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When Teamwork Translates Into Skills Training

Press Release

PRAHDLogoPERTH AMBOY – Late last fall, the Puerto Rican Association For Human Development, Inc. (PRAHD) and the Northeast Regional Council of Carpenters (NRCC) agreed to create a unique training program that offers a path and a ray of hope to the unemployed or underemployed.

We established a pre-apprenticeship program that allows participants to embark on that first, important step to becoming a full apprentice in a union carpenter program.

This comes at a time when job creation is on everyone’s mind, accompanied by the refrain of the importance of education.  We believe that our approach is both creative and a real-world antidote to the issues of unemployment, education and upward employment, the ability to earn and learn in a manner that allows participants to improve their socioeconomic status.

It is never easy to make a transition from no or low employment to a skillful job with a future. Indeed, it is a lengthy bridge that many never cross. Our program offers guidance and a helping hand that people can grasp.  The contributory factors that have spawned such confidence include:

• Small successes.  The pre-apprenticeship program will bring candidates into a training regimen that builds confidence and instills a measurable, modest skill set that they might not have possessed previously. It is a powerful introduction on the road to a respected, well-paying job: becoming a union carpenter.  Our objective is clear-cut: PRAHD lays the foundation for employment within our community and, just as important, it provides for sustainable employment.  You can’t export the skill and labor required for a construction job.

• Advanced Technical Education. Training provided to apprentices and journeymen is a superior educational option. While pundits often focus on a more traditional educational theme (attend college), their voices become muffled when discussing vocational and apprenticeship programs. Yet apprentice carpenters who become journeymen receive the equivalent of a college degree with a five-year curriculum and 1,000 hours of technical training. Participants can also earn college credits and when they graduate, it usually leads to highly desirable employment because they actually worked in the field they studied.

• A broader view. We were very fortunate that NRCC, which represents both New Jersey and New York, were flexible in approving this trial approach.  If successful, and we believe it will be, it lays the foundation for other trade organizations in Middlesex County to consider a new pathway for potential candidates.

PRAHD and the NRCC reached an agreement, in part, because the carpenter’s union placed great value on our influence and ability to communicate to our specific audience of women and minorities. Sisters of the Brotherhood, which is a female component of the carpenters union, aided in this agreement. The Sisters have worked diligently in recent years to break the stereotype that women “can’t make it” in the construction. They have, and we expect more to follow.

The NRCC is providing the same umbrella of training under which apprentices and journeymen study. The carpenter’s union has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on training throughout the country and justifiably describes their graduates as the best in the construction business. Locally, our candidates will train at the NRCC’s training center in Kenilworth, N.J. We have designed the classes for evening instruction, which permits attendance for those who must maintain daytime jobs.

Throughout the United States, business leaders and owners constantly lament that they can’t find qualified personnel to fill jobs. This bemoaning increases as more American workers enter retirement age.

Recently, President Barack Obama said that he believes students should be allowed to attend community college for free, if they are willing to work for it.  The implementation of this idea, if it occurs, translates into a basis for education and jobs. However, its realization could be years in the future.

The initiative we undertook with the NRCC is an answer for education, employment and future job security, and it is available NOW.

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