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Christopher Connell
Apprentice ironworkers from Local #86 with their instructors on a steel scaffolding where they learn their craft at Bates Technical College in Tacoma, Wash. The apprentices, who start at nearly $25 an hour, are among more than 200 the union is training as demand for them in the Seattle area picks up after a two-year lull. The apprentices earn college credit for the classes at Bates.
TACOMA, Wash. — Five-foot-two Jesica Bush exudes confidence, whether she’s scribbling notes in a 6:30 a.m. class at Bates Technical College here or wrestling 900-pound girders atop a mock two-story building.
With her blond ponytail tucked inside a brown hardhat, the 30-year-old is an apprentice with the ironworkers’ union, a job that starts at nearly $25 an hour and will lead her in three years to both a journeyman’s card and an associate degree.
Three years back, Bush sat in the state women’s prison in Purdy, finishing seven and a half years for an armed-robbery conviction. The former addict dropped out of school in seventh grade — “Me and school, we never saw eye to eye,” she says — was convicted of her first felony at 13, had a child at 15, and was sent to prison at 19.
But when it took her just six months to complete her GED in Purdy, the instructors asked her to be valedictorian at the graduation ceremony and to start thinking about college. When she got a chance to fight fires with a prison brigade instead of cleaning toilets, she jumped on it and made the discovery that “I loved hard work. I’d never worked a day in my life. You hike up the forest, you chain-saw trees all day. It’s hard — really hard — just like being an ironworker. But I loved coming back and being tired.”
Now Bush is one of 209 people learning the ironworking trade through apprenticeships like this one and others run by the Aerospace Joint Apprenticeship Committee, a state-funded partnership among community colleges, industry and the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, at a time when skilled workers are needed by Boeing and the rest of the aerospace industry in Seattle and to help build a $4 billion replacement for the floating 520 Bridge over Lake Washington.
Christopher Connell
Jesica Bush, 30, who served 7½ years in prison for armed robbery, is now an Ironworkers Local #86 apprentice in Tacoma, Wash., making nearly $25 an hour and earning credits toward a community-college degree.
An age-old doorway into skilled trades and a middle-class life, the apprenticeship is making a comeback, rebounding after all but disappearing in recent decades in the face of a decline in union membership and dwindling demand for skilled labor. And as the economy changes, today’s apprenticeships combine the chance for workers not only to master skills while earning a paycheck but to get a college degree at the same time.
From the White House to executive suites, and from think tanks to such industry groups as the National Association of Manufacturers, there’s a push to link apprenticeships with conventional education, mostly at community colleges, and produce a better-educated workforce capable of filling the more than 3.6 million skilled jobs the Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates remain vacant in industries such as manufacturing — even at a time when more than triple that number of Americans are looking for work.
Higher education, advocates say, can not only provide these newly minted workers with the critical-thinking skills they need for today’s jobs, but also leave them better prepared and more appealing to employers the next time things get tough.
“What works so well about apprenticeships is that workers can gain tailored skills for the workplace along with critical academic learning, all while they earn a paycheck,” says Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., a champion of federal support for apprenticeship programs.
The 'skills gap' may be your fault, employers
What makes them a model, Murray said at a U.S. Department of Labor ceremony marking this year’s 75th anniversary of the National Apprenticeship Act, are those paychecks, plus the programs’ reliance on strong public and private partnerships and the combination of academic and on-the-job learning.
Machinists these days have to operate sophisticated, computer-numerical-controlled equipment like the $3 million Makino vertical machining center that Seattle apprentice Irwin Downes has learned to run at JWD Machine in Fife, Wash. The company sent Downes and two other apprentices to Ohio to learn how to run the super lathe, which can cut titanium parts on several axes at once under high heat and jet sprays. Now the three are teaching the factory’s other 42 machinists how to use the time-saving machine to make critical parts for the aerospace industry.
Downes, who is 24, also spends four hours in class one night a week at Bates Technical College. “I knew my feeds and speeds for cutting aluminum, but why is it that way?” says Downes, who previously worked in a Chinese fast-food restaurant for a year after high school. “At Bates, they break it down into a math formula and show us where the numbers come from.”
