LEWISTON – Representatives of several local manufacturers told U.S. Deputy Secretary of Labor Steven J. Law that health insurance and training are among the greatest challenges facing Maine companies.

They told him high taxes, unfair foreign competition and a state legislature with rapid turnover and vacillating policies also contribute to difficulty in doing business here.

Law, who was in Lewiston on Wednesday afternoon for a tour of the WahlcoMetroflex manufacturing facility, said, “We think there’s a lot of hope for Maine and for its manufacturing base.” He noted that the Department of Labor has approved 26 different national emergency grants in recent years to help Mainers who have lost jobs in a particular area to transition to a new company and a new job.

“We think there’s a bright future ahead and it’s already starting to happen,” Law said. “With 11,000 jobs created in the last year here in Maine, I think it’s definitely on the upswing.”

Law met for nearly an hour with representatives of Formed Fiber Technologies Inc., Geiger, Procter & Gamble, Johns Manville, Cianbro, the Lewiston School Department, Maine Metals Products Association and the Manufacturing Extension Partnership. Also present were representatives of U.S. Sens. Olympia J. Snowe and Susan B. Collins.

Concerns about the shift from technical colleges to a community college system were raised by several business leaders. They said they fear that technical schools, which had been a feeder system to manufacturers, are slowly fading away. The high costs of supporting a welding class versus the lower costs for an English class were cited as reasons for the shift, and the deputy secretary was told it would be great to see some subsidies for technical needs.

Law told the business leaders that he believes Washington “is beginning to focus on where we are as a country in a worldwide marketplace.” He said, “I think there’s been some fruitful thought about looking at the United States as a market – looking at it as a global competitor – and thinking about what things we need to do to be more competitive. We believe that there’s some real potential in manufacturing, but it will be a different kind of manufacturing than what we’ve seen in the past years.”

In response to misgivings voiced about society’s litigious nature, Law said, “sooner or later we are going to take on the field of litigation crisis. You’re seeing more and more of that conversation in Washington.”

Law chose the WahlcoMetroflex plant for his tour and fact-finding visit because the firm is a recipient of Department of Labor grant money that helped hire workers.

Law’s tour of the 55,000-square-foot facility in the Lewiston Industrial Park was guided by John Powell, president of WahlcoMetroflex, and Evan Spoerl, product manager for auxiliary systems. They showed precision construction on large components representing the firm’s products that isolate and control gas flows.

Powell explained how the firm, founded several decades ago in Auburn by an immigrant from Germany, has achieved a worldwide customer base. The company moved to Lewiston in the early 1970s and was purchased in 2001 by a management team consisting of Powell and a half-dozen others.

WahlcoMetroflex currently employs about 60 people.

Earlier in the day in Portland, Law announced a grant to assist dislocated workers in Maine. The grant, made to the Maine Department of Labor Bureau of Employment Statistics, will assist about 50 workers who lost their jobs when Portland’s Tartan Textile Inc. closed recently.