.
Four working groups have been created, one for each professional family involved in electric battery technology (chemistry, installation and maintenance, mechanical manufacturing and automotive) that are preparing training units in professional skills related to battery manufacturing that will begin to be offered this coming academic year 2022-2023 in VET educational centers that offer intermediate and higher level studies for these four families, not only in the Camp de Morvedre region, but also in L’Horta Nord, in València, in the regions south of Castellón and in the capital of La Plana.
From the Sagunt City Council they point out that the town has high unemployment rates (as of May 31 there are 4,789 unemployed), so one of their “great concerns” is to improve professional training.
Education has been working on this since before the gigafactory, to transform the training offer in the area and convert the IES Eduardo Merello and the IES Jorge Juan into Public Integrated Vocational Training Centers.
This is what ASECAM and the unions expect, although the latter warn of delays. “If they don’t work in the next course, we won’t advance anything to reach the times imposed by the gigafactory,” says Sergio Villalba, general secretary of the Intercomarcal Union of CCOO Camp de Morvedre.
Until now Education has invested 22 million euros in the 11 works of the Edificant plan, managed by the Sagunt City Council, to expand 10 centers in the town and build IES No. 5, which will allow the aforementioned centers to be only CIPFP.
The new IES No. 5 will have 30 ESO and 8 Baccalaureate classrooms, will offer 1,180 school places and will start operating next year, but while the delegation of powers that will allow the transformation of the IES Merello into an Integrated Public FP Center is being processed and expand it to a profile of 17 different vocational training degrees with 34 classrooms and the necessary workshops to train more than 1,000 students.
In the Camp de Morvedre region there are 6,058 unemployed according to the latest employment figures. Most belong to the service sector, but in recent years unemployment in the industrial sector has grown, and that is worrying.
“There is no fluctuation in unemployment, but here we are not seeing the recovery that exists in the Valencian Community, so we hope that the large projects that have been announced will begin to change this,” says Sergio Villalba.
For this reason, from the region that will host the large battery installation they want to prepare, a thesis that is supported by the CCOO-PV, whose secretary Ana García defended a few weeks ago as “essential that the planning of the training that the workers and the workers can be designed they are going to need, mainly, before the announcement of the battery gigafactory that is going to be installed in Sagunt”.
García demanded it in an act with the general secretary of the CCOO, Unai Sordo, who participated in a conference on the so-called “new reindustrialization” and in which the challenges for the Camp de Morvedre were addressed.
In addition, in the local industry there is concern about the pool of workers who, also now, will have to compete with the German automotive giant.
The businesswoman Cristina Plumed says that the announcement of the gigafactory generated “a great joy for the territory and for the Valencian Community, but in the industry there is fear and respect for the lack of profiles that all sectors are currently suffering.” The figures of 3,000 to 3,500 employees that Seat-Volkswagen has given is “a lot of employment” and that in the end is also a challenge.