Christopher Connell
Ironworkers Union Local #86 instructor Kelly Graves readies a piece of equipment at the union's training center at Bates Technical College in Tacoma, Wash. The four-year apprenticeship now comes with the opportunity to earn an associate degree.
Across the country in Virginia, at the sprawling Newport News Shipyard on the waterfront near where the James River spills into Chesapeake Bay, applications to the apprenticeship program have skyrocketed from barely 540 a dozen years ago to a record 6,300 this year. New apprentices spend two full days each week in college classes, while earning more than $30,000 to start and upwards of $50,000 by their fourth year. They spend the rest of the week on the waterfront learning one of 17 trades and helping build and repair the nation’s aircraft carriers and nuclear submarines.
The best move on to advanced classes from which almost half will graduate with an associate degree from nearby Thomas Nelson Community College or Tidewater Community College, which teach some courses inside the shipyard gates and others back on their own campuses. The shipyard’s Apprentice School has its own 17-member faculty as well as nearly 70 craft instructors. Of those 6,300 applicants, it takes 260 new apprentices each year — making it more selective than Harvard, Yale or Princeton.
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- Pressed to bridge the skills gap, colleges and corporations try to get along
The shipyard, owned by Huntington Ingalls Industries, also looks to the Apprentice School for future supervisors, managers and executives. Danny Hunley, who enrolled as an apprentice welder at age 19 in 1974 and is now vice president of operations, says that “human supply chain” is particularly reliant on the community colleges.
“We invest heavily in community colleges, not just for workforce development but for education of our employees,” says Hunley. “We rely on a lifetime of learning to prepare our people to create the product that we sell that no one else can.”
Hunley says he hopes that when the Apprentice School moves from its World War II-era brick building into a planned glass-and-steel showcase in downtown Newport News, it will even begin to offer bachelor’s degrees.
Malachi Underwood, 27, an apprentice in the foundry shop, came to the shipyard in 2010 after being laid off from a job making wheels for railroad freight cars. “The things you do in the classroom here relate to what you do every day on the job. They make them real life,” says Underwood, who was recently tapped to leave the foundry and become a nuclear test technician.
Christopher Connell
At the Newport News Shipbuilding Apprentice School in Virginia, new apprentices spend two full days in college classes each week while earning more than $30,000 a year. Director Everett Jordan, an alumnus (he was a shipfitter), says the college classes add "a critical dimension to our education here."
Everett Jordan, director of the Apprentice School and, like Hunley, an alumnus (he was a shipfitter), says the complex theory classes that apprentices take bring “a critical dimension to our education here.” Adds training manager David Tilman: “If you’re taking AC/DC theory as a freshman in college [elsewhere], you’re putting together little boards. When you’re doing it here, you’re putting together nuclear submarines.”
Conversely, employers say the instruction their apprentices get in college classes is broader than what new workers can learn on the job alone. The colleges typically work with local industry to design their classroom programs.
“Not only is the curriculum structured, but it helps the company build that apprentice’s skill in all facets,” says Jason Mohon, manufacturing director for JWD Machine. “Historically, if you were just an operator or a machinist out on the floor, you might find yourself spending years focusing on one task. This helps the company open their eyes and cross-train them.”
Christopher Connell
An Ironworkers Union Local #86 apprentice prepares to hoist a section of a steel beam to the second story of the building skeleton that students practice on at Bates Technical College in Tacoma, Wash.
The same is true of the 6:30 a.m.-to-3:30 p.m. classes that the ironworker apprentices take in Tacoma, which occupy one month each year during their four-year apprenticeships. At the job sites where they spend the other 11 months, much of the trainees’ time may be spent carrying or tying rebar, or doing other hard, physical labor, rather than the more complicated work of following codes and blueprints.
