Reported By: Susan Sharon

It may be one of the best kept job-retraining secrets in Maine. It offers an attractive benefits package and good pay and the training program itself is free. And it’s being held up as a model for how business, education and labor can help strengthen the new economy.

Stacey Timberlake of Lisbon Falls didn’t plan on becoming an electrician. She originally got a teaching degree in elementary education. And when her son was born nine years ago Timberlake became a stay-at-home mom. To supplement her income, she eventually started waitressing on the side.

One day some of her customers started talking about Local 567′s Joint Apprenticeship Training program, how it was good to have an aptitude for math, which Timberlake did, and how you were virtually guaranteed a job. Timberlake went down and filled out an application.

The next thing she knew, she was enrolled in a five-year program to become what’s known as an “inside wireman.”
“I think we do about 980 hours of classroom time and 10,000 hours of work time before we finish the program. We have to work 2,000 hours a year. You work Monday through Friday – a 7:00 to 3:30 schedule with the rest of the journeymen.”

Classroom training takes place a couple of nights a week in the IBEW’s training center in Lewiston. And just about everything is free. Apprentices are responsible for their books and their tools for the job. Participating electrical contractors pay for the rest. That’s because they’re looking for skilled labor, people who can literally hit the ground running.

Timberlake is beginning her fourth year in the program. She says she had just four months of classroom training when she went on her first job. “My first day on the job site was horrible,” she laughs. “It was so cold and the heater in the van didn’t work. My bottle of water froze – but I learned a lot and I mean — it was a residential job my first time and we were pulling wire and they’re very patient with you. And you have kind of a level of what you’re expected to know with each year.”

Susan Sharon: “When you get done what will you be qualified to do?”

Stacey Timberlake: “When I’m done I can work residential, commercial and industrial. I can be a foreman, a journeyman, I could do jobs on my own.”

SS: “You’ll be an electrician?”

ST: “Yup.”

Timberlake expects to earn much more than she did as a teacher. And she’s already getting benefits. Once she’d worked 500 hours on the job those kicked in. And the contractor she’s working for right now is contributing to her pension plan. Apprentices can also train to do shorter, three-year programs in residential applications or for teledata, installing lines for telephones and computers.

This year there are 71 apprentices, but some years the program swells to as many as 120. “Eighty-five percent of the folks who come into this facility graduate and of those 90 percent are placed immediately into jobs,” says Rob Brown, Executive Director of Opportunity Maine, a non-profit and advocacy program that supports workforce development.

And in a way that makes sense for displaced mill workers and others who might not be interested in devoting the next four years of their lives and their bank accounts to a college degree program. “Very little public money goes into this. This is supported by the contractors themselves. These students are not paying tuition to go here. It’s an earn while you learn strategy of education and work.”

And it’s one that Brown thinks can be replicated in other fields, like health care, for instance, through the help of pending legislation in Congress that’s sponsored in the Senate by Maine Senator Olympia Snowe and co-sponsored in the House by Maine Congressman Mike Michaud.

Recently, Michaud paid a visit to the IBEW’s apprenticeship program in Lewiston, where he spoke about the Sectors Act, which would provide grants of up to $2.5 million for stakeholder partners to train workers. “It really is a game-changer and it brings business, unions, educators and the public workforce to grow and save an entire industry.”

Michaud says it could also help Maine foster new industries too. As an example, supporters point to the IBEW apprenticeship training program where several students worked on the Kibby Mountain windpower project installing 20 wind turbines over the summer. By the time they’ve completed their training, students will also have skills to install solar panels as well, something that could be a factor for clean energy developers as they consider project sites around the country.

By Rob Brown and Don Berry

Maine’s intertwined economic and energy challenges have deep roots. We have the nation’s oldest housing and work force, greatest reliance on heating oil, and highest percentage of young people neither working pursuing education. Electricity costs are high, and Maine has the lowest income and education levels in New England.

We must turn these challenges into opportunity. Public and private investment in energy efficiency and local renewable power generation can save Maine’s economy billions and create good-paying, non-exportable jobs in every community, if we give our work force the skills to refashion our energy economy.

Across the country, the most effective model for meeting challenges like Maine’s energy crisis has been the “sector partnership model,” which unites stakeholders in an economic sector to lead training efforts across multiple firms for current and potential workers within the targeted industry sector.

One of Maine’s most successful sector partnerships and best kept educational secrets is the Joint Apprenticeship and Training Committee in Lewiston.

The JATC is managed by a board comprised, in equal numbers, of business and labor representatives. Its curriculum, training and credentials conferred guarantees graduates possess the skills businesses need.

An impressive 85 percent of those who start the training complete it and more than 90 percent of graduates are placed in good jobs. The JATC’s high completion and placement rates result from its “earn while you learn” training strategy. Apprentices work real jobs and get an education in a coordinated, streamlined program. When it comes time to find a job, these graduates already have one foot in the clean energy work force.

Sector partnerships like the JATC target resources by supporting the long-term competitiveness of industries and education, and training opportunities that lead to good-paying, green-skilled jobs. They unite stakeholders in a given industry — in this case, clean energy — to identify all needs for building the sector as a whole, and meeting those needs in a manner that maximizes economic opportunity for local people, particularly those with low incomes and other disadvantages for which a four-year college degree is not practical or possible.

We are setting ourselves up for failure if we build a renewable energy market without developing a high-quality work force, and if we don’t parlay our clean energy and work force investments into opportunities to bring renewable energy component manufacturing to Maine. Currently, over half of all wind components, 90 percent of solar components and 100 percent of advanced battery technology is manufactured elsewhere.

It will mean little to American workers if the clean energy economy is built in China.

Meeting our energy needs and manufacturing the products to do it requires greater coordination and innovation than now exists. Workers must be trained for jobs that exist today and will exist in greater numbers as the clean energy economy expands. Both Maine and the federal government have taken promising steps in this direction, but require bolder action.

One of the most promising developments is the federal SECTORS Act (Strengthening Employment Clusters to Organize Regional Success). It would provide state grants to establish or expand sector partnerships, allowing businesses, work force development boards, labor unions and community colleges to collaborate to determine work force and community needs and link skilled workers with emerging industries. Sen. Olympia Snowe is a lead sponsor, and Rep. Mike Michaud has championed SECTORS in the House.

Additionally, the Senate must now pass the American Clean Energy & Security Act, which will implement substantial energy market reforms and work force investments in the clean energy sector. This legislation, with the new Efficiency Maine Trust, clean energy investments and reforms Opportunity Maine has proposed at the state level, and the work force investments contained in the SECTORS Act and epitomized by successful partnerships like the JATC, can turn an energy crisis into an opportunity for prosperity for this and future Maine generations.

Don Berry is the director of the JATC. Rob Brown is the executive director of Opportunity Maine. E-mail: dberry@ibew567.com or rob@opportunitymaine.org.