Workforce Solutions

New Orleans Unions Plant Seeds for Growth With First Preapprentice Training Program

By Angelle Bergeron

The program is designed to stimulate reconstruction of homes and the city’s devastated middle class through skill training and union-funded projects.

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Hoping to boost its visibility in an open-shop stronghold and bolster numbers and skill levels of a badly needed craft workforce, the AFL-CIO’s Building and Construction Trades Dept. is bringing its message to the Hurricane Katrina recovery zone through a fast-track training and job-placement center to feed recruits into union apprentice programs for the first time.

The Gulf Coast Construction Careers Center in New Orleans is a joint venture between the building trades and the Louisiana Works Workforce Commission, a state-funded workforce development program, to develop a pipeline of construction preapprentices. “Our goal is to deliver 225 people per year for three years,” says Art Lujan, the center’s executive director. The AFL-CIO is using the program to test innovative strategies and develop a template for fast-track training in low-density union markets, he adds.

When AFL-CIO President John Sweeney visited New Orleans in June 2006 to announce a $1-billion labor-sponsored Gulf Coast revitalization program, he promised to include workforce development as well. In August, the center will graduate its third preapprentice class, introducing the first trickle of new recruits. Lujan says a $3-million state block grant to fund the program “just got finalized.” Eager to jump-start training, the AFL-CIO’s Housing Investment Trust is adding $1 million. 

The first of the three-week-long, all-day preapprentice training sessions were held in a local ironworkers’ hiring hall, with plans for a permanent facility later this summer. The program is designed to stimulate reconstruction of homes and the city’s devastated middle class through skill training and union-funded projects.

But union executives admit that project funding is bogged down. The AFL-CIO committed $750 million to local reconstruction in the New Orleans area, but to date, no specific projects have been earmarked. “Things have not gone as fast as we had hoped two years ago,” says Tom O’Malley, director of the housing fund’s community investment initiatives.

O’Malley and other top union officials were on hand at the June 22 graduation of the program’s first class to encourage students and publicly tout the AFL-CIO’s presence. “On behalf of the people I represent, three million strong, welcome to the family,” said Sean McGarvey, BCTD secretary-treasurer. With many remaining obstacles in post-Katrina New Orleans, that family will likely have to pool its vast resources to ensure that the preapprentice program is a success. The first class of 22 was followed by one of 16. Only a dozen are set to graduate in August.

One problem is the program’s grant-required pre-admission testing, performed by a local technical college. “That’s been a choke point, the fact that we can’t get enough people tested in order to generate a full class,” says Lujan.  “Only 25% of those taking the exams are passing, so we have to do some additional remediation.” He is working with the American Federation of Teachers and the Urban League, among other groups. “We are trying to entrench ourselves in the community and partner with other organizations who are doing good stuff,” Lujan says. “It will take a whole village to develop a workforce.”

Center officials cite other constraints in the recovery zone. “We know the pool of recruits will be smaller than what we need here because of the lack of adequate, affordable housing and public transportation,” Lujan says. The grant requires that at least 51% of each class of students live in New Orleans and had to have been affected by the storm. Classes include intensive training in life skills, remedial math and introduction to various craft apprentice programs. Upon completion of the program, attendees earn a stipend of $10 per hour for 120 hours.

Students are recruited to the program through various channels, including state outreach, technical schools, corrections programs and faith-based organizations. “I talked to a lot of mothers and sat in a lot of living rooms,” says Maria Alexander, worker services coordinator, whose father was in the plasterers’ union. “This is not only to help them get a job or build a house but to change their attitude about work,” says Alexander, who also recruits in the city’s hurricane-hit Vietnamese and Hispanic enclaves. 

Early graduate Byron Jackson now works as an electrician’s apprentice for local contractor Walter D. Barnes Electric. After evacuating to Georgia, losing all his possessions to floodwaters and having his family scattered across the country, Jackson suffered the death of both his wife and son. “I looked at this as a chance for me to get started again,”  Jackson says about his decision to return.

Officials hope the center helps revive declining union apprentice programs in the wake of right-to-work legislation. “Wages have been depressed, especially in the South, so no one has been able to recruit to the industry,” Lujan says. “Very few people here know what a boilermaker is, but we need 5,000 boilermakers right now—today. We are interested in improving wages and benefits.”

Kenneth Naquin, CEO of Louisiana Associated General Contractors, concurs, noting the region’s dearth of workers, even before Katrina. “In Louisiana, we need 90,000 workers by 2009—all trades,” he says.  

Morty Branighan Jr., director of the local Electrical Joint Apprenticeship and Training Committee, says that the Gulf Coast area isn’t “keeping pace with the rest of the country.” He says that after Katrina, the electrical workers’ union “lost 30 to 40% of our apprentices because they had to move and haven’t returned.”

All of the local trades experienced similar losses, as well as having hiring halls and training facilities destroyed by floodwaters. “I could probably put 25 or 30 electricians to work tomorrow if I had them,” Branighan says. “Our contractors aren’t calling as often because they understand we don’t have the people to send out anymore, and it’s the same across the craft lines.”

The problem is further exacerbated by inflated wages being paid by out-of-state contractors, say local union leaders. Andy O’Brien, a training director with Local 53 of the International Association of Heat & Frost Insulators & Asbestos Workers, refers to “carpetbaggers,” which he claims have flocked to the area to make quick money and exploit workers. “We don’t train for the money,” he says. “We train for the industry.”

Even if the preapprentice program meets its 675-graduate goal in three years, “it’s just a drop in the bucket of what we need,” Naquin says. He cites the union’s new effort in New Orleans, as well as nonunion training efforts such as the Business Roundtable’s “I’m GREAT” campaign. “Certainly making wages attractive and offering training are important,” Naquin says, but he doesn’t see a resolution to construction’s labor problems “until we get everyone together, union and nonunion, to talk about needs and what we are doing, and [they] decide they are willing to invest the money.”

But economic boosters say the union preapprentice program is a solid step forward. “We’ve got to get moving,” says John Stewart, manager of the state’s $38-million workforce grant program. “If you generate 300 welders this year, does that cover the need? No. But that’s 300 more welders than we had before, and they are 300 Louisiana welders.” 

This syndicated column originally appeared in the July 30, 2007 issue of McGraw-Hill Construction's ENR, pages 37-38.

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