In Germany, apprenticeships mean job security
Some foremen and journeymen “have no problem explaining things so the apprentices build up knowledge as they go, but some do not,” says instructor Kelly Graves. He tells the apprentices that if they want to be superintendents, they’ll need college degrees. “The more education you have, the better off you are,” he says.
Washington Gov. Chris Gregoire and the state legislature came up with $3 million to create the aerospace apprenticeship program in 2008, at a time of near-panic among employers about the aging of their skilled workers. Half of Boeing engineers are eligible to retire by 2015, and two-thirds of the company’s entire workforce is within a decade of retirement age.
Yet employers have their work cut out to convince a new generation to enter these trades, says Laura Hopkins, the program’s executive director. For them, the promise of a college degree can be an inducement.
“In this day and age, if I’m trying to recruit young people, we have to have a college degree attached,” Hopkins says. “We have to convince their counselors and teachers and parents as well that this is a good career opportunity for them and that if the economy shifts and their industry goes down, they can move on to something else with that college degree.”
If apprentices have a college degree and work as machinists for a while but then decide they want to go into engineering, “they now have the opportunity to do that without starting from square zero,” says Hopkins, herself a former Boeing aircraft mechanic and dean at South Seattle Community College. “The more pathways we create for folks to go into these different careers, the better it is for everybody.”
Back at Bates, Jesica Bush is convinced she’s found the right calling. She wants to become a construction supervisor eventually and instruct apprentices herself.
“I’m a bossy person. I envision me running something sooner or later,” Bates says. “I grew up in prison. That’s where I got educated. I had to learn, and I’m still learning. I am driven — and I refuse to lose again.”
This story, "Economic reality marries age-old idea — apprenticeships — with college," was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, nonpartisan education-news outlet based at Teachers College, Columbia University. It’s one of a series of reports about workforce development and higher education.
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So many parents today think their kids are special and insist they go to college for a four year degree in a profession that is indoor work only and doesn't get dirt under their fingernails - whether they are cut out for it intellectually or not. Thus, you end up with tons of college grads with useless degree and tons of debt.
In some countries, you don't get the choice. You're tested and tracked into college and vocational tracks early on - sensibly based on the aptitudes and interests measured during testing. As long as the test is valid (measures what it's supposed to measure) and reliable (produces the same results when someone takes the test multiple times), it makes more sense that mom & dad's snobbery and need to brag to the neighbors and mass Xmas card letter.
She loves hard work, and there is another good side of hard work - you sleep well at night!
Working with your hands is wonderful. However, there is a need for a basic education to understand how to do simple bookkeeping so that the money that is made can be managed properly. Working one's way through college is the way it's supposed to be done! Going into debt hoping to land a good job is just ludicrous.
Thing is America's youth is fed that lie over and over again. "You want a good job you need a degree" so everyone's gone out and gotten the easiest degree they could get, hence all the liberal arts degree's running around. Their worthless in general and pretty much equate to wasted time and money.
I really like the idea of apprenticeships and other combined craft and education programs. Gives education along with skills training and builds a solid capable workforce. Its the bedrock of the German Engineering system and the reason German Engineering is considers some of the worlds best.
La Bama please don't let your personal dislikes cloud your comments like this. Your screen name says you don't like our sitting president. OK that is your right. But don't slander him with implied untruths like this one. The people of Washington State voted for this as a referendum/initiative and it had nothing whatsoever to do with who was president at the time. If you notice, the president's administration (the DEA) is presently harrassing those states with legal marijuana usage. That alone invalidates your snarky comment at #1.4.
I wish that were not true because of the medical benefits of this herb. It just makes it harder for those who truly need it to get it and use it without fearing being carted off to prison for just trying to live without pain or suffering. It also hampers any serious research into any other possible positive uses for this plant such as that going on in other nations. To a healthy person who has no need for it these kind of comments sound funny but to a person suffering through chemotherapy or struggling with diabetes or glaucoma it is anything but amusing. It is just another stumbling block for them to trip over in their effort to live their lives as comfortably as possible.
