Dartmouth company looks to UK for steelworkers

A Dartmouth firm best known for building bridges is looking to Ireland and Scotland for workers.

Over the next two months, Cherubini Metalworks is hoping to recruit steel fabricators it can't find in Nova Scotia.

Cherubini general manager Steve Ross hopes to hire as many as 20 fabricators from the United Kingdom.

The bridge builder has all the work it can handle for the next few years.

This weekend, Ross heads to Belfast, Dublin and Glasgow to interview unemployed workers.

"These are specific fabricating areas. With the economy the way it is over there now, there's people that are available. We've been looking around the world," said Ross.

Two years ago the company used Skype and the temporary foreign workers program to hire 20 workers from the Phillipines and Southeast Asia. Many are still here and their families have followed.

"What this is all about as well, it's not just to get workers to do a specific task and then leave, it's also the possibility of potential immigration," Ross said.

In Nova Scotia, the only training prorgam for steel fitters and fabricators is in Port Hawkesbury. 20 people a year graduate from the course. Cherubini and other companies have been asking for a second community college course for years.

"They're looking at that, but it just takes time to set up the prorgams amd establish the curriculums. That doesn't solve our problem for next week," said Ross.

Cherubini Metalworks currently employs about 220 people in Dartmouth.