Trump’s Order on Apprenticeship Could Affect Our Future
Date Posted: June 16, 2017
Posted In: Discussion, Workforce,
ANALYSIS
by Tom Finan, Executive Director, Construction Forum STL
Yesterday (June 15) the White House echoed messages that have been resounding locally and nationally in our industry for some time:
- We need to attract young people into the skilled trades.
- We need to adopt the Swiss/German model for apprenticeship.
- These apprenticeship programs can articulate with associate degree programs, alleviating college debt and creating career paths.
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On June 15, President Trump signed an executive order “Expanding Apprenticeships in America. (Click here to download the text of the order). In remarks before the signing, he cited many of the points made above.
On the face of it, that’s a good thing. But the President didn’t stop there. “In history, nobody has gotten rid of so many regulations as the Trump administration,” the president stated. “We will be removing federal restrictions that have prevented many different industries from creating apprenticeships.”
The order directs the Labor Department to allow companies, trade associations and unions to develop their own apprenticeship-program guidelines. Those would be reviewed for quality, but the government would not exercise the oversight it does with current programs.
The order also directs additional funds to apprenticeship programs, roughly doubling spending to $200 million a year, senior administration officials said Thursday. The increase appears to contradict the president’s budget, which proposes to cut DOL overall funding for training and employment by $1.27 billion. The Wall Street Journal noted that the Trump Administration said that part of the funding will come from fees paid by companies to bring in foreign workers. The Journal notes skeptically that some of that money is already spent on job programs and that visa fees are set in law.
Thursday’s order is the latest chapter in continuing federal efforts to promote apprenticeships, dating to the 1940s. In 2015, President Barack Obama launched a program to award $175 million in apprenticeship grants and his administration entered a deal with German counterparts to collaborate on workforce development.
Wes Bush, chairman, chief executive officer and president of Northrop Grumman Corporation and chair of the Business Roundtable Education and Workforce Committee, issued a strong positive response to the president’s remarks. “America needs a strong, skilled workforce to drive job creation and ensure future economic growth. America’s business leaders are encouraged by the Administration’s focus on building a 21st century workforce and welcome President Trump’s commitment to expand and improve apprenticeship opportunities in the United States.”
“Work-and-learn models, including internships and apprenticeships, are powerful tools to close the skills gap and meet our nation’s workforce needs. We support the President’s challenge and look forward to partnering with government at every level as we work together to rebuild the pipeline that generates top talent.” June 1 the Business Roundtable, which is comprised of the CEO’s of America’s largest companies, issued a report, “Work in Progress: How CEOs are Helping Close America’s Skills Gap” (click to download), that pretty well echoes Bush’s comments. The report also includes examples from various Roundtable companies.
Not So Much…
John Gaal, EdD, director of training and workforce development for the STL-KC Carpenters Regional Council said he is “appalled” at the direction the Administration is taking. “It’s another form of corporate welfare with absolutely no oversight,” Dr. Gaal, an internationally-recognized expert on apprenticeship and the originator of STL’s BUD plan, said.
Gaal noted that in the President’s remarks he had praised those working in workforce development now, which includes the people running some of the same programs that will be eliminated under the executive order.
The Twittersphere rang with Tweets about the executive order from the workforce development community. One thread came from Chris Lu, deputy director of labor in the Obama administration. Lu visited St. Louis late in 2015. In a meeting at the Carpenters Joint Apprenticeship and Training Center he praised the high standards and strong result metrics of various apprenticeship and pre-apprenticeship efforts in St. Louis — including the Building Trades, the Carpenters effort with the federal probation and parole, the BUD program, and Youth Build. Lu spoke of the “on-ramps and off-ramps” that a career that starts with no college debt affords people in our industry.
Lu tweeted, in response to a Wall Street Journal article on white collar apprentices that, “This isn’t new. In Obama DOL, we signed apprenticeship agreements with Microsoft, Amazon, Zurich Insurance, the Hartford.” He also tweeted that, “Trump will claim to increase apprenticeship funding, but it’s simply a funding shift from other training programs. FY’18 request is flat.” He included an image of the Wall Street Journal piece. So the Executive Order, he is arguing, hands dollars that are already going to job training to corporations. Particularly in a union construction town like St. Louis where owners and unions shoulder the burden of training programs that meet federal standards and are constantly being improved, that’s deeply troubling.
Economist Aaron Sojourner, senior economist on the President’s Council of Economic Advisors and an expert on the labor market impact and K-12 workforce pipeline, posted tweets that were even more blunt than Lu’s:
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- Proposal @POTUS starts w/real problem: each company must devise its own curriculum & get it govt-certified, a hassle and a wasteful barrier.
- But shredding accountability opens up room for grifters, introduces problem suffered by many students in for-profit higher-ed.
The National Skills Coalition — an alliance of more than 3,200 members, representing more than 1,400 industry, labor, and education organizations in over 43 states — wrote in its blog:
While the apprenticeship components of the EO were generally good, there were some troubling provisions relating to other federal workforce programs. The order directs all Federal agencies with jurisdiction over at least one job training program to evaluate the effectiveness of those programs, and proposes elimination of programs deemed to be “ineffective, redundant, or unnecessary.” In light of the president’s Fiscal Year (FY) 2018 budget which called for substantial cuts to the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA), the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act (Perkins), and other workforce, education, and human services programs, the direction to propose further cuts or eliminations is a step in the wrong direction. These important federal programs fund the country’s workforce and CTE system and although they have strong bipartisan support in Congress, they are already underfunded after more than a decade of cuts. This trend has frustrated small and medium-sized businesses who struggle to find skilled workers.
Our industry has invested mightily in the training of our workforce. St. Louis has been proactive in trying new approaches, borrowing best practices, and developing metrics for what works or what doesn’t. So the prospect of construction subsidizing untried, unmeasured programs at a time when we face critical shortages already and a looming exodus of Baby Boomers is unfair and illogical.
We’ve been toiling at workforce issues in construction for decades. An effective workforce pipeline is our future.
We need to get this right.