As for the recreational users I would much rather the iron worker over my head smoked marijuana last night than being hung over from too many shooters at the local tavern. Sorry but the alcoholic guy is far more impaired the next day than the toker. That is just plain fact. There is no hangover with cannabis and use of either one on the job is cause for dismissal anyway so nothing changes there.
FINALLY:
The reality check that puts the smack-down on the "KNOW-IT-ALLS"
I'm glad I don't live in one of those countries.
I LOVE this report! Not everyone is meant for traditional college, or even wants traditional college. That doesn't mean they should be unemployable. We have lost sight of that in America. Bring back vocational training in high-school. Get rid of the crooked "for-profit" trade schools and make public education meaningful again.
Sam you remarked that you are glad that you don't live in a country where you don't get a choice about your education. Well to be brutally honest you do if you live here. It has reached the point that without a degree of some kind you simply cannot qualify for much of anything from an employment standpoint. Today most employers will give preference to someone with a degree (any kind of a degree) over someone with just a high school education.
This is wrong and grossly unfair when the job in question simply does not require such an extensive educational background. In many cases the person who is superior to you on a new job does not have a degee because that requirement didn't exist when they took the job. So you might ask why all of a sudden it is required now? I think that to some degree that requirement is just a way of practicing a kind of age discrimination. It say "go away and come back when you grow up." However there are a lot of mature people out their with excellent work histories and decent qualifications who cannot get a job because of not having a stupid piece of paper/parchment/sheepskin or what ever. LOL
We tend to forget people who have worked somewhere for 20 years and are middle aged whose jobs vanished overseas and they have a house with a substantial mortgage, a car they are still paying on, two kids in school, and a wife to support who simply cannot go back to school to upgrade their education. So they do what they have to by taking menial jobs and perhaps working multiple jobs to sustain their life style. Others just turn to crime. When you corner a rat they can become quite viscious. The will to survive is much stronger than any morality.
There are also "work colleges," like Warren Wilson College in North Carolina. In addition to traditional college classes, all of the students are required to be on a work crew on campus, and the students essentially run the physical plant of the school, including its working farm. It's a great way to learn an additional skill, to get used to the working world, and it keeps the cost of the school down. Warren Wilson is ranked as one of the best value for the money colleges in the country.
(Full disclosure: I'm a WWC parent.)
@Ron, a friend of mine's father worked(now retired) in the fire protection industry, and his union was for many, many years connected with Penn State. This was before most unions even thought of connecting with a college.
Apprenticeships are available in almost any construction trade, and if they are union, the wages and benefits are a lot better than the non union. And for you union haters out there, it seems like you have no problems screwing your fellow man.
I liked that one comment by the woman who had never really worked hard in her life before and found she actually liked it. There are too many Americans born into sloth, dependent on welfare or charity, with no self-esteem because they know they're worth nothing. Work programs aren't a burden to the poor; they're a gift (so long as it's work that leads to something and not make-work).
Yeah, it's nice to see she's finally found something she likes to do. I really do hope it keeps her off the streets and out of prison.
I wish there were lot's more of these programs available in the private sector.
higher ed tends to be a very crooked industry....do you realize Ford Motor Company gives out "additonal incentives" to specific ethnic groups??? Very discriminatory and they get by with it.....
I served a 5 year apprenticeship in the UK from 16 to 21 years and went to school at night-----ended up owning five companies in New jersey and New York!!
Good for you!
Are they union companies , or did you stab them in the back after they trained you??
This is an excellent idea that should be encouraged and expanded.
There is nothing more fulfilling than the satisfaction of a job well done and all young people should have that opportunity.
GK-298121,
Excellent Post!!!
Finally it is being recognized that everyone doesn't need a college degree to be sucessful... Within my family I was the oldest and lucky enough to get into an Electrical apprenticeship. I was followed by 3 brothers and all of us have benefitted with a better life than our parents. There is nothing more satisfying than being able to stand back and see what you have accomplished after a good hard days work.
3 million manufacturing jobs, and 6 million unemployed. This is a great idea! Maybe this is the beginning of a shift back to an America with something that actually resembles values!
