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My kid fell for this. They promise you’ll get paid while you learn. What they don’t tell you is that IF you manage to pass the entrance exam (he did) you get put on a list for open apprenticeship positions, waiting to be called in at any moment. While you’re on that list you don’t get paid. If you do get a spot, contracts only last a couple of months. Then you go back on the list. Rinse and repeat. And the longer you’ve been in the union the higher up you get placed on the list. So the older members get placed before the newer ones no matter what number they were in line. This “join a trade” push is similar to the charter school scam, siphoning up state and federal training funds without delivering results.
That sounds like a specific problem to whatever country you live in, not trades in general.
That’s US trades in a nutshell due to unions.
That has not been the experience of any of my friends in the trades and that's not a small number
That’s the plumbers, electrical, boilers, elevator, carpentry, lathing, scaffolding, HVAC, refrigeration trades/unions at least.
Schooling is done and provided by the union and not secondary institutes, so they control everyone who goes through their system. In the vast majority of them, you won’t even get in unless you know someone.
You must not actually know anyone in a trade, or you know just the few people in trades that aren’t heavily unionized that aren’t like this.
It’s an extremely well known and common issue.
That's not how it happens in Canada. Private institutions run schooling and the government oversees the apprenticeship program. Unions don't have much say in it at all.
Went through the system in Canada, it’s great that they have also started harmonizing stuff across provinces too. Before if you were a third year in BC, you would have to start as a first year in AB as the schooling was too different.
Unfortunately there is some trades that you still need to know someone to get in, since you need a company to sponsor your apprenticeship before being accepted by the government program.
My partner is in an apprenticeship program for electrical and plumbing. We're in a city so large, with so many tradespeople, that a given field has multiple unions within the same metro area. What you're describing is not at all anyone's experience in this area of the U.S.
This is such a bad take. Getting in to the apprenticeship doesn't gaurantee you work. You have to look at the market in your area to see if there is work for the trade you are going in to. Schools and job posting can give you hints on this. You may have to move where the jobs are. It's a reality.
That union runs on a seniority priority for job call outs. Not all unions go by this, the one I was a part of gave priority to those who worked least the last 365 days. Don't paint the whole system as a scam.
Also my union didn't have contracts for callouts. The companies asked for X amount of guys, they go out for the duration the project. If they like you and there's more work available then they keep you instead of sending you back on the out of work list. But that's the nature of construction, it's up and down and you never know if you have a job after completing a project.
Apprenticeships work the same for non-union, but you have to look for more work yourself if you get let go, same as any other job in the world.
In my experience, plumbers and electricians are near impossible to hire. I’m a branch manager and unless they’re severely under paid or HATE the people they work for they won’t jump ship. There’s a major lack of them already and it’s only going to get worse. HVAC techs are the easiest to hire.
Not to mention how it's an old boys club who are just doing their own union minimums when they offer apprenticeship spots, not even the people in trades want to be part of the trades pipeline
The only people pushing trades are economists realizing the implications of all the trade electricians being near retiring age, and amgy Republicans who see it as a way to undercut the political trends that increasingly college educated folks have been pushing
I’m totally pushing learning a trade for my niece. Most trades can’t be outsourced or done with AI. And it’s pure gold again from South Park. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=RcoGzT9QrTI
Must be a state by state thing. My partner recently moved to trades from another career, and it's correct that you get put on a list of apprenticeship positions, but they employ you to actively do work the entire time.