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GAO affirms problems with apprenticeship oversight

Date Posted: September 30 2005

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Serious problems exist in nonunion apprenticeship programs, and the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) should take action to fix the programs as well as its own method of managing the training system.

So said the investigative arm of Congress, the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office (GAO), in a report issued Sept. 13. The AFL-CIO Building and Construction Trades Department two years ago conducted an extensive study on nonunion apprenticeship programs and had been urging the DOL to remedy the problems.

"We are pleased that the government's own investigative
agency concurs with what our own reports have long been saying," stated
Building Trades President Edward C. Sullivan. "Building and Construction
Trades unions take pride in the fact that we invest hundreds of millions of dollars
annually to ensure the highest standards of skills training in every craft, and we
continue to urge the Department of Labor to take action concerning programs
that fall far short."

Among the key findings in the GAO report:

  • Nonunion apprenticeship programs graduated 30 percent of their apprentices in the period under study, compared to a 47 percent graduation rate for union apprentices.
  • Union apprentices in the DOL system that began in 2004 had pay rates 24 percent higher than their nonunion brethren. Union apprentices will also earn 36 percent more when they finish their program.
  • The GAO report criticized the Department of Labor for not conducting
    more quality reviews of existing programs. In particular, the agency criticized the
    DOL for not utilizing information on performance, directly stating "Although Labor
    collects information to compute completion rates and track participants who do
    not complete programs in the time expected, it does not use these data to focus
    its oversight efforts on programs with poor performance."

The DOL doesn't do much examining, due to lack of manpower. The report found that the Department of Labor reviewed "very few of the apprenticeship programs in the states where it has direct oversight. They conducted 379 quality reviews in 2004, covering only about 4 percent of the programs under their watch."