And single payer universal health care for all would really enable those students in this very large land to more easily migrate to the jobs available areas.
It's about time!!! We need these trade school and apprenticeships to get our country working again. Also, did you notice that these are UNIONS that are making this happen? My dad was a carpenters apprentice with the local union and worked in his trade until he retired. You can't ship these jobs overseas either. Good for them!!
Unions can be good and bad depending. They have the ability to certify and internally police bad workers. They also have the ability to completely shut down a company and ruin jobs while their own management still collects a pay check.
As long as there is a balance kept then everything is fine, the moment a Union attempts to take control over a company all sorts of sh1t hits the fan and while they may win at once place, it sends a signal to all other companies to say the f*ck away from unions.
@theotherguy, BS on your drivel that their own management collects a paycheck if they are on strike. Maybe one or two unions do, but not all of them.
And yes, the unions can shut the company down over bad company policies, which should never have happened if the owner was on the up and up. And for your information: Unions don't want to take over companies, nor do they want companies to go out of business.
Take your union hating BS someplace else. This is about unions and education, nothing else, SCAB.
Hostess is out of business because of union pukes. Over 18,000 employees lost their jobs.
Sally ann, as a union member, yes, most of our paid officials (local Business agents ect. all the way up,) do earn a paycheck whether I work or not, however, most of us at ground level, realize, they represent more than just one particular jobsite.
@the otherguy. If you are talking about the recent hostes debacle, there is much more to that story. The very same ceo who demand ANOTHER concession from the union (this was just the latest, and the last straw for members) Gave himself a 300% raise the year before, along with massive raises to the rest of the executive management. Now before you blast the union members, how would you feel if you were them, and asked to give concessions that amounted to a yearly pay cut, that in three years would leave you making less than a full time McDonalds employee.
Hostess is out of business because of horrible, over-compensated mangement.
You better study a little more Terry , before you comment!
@Ron I got it right the first time, you just don't like it. The offer was on the table, even the Teamsters had approved it, the baker's union turned it down and the company went under. Too bad about the 18,000 plus losing their jobs. All the union's doing. Nothing more to read.
Terry are you saying that those people had an obligation to vote for the offer even if it was detrimental to them? The "union" is made up of individuals, who voted on that contract, who voted on those who would represent them. Why do you hate union members so much?
I think 4-yr universities are a joke....they force students to take "elective" courses and "required gen-ed" classes that are absolutely worthless. I received my licensed practical nursing degree from a tech school in 11 months and then went on for my 4-yr nursing degree at a university. I learned waaaaaay more at the tech school...the university was a waste of time...didn't learn anything I didn't already know. Also, I was held to a higher standard at the tech school. The best education I ever received was from that tech school, though I was made fun of because I wasn't at a "real" university. I now have my bachelors, but whoa...what a waste of time.
Do High Schools still have shop classes?
I did a apprenticeship as a machinist through the IAM union.....years ago it seems.
Yet I remember shop classes in high school, from auto repair to carpentry & metalworking.
Working with ones hands does not mean they're less intelligent than the white collar professional types.....Something they should remember the next time they're zipping along at 550MPH @ 35,000 ft.
The plane they're trusting their life to was made by people working with their hands.
Some schools do, but definitely not all of them. It's a real shame, too. The job that I most enjoyed when I was younger was welding, perhaps because I could see the fruits of my labor at the end of the day, while working now in IT, it's not quite the same.
As a graduate of the Newport News Shipbuilding Apprentice School back in the 70s, I was given a good education and a good job. Left there and went on to a career in engineering. Apprenticeship programs are important stepping stones to a great career and an important building block for the economy, yours, the companies, and the nations. I always thought one of Germany's biggest advantages was its extensive apprenticeship programs and that whole culture of apprentices is one the US should embrace also.
Do you think this apprenticeship thing could be applied to public school teacher training? I believe I, or anyone with average intelligence and an apptitude for teaching, could work as a teachers' assistant for three years while getting an associate degree and be qualified and able to teach through at least the third grade. We might even reduce the cost of education with the apprenticeship concept.
