Apprenticeship first step on ladder to middle class

By designating this week as “National Apprenticeship Week,” President Obama has issued a challenge for America.

For many workers who are not headed toward a four-year college degree, workplace-based training provides a better learning environment – and far larger earnings gains than one or two years in community college.

Completing one year of an academic program at a community college increases a worker’s wages by 8 percent over what she would earn with only a high school diploma. If workers go on to complete an associate’s degree, they earn on average 33 percent more than a high school graduate.

That’s a significant increase.

But a graduate of a joint labor-management apprenticeship program – such as those funded and operated by Kansas’ Building Trades Unions – sees a wage gain of 88 percent.

Apprenticeship and workplace-based training is an “earn while you learn” system that offers young people the chance to learn from the best trained construction workers in North America. When individuals complete our programs, they obtain a portable, nationally recognized credential that they can take anywhere in the country, one that comes with good pay and benefits that will support them and their families.

Skilled craft apprenticeship programs offer the necessary capacities, resources and flexibility needed to help Americans from all walks of life achieve and retain careers in the great American middle class, while simultaneously assisting employers to obtain the skilled workforce they need to help drive growth in their local labor markets.

Every year, North America’s Building Trades Unions and our signatory contractors direct more than $1 billion in private investment toward this training system. Here in Kansas, the private sector investment amounts to roughly $25 million to $30 million.

An additional important feature is that most apprenticeship programs in the building and construction trades have been assessed for college credit, which participants can apply toward an associate’s or bachelor’s degree. To be sure, a skilled craft union apprenticeship is the “other four-year degree.”

Apprenticeship programs have also been proven to provide a greater return for employers. Economic return on investment has shown that employers gain a return for craft training of as much as $3 to every $1 that is invested. The return is accounted for by improved safety, elimination of rework and increased productivity of the craft worker.

The joint administration of apprenticeship funds and training enables contractors and craft organizations to develop and modify training in real time, in order to better fit the needs of the industry at any given time.

Because of the high quality of our apprenticeship curriculum and our apprenticeship programs, contractors and end users don’t have to sacrifice efficiency or excellence when they put union apprentices to work on their projects.

Apprenticeship training is a remarkably successful model when supported broadly by employers, and we feel it should be available to more Americans from all walks of life.

That is why we are making concerted efforts to work with state and local governments as well as community-based organizations like the Urban League, YouthBuild and Job Corps to open the doors of opportunity through apprenticeship readiness programs that target historically underserved populations.

This story was originally published November 4, 2015 at 5:50 PM with the headline "Apprenticeship first step on ladder to middle class."