Apprenticeships Presented as College Alternative
YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – The work is hard, physically demanding, but rewarding financially and emotionally, apprenticeship coordinators for the building trades unions told juniors and seniors at Austintown Fitch High School Thursday.
The work requires intelligence as well, the coordinators emphasized. Those with a 0.8 GPA need not apply, Matthew J. Sargent, the co-coordinator for Local 207 of the Ironworkers union, said, or if a student has been excessively absent.
“You have to be prepared to come into our program,” Sargent said.
“You have to have a good math background,” said Edward Emerick, coordinator for Local 64 of the electricians union, “algebra I and geometry at the very least.”
Some 250 boys and girls attended the inaugural Building Trades and Craftsmen Fair at Fitch High School coordinated by Marie Dockry, a guidance counselor since 1980. She met Don Crane, president of the Western Reserve Building & Construction Trades Council last summer at a meeting where Crane spoke and invited him to put on the trades fair so juniors and seniors could learn firsthand the career opportunities the unions offer.
And she wanted her students to appreciate the avenues they could take other than college and the military.
Present yesterday were representatives from Local 64 of the electricians union, Local 396 of the plumbers and pipefitters, Local 207 of the Ironworkers, Local 66 of the Operating Engineers, Local 45 of the Elevator Constructors, Local 207 of the carpenters union, Local 125 of the Laborers International Union of North America, Local 847 of the glaziers union and Local 476 of the painters union.
The trades council represents 14 crafts, Crane said.
Crane and the apprenticeship coordinators were blunt. Most second-year apprentices earn more than the average wage in the Mahoning Valley, Crane said. And while the work is demanding, physically and mentally, and the hours can be long, the rewards are considerable.
Unlike college, apprentices pay no tuition and when they have achieved journeyman status, they likely will have earned 30 credit hours toward a college degree, Crane noted. The skills the apprentices attain make them “more profitable to your employer” and they can expect to earn a “six-figure annual income” in some trades. “The work is there,” whether retrofitting the General Motors plant in Lordstown when it secures a new model or in the ever-growing oil and gas industry.
What’s it cost to go to college?” the plumbers’ Marty Loney began. After the students agreed on an average of $45,000 (with Loney’s nudging), the apprenticeship coordinator put out “three figures, 45, 45 and two million.”
Instead of paying $45,000 in tuition, a plumber’s apprentice can pay a $45 application fee and, if accepted in the program, expect to earn $2 million over a 40-year career. “$50,000 a year over 40 years,” he said, “and that’s the low end. Plus retirement [a pension] and benefits. … You make money every day you’re an apprentice. You don’t pay to go to school.”
Conceding the figures are out of the ordinary, Loney told of two plumbers in Lima he met earlier this year. One worked nine month and earned $172,000, the other eight months and was paid $147,000. The men worked considerable overtime.
The Ironworkers’ Sargent responded, “A lot of guys make over $100,000 a year and some make $10,000 a year. It all depends on how bad you want to work.”
But Loney’s point was this: “It’s dirty welding pipe laid in the ground, but you get paid a lot of money for it.”
The wages paid most in the building trades is $25 to $40 an hour, excluding benefits.
Three-fourths of the students raised their hands when the electricians’ Emerick asked how many planned to go to college. “You can achieve a college degree through us and not pay a cent,” he stated. Besides the 30 credit hours Crane mentioned, Emerick noted employers are willing to subsidize the college tuition of their best performers and have them return with degrees as electrical engineers.
The Elevator Constructors’ Vincent Irvin compared his union’s “apprenticeship program to a $45,000 scholarship you don’t have to pay back. Apprentices in his union spend 4,000 hours earning journeyman status, of which 432 are spent in a classroom.
Irvin has a baccalaureate, he noted. He majored in human resources while getting his degree in business administration 25 years ago. And both the time he spent in college and as an apprentice have served him well, he related.
A girl asked if there is a “physical side to every trade.”
“Yes,” Emerick answered immediately – which led to a difference of opinion among some coordinators about which trade is the most physically demanding. Sargent claimed being an Ironworker is. “It’s the most physical, most challenging, hardest work there is,” he asserted.
Crane, who belongs to the Local 1879 of the Millwrights and Pile Drivers union, disagreed, calling attention to what it takes to drive metal piles into the ground needed for bridges and at the Vallourec mill in Youngstown.
“If you drove here,” Sargent countered, “and passed over or under a bridge, an iron worker helped build it.”
Wrapping up, Crane and the coordinators pointed to the safe work environments the unions have fought for and the sense of family each of the locals instills in its membership. They remarked on the satisfaction the building tradesmen take in very quickly seeing what they’ve accomplished.
Crane also noted the efforts unions make to give back to their communities, from the carpenters building wheelchair ramps for the needy who otherwise would be confined to their home to supporting the United Way.