Meatpacker offers tuition to lure maintenance workers

An eastern Iowa meatpacker is offering to pay tuition at a local community college for students who become maintenance workers. I-B-P in Waterloo has set aside 100-thousand dollars to send potential maintenance workers to college. Ken Milbrodt is the plant’s director of training and development.Students take 28 weeks of classes while working part-time at I-B-P in an internship program. Milbrodt says students must pay one thousand dollars to enroll, but if they stay with the company for two years, all student loans will be forgiven.Milbrodt says the program will start in January. They hope to register up to 19 students per year.