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Building trades advance fight to strengthen apprenticeship

Date Posted: April 30 2004

The AFL-CIO Building and Construction Trades Department has filed a formal petition for rulemaking requesting U.S. Labor Secretary Elaine Chao to establish specific graduation requirements by craft for construction apprenticeship programs.

“We must take this action because it is an increasing problem that continues to be ignored by the Department of Labor,” said Building Trades Department President edward Sullivan. “Any misuse of the apprenticeship system undermines the industry’s future, and potentially defrauds construction workers.”

The action is the result of the DOL’s failure to respond to repeated calls for action on the lack of standards and monitoring of apprenticeship programs. An October 2003 study by the Building Trades Department on the apprenticeship graduation records of the Associated Builders and Contractors found that ABC programs overall produced twice as many cancellations as graduations – and some individual areas were much worse.

In contrast, building trades union programs graduated 75 percent of enrollees from 1997 to 2001.

The building trades action comes one month after U.S. Sens. Edward Kennedy and Patricia Murray asked the General Accounting Office to investigate the performance of the nation’s apprenticeship programs, including graduation rates, duration of training and wage levels for apprentices.

“Unions invest millions of dollars millions of dollars to provide quality training for workers,” Sullivan said. “We believe that many apprenticeship programs in the open shop are failing to keep the promises they made to workers, and the Labor Department must take immediate corrective action.”