It's a safety issue. Pressurized acetylene must be treated with great respect, and just the other day I read about a chem student that was killed in a lathe accident at Yale.
thanks for explaining. Still seems a bit like having a golf course and only letting employees with a certain handicap play. Maybe they could balance this out by offering an area with less dangerous equipment and/or lessons/instructors/supervision for everyone else.
When I still worked for Google the shops were split into four rooms with separate certification process and access for each. It was easy to get access to the EE or Woodworking shop, harder for the Metalworking and Welding.
