Page 48 • December 12, 2009 • www.constructionequipmentguide.com • CONSTRUCTION EQUIPMENT GUIDE
Programs Entail at Least 4,000 Hours of On-the-Job Training APPRENTICESHIPS from page 24
carpenters really embrace the young tradesmen.” Sometimes apprentice programs are farmed out to community college campuses, which usually is a good fit. But not always. In LaCrosse, Wis., a carpenters program operated for years by Western Technical College was taken back by the local carpenters union. Class schedules were the problem. “They said their employers wanted training in what they call block schedules,” said Bill Brendel, the school’s dean of agriculture, apprenticeship and technology. The school offered classroom work for the apprentices one day every
other week for a total of 72 hours per semester. “Employers said they preferred to lose an employee for a week at a time rather than to pull them out every other Monday or something.” Most of the school’s carpenter apprentices were unionsponsored. The school offers both union and non-union training in some trades, though the classes are virtually identical as required by the state’s Bureau of Apprenticeship Standards. “It is a workable situation,” Brendel said of the union/nonunion classes, which are common across the country. “Unions have no problem bringing in non-union students.
There actually is more pushback from non-union employers for having to send their employees to a union hall. They see the classes as an opportunity for a union to cherry-pick students. It is kind of an uneasy situation in some respects.” At a new craft teaching institution in Oregon, cooperative relationships range beyond the union status of students. The Northwest College of Construction was formed four years ago from the vision of college President Dan Graham. Graham had been workforce manager of the Columbia, Ore., chapter of the AGC for 10 years when he proposed that contractor associations come together to establish a college that could, in the words of its mission statement, “promote life-long learning by delivering craft, technical, supervisory and management education to the construction industry.” The college’s founding organizations are the Pacific Northwest chapter of Associated Builders and Contractors, the Homebuilders Association of Metropolitan Portland, the National Utility Contractors Association of Oregon and Southwest Washington, and the Columbia AGC chapter. They formed a non-profit, privately funded organization and
“What we are focusing on in the chapters is development of a lifelong career path for tradespeople. Skills training is a part of that.” Dan Graham Northwest College of Construction
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purchased and remodeled a 40-year-old facility on Holman Street in Portland. “These trade associations often are competing,” Graham said, “but the reality is they all recognize no one is making much money in education. So it was easier to decide we could pool our resources and create some economies of scale and provide a better product. That logic really did win folks over.” The president said the college has about 1,600 enrollments — “we count enrollments, not bodies, an important distinction” — in this fourth school year of its existence. He is optimistic about the future. “I think we are going to make it,” Graham said. “We are still scrapping and of course in this economy everyone has their fingers crossed. I was just talking to some contractors that are really sweating bullets. By and large, contractors are our customers so we are watching the economy closely — the construction industry in particular, which as you know is pretty rough right now.” The school operates eight merit apprentice programs, but see APPRENTICESHIPS page 52