At the same time, we should not demonize four year degrees; actually the major value of a college degree is the perserverence required to achieve it.
SARGEANTFLOYD, no, preserverence is part of it, the greater part is that you, the individual, can be taught how to do things, and have the ability to learn. That is really all a college degree means. It doesn't mean you stuck it out in higher ed for 4 more yrs. Anyone with enough money can do that.
The AFA (teachers union) has been trying to get a law passed that all teachers would have to pass a standard type test, like lawyers or Dr's do, so they can be certified to teach. Something some people should be looking into when it comes to teachers. Right now, each state has it's own requirements on teachers.
Reduce the cost of education?! That's not allowed.
I am a graduate of Whitmer HS machine shop class, my shop teacher was a huge influence in my life, started my Tool & Die apprentiship after co-op when I graduated, worked for 34 years in the trade, then went on to teach a HS machine shop class for 10 years, the skills I learned thru the apprentiship program has provided a great income for my family, am glad to see skilled trades are coming back.
This is just as well. I am a boomer who acquired his metal fabrication, equipment repair, machining, earthwork, masonry, supervisory and CAD design skills in Panama, Curazao, the Dominican Republic, the U.S.V.I. and Puerto Rico over a period of 25 years with telecom contractors. 8 years ago I relocated back to the 'states (I was born in NYC) after a job opportunity in Georgia. My observations and conclusions are that the quality of the industrial workplace and management pool in the U.S. and it's territories have become too tiered, out-of-touch and @ssh0lish for their own good during the last decade or so. Too many chiefs and not enough indians, and the chiefs are kissy-kissup-loving M&B school Johnny-come-Latelys who know almost nothing about the process and the end product, with no real human resource management skills and very little true leadership qualities. The only answer that they have to stiff competition and wavering sales is "restructuring," downsizing and giving themselves raises before the company goes under. They have no game, no growth strategy and they are a travesty to shareholders. In the meantime, really GOOD management overseas that gets it is giving U.S. industries an @sswhooping. This is why I'll be turning in soon, I've become tired of the U.S.-influenced workplace and I think that maybe a small machine or reprographic shop in the Caribbean or the Isthmus would give me what I need, I believe that there are a bunch of STEM and industry veterans out there who are heading in the same direction, and unfortunately, we a taking our transferrable skills with us, because we are just tired of the B.S.
Don't let the door hit you on the way out.
The skilled trades never went anywhere - they have been doing this for years! When I was a grad student at Harvard, my classmates never seemed to know what to say when I mentioned that my husband was a Master Plumber (and proud of it!). Still, when I tell students I work with or other "academic" folks that it took my husband 5-6 years to become a Master Plumber in MA (100 hours of advanced plumbing theory, plus 3 years as an apprentice, and at least 1 year as a Journeyman Plumber before you can even apply to test for the Master Plumber license) they're amazed. They've always just assumed that blue collar folk choose to work with their hands because they don't have an opportunity to go to college. Maybe sometimes but on the whole, that simply isn't true! I wish the article had touched upon the crazy bias our society has toward "white collar" jobs and academia.
Now, when it goes the other way, when more "academic" institutions start to value these very tangible skills and encourage their students to know the basics, like how to change a tire or use an electric drill (yeah, I mean the very basics), now that would be worth writing about.
The skilled trades never went anywhere - they have been doing this for years! When I was a grad student at Harvard, my classmates never seemed to know what to say when I mentioned that my husband was a Master Plumber (and proud of it!). Still, when I tell students I work with or other "academic" folks that it took my husband 5-6 years to become a Master Plumber in MA (100 hours of advanced plumbing theory, plus 3 years as an apprentice, and at least 1 year as a Journeyman Plumber before you can even apply to test for the Master Plumber license) they're amazed. They've always just assumed that blue collar folk choose to work with their hands because they don't have an opportunity to go to college. Maybe sometimes but on the whole, that simply isn't true! I wish the article had touched upon the crazy bias our society has toward "white collar" jobs and academia.
