World Class Training is absolutely correct. Having taught apprenticeship classes for 9 years with my organization and having been an apprentice for 3 years, I feel I have a handle on the World Class Training the trades provide.
However as well as our program was run, along with the sheer pride of owning our skills that one has in being a trades-person, no-one left the program without a thorough understanding of labor history and understanding that being part of a union is at the core of why we have the wages, benefits and conditions.
There has been a whole generation now that has been taught that your skills is what you have to sell. For nearly 2 decades now, Value on Display, along with primarily using top-down market development has advanced this strategy without overall success.
While our skills are very important, the numbers overwhelming say that this approach – while playing to our pride, simply does not work in raising market share.
There is a simply test that anyone believing that their skills are worth more, and that the non-union contractors will pay more can take! Quit your union job and take all your skills and credentials to any non/anti-union contractor. Tell them how you are more productive, have all your training and safety certs and show up every day. On the comment section below, let us know how that has worked out for you and your family.
With technology continuing to advance and eliminating both jobs and the need for the heavily skilled tradesperson of the past. The premium that we hoped a non-union contractor would pay simply is not there, without the collective power the union brings – mandating living wages, benefits and conditions.
When we factor in the growing modularization of construction, the need for skills diminish even more.
What we have done for these past 4 decades is train everyone in construction, union or not. When I was an organizer it never escaped me that any non-union worker that was interested in their craft, either had, or could get access to our training materials. They can still readily do that today. When we as organizers/agents go in to do our pitch to the non-union contractor, they listen with great intent, to learn what they need to be doing, and we provide them this framework for free. Talking about a poor business model, this is at the top.
CURT has long recognized that the trades set the standard for training, and has traded some jobs for access to that training. However they continue to work with post-secondary community colleges and vocational tech schools to provide training in the future. They have picked a point in time as part of their overall strategy to where the technology, training, man-power, and economy all converge. That simply means that the building trades is not a part of that equation. If you look at the total number of hours that the building trades has on jobs that CURT represents, then you will see how dependent we are on those industries.
Finally, we are not relevant to this next generation because we primarily talk skills and not the “Value” of being union. Google “jobs” or “careers” in your craft and location. So for example, careers in HVAC in Boston or being an electrician in Dallas. Seldom if ever do you find our apprenticeships as a career path on that first page. We are irrelevant to the decisions a person makes entering the crafts. Apprenticeship is an arcane and seldom used word, but also use it in the Google search – because if the union apprenticeship still doesn’t come up on the results page – you literally do not exist to the next generation of workers.
CURT’S Mission Statement tells us all what we need to know and what they think about workers and especially union workers.
JC Turner’s White Paper about the Business Round Table and American Labor written in 1979 is dead balls accurate. Hopefully the leadership will pursue the “Value” of being union to this generation and the next, and become relevant using the tactics available in the 21st Century.
Danny L Caliendo
Labor Rising
