Triumph Gulf Coast on Thursday awarded Pensacola State College more than $12 million to expand its aviation maintenance program. The move is expected to boost the local workforce in Florida’s fast-growing aerospace industry.
However, the announcement also comes amid controversy surrounding one of the program’s key beneficiaries, ST Engineering, which has faced scrutiny in recent weeks over its labor practices.
Gov. Ron DeSantis addressed the project at a press conference last month, where he announced a $4.4 million Florida Job Growth and Defense Infrastructure grant award to the program at PSC.
"We think there's a great opportunity in Northwest Florida with the college here," he said, "but also with a lot of the folks that come through here in the military. As they leave the military, these are great opportunities for them as well. So this is really significant."
Together with the state funding, the Triumph award will help to create a state-of-the-art facility that proponents say will train at least 420 students as aircraft mechanics over the next ten years.
If successful, the program would fill a void. Across the 12-county Panhandle region, the aircraft manufacturing sector has seen 49% growth in the last five years alone, according to Florida’s Great Northwest. However, at that press conference last month, Florida Commerce Secretary Alex Kelly noted that the market has failed to keep pace with the growing demand for skilled labor.
"The team here in Pensacola and Escambia County is doing a phenomenal job attracting interest from the aviation and aerospace industries," he said, "but that doesn't work if you don't have the workforce."
Despite the promise of high-quality jobs, Thursday’s announcement was overshadowed by controversy. ST Engineering has come under fire in recent weeks for its treatment of some 300 Chilean workers at the company’s facilities in Pensacola and Mobile. The workers allege they were promised long-term employment and potential green card opportunities, before being laid off without adequate notice or support.
The controversy has also sparked broader questions about how ST Engineering is fulfilling its contractual obligation to create jobs. Pensacola Mayor D.C. Reeves has given the company a Sept. 1 deadline to prove how many jobs it has created thus far and present a plan for the future.
Community organizer Grace McCaffery, who has been a prominent critic of the company’s practices, addressed the board on Thursday.
"We keep awarding ST engineering with millions of dollars to create jobs in an abusive environment," she said. "... Before ST engineering benefits from another dime, they need to make this right."
Responding to these concerns, PSC President Ed Meadows noted that the project was designed to benefit the broader aerospace industry, not just ST Engineering.
"Those hangars (at the airport) do not belong to ST," he noted. "They're leasing those. For all we know, five or ten years from now, ST may not be here, but another company may be here that gets the contracts with major airlines to repair and maintain those. We want to be able to have the workforce (to support that)."