Now, when it goes the other way, when more "academic" institutions start to value these very tangible skills and encourage their students to know the basics, like how to change a tire or use an electric drill (yeah, I mean the very basics), now that would be worth writing about.
My son is 40 years old and has been in trouble with the law most of his life. Last year, a plumbing company, desperate for labor, started him out as an laborer. Since then he has earned his Apprentice license; is taking adult plumbing courses and his boss has said a lot of good things about him and given him a raise. The company would like for him to become a Master Plumber eventually. These educational places have really saved his life and made me very proud of him. Obama needs to encourage more of them.
That wouldn't be "Joe the Plumber" would it?
Opticians have been using apprenticeships for years as a way to become trained and licensed in their field. Alas, with more and more people getting their (cheap) eyeglasses directly from overseas via the internet, this profession is on it's way out. Be on the lookout for $300 eye exams, and no one to repair or troubleshoot you problems when this happens.
Where I live, apprentices are expected to work for a year totally for free. So if you are working part time, you will have to quit your job and work full time for the new company for a year, with no pay.
So, what's the excuse not to accept employment & life, where the work is available, and apprenticeships? In the past, we all went to where the jobs were located.
ozkmtnbear if that is the case about having to work for free in your area as an apprentice then your area is ripping people off big time. That is not the case in every location that I have heard of. It is treated much like the Co-Op plans used in some colleges where students do classroom work part of their school year and actual real world work the rest of it. They do get paid for their work. That is a requirement of the National Labor Relations Board. I would file a complaint with the NLRB if that is true. We no longer allow indentured servant status here as far as I know, at least not legally.
Don't hold your breath on those wages... note "union" and "government" ship yards... the defense jobs are history and after Michigan it's going to be like the old auto workers who made $40 per hour..... see how you like $15 when the jobs are all in Texas or Michigan "so they stay competitive"...
Ingalls is a non union shipyard.
Apprenticeships have always been a viable option, and should be considered throughout the country. If, you need well trained employees this is a way to maximize the worker benefit for all. I was, for some time, the apprenticeship secretary for a school here. It was a great feeling, worthwhile for me, as well as the apprentice. I loved helping these men & women to further a good career. Our apprentices were in A/C & Heating, Plumbing, Diesel & Auto Mechanics, Construction fields, Childcare, and Electicians. State education in Florida, no longer funds apprenticeship fields. GOP decide it was not worthwhile. In the future, it will be heavily based on needs & finances, of companies & unions, who need a well trained employment base.
I earned a four year degree with what amounted to a triple major in History, Poli Sci and sociology. After graduation, burned out, I interviewed for a couple of jobs, but after getting to the interview, I realized they were multi level marketing schemes and I am no Salesman, or a cubi person. Was offered a chance to join the United Brotherhood of Carpenters apprenticeship. Jumped in feet first and never looked back 22 years ago. Now I work often times as a foreman or supervisor over scaffold crews in nuclear and petrochemical plants. 8 years from now if i so chose I can retire with a full pension. I am also an elected officer of my local. For any young person who can't figure out what to do with their life, but knows they are not cut out for college, I would definitely recommend a union apprenticeship as one possibility. Just as an aside, pipefitters capable of welding carbon and stainless steel to nuclear spec earn well over 100k working about 9 months of the year and taking summers off. Those guys are in such demand that they can pretty much have their pick of jobs and write their own ticket.
Another poster talked about Germany and their system. There is a German welder who is one of a very few people in the world who can weld the complex alloy used in power generation turbines. I've met the guy, nice as heck, but when he comes over to work on a turbine here in the states, he get and his team get picked up in a limo, all expenses paid in 5 star hotels limo takes em to and from the plant every day, and he gets anything he needs at the plant, even seen him get two carpenters to be on standby all day if he needed a scaffold modified. And I mean they are assigned ONLY to him. No other supervisor can pull them for another job because he can't stand the idea of them sitting there doing nothing but waiting.
You get what what you pay for in this world. This will never change.