8 Associated Builders and Contractors, Inc. DOL UPDATE It’s impossible to listen to government leaders talk about workforce without hearing the latest buzzword, “apprenticeship.” While the construction industry has been successful in turning the tide on the outdated notion that young adults need to go to college to start a good-paying career, the focus has turned to formalized training programs in the skilled trades. It’s now hip to work in the skilled trades and to attend trade school. With this newfound “hipness,” governmental leaders can’t help but want to jump on the bandwagon. To compensate for their late-to-the-game conversion, they’ve recently been providing some limited taxpayer support for a variety of these training programs. Next comes the strings. While trade schools are still mostly funded by private tuition dollars, formalized training requirements are surreptitiously being written into eligibility guidelines for government contracts or private projects that have received any government money. Recent examples include Oakland County and Ann Arbor, among a host of others. The federal “Inflation Reduction Act” introduced stiff new training requirements as well. Under the guise of ensuring “quality” construction on public projects, these rules diminish the importance of competitive price and instead focus on worker training. The prescribed training looks curiously like what labor unions do — apprenticeship. On the surface, apprenticeship is a good model. The idea is to work a job while simultaneously going to school to hone a worker’s knowledge and skill. But when overseen by federal government bureaucrats, it turns out the “training” isn’t about worker aptitude at all. The federal government doesn’t actually track how well an apprentice performs on written exams or skills tests. They only care that employers run through a nearly impossible gauntlet of federal tracking and record keeping requirements. Employers can expect to document and defend your hiring practices for constitutionally protected groups, as well as pay mandated employee pay increases regardless of actual on-the-job performance. Pay becomes commensurate with longevity rather than value or skill — antithetical to ABC’s “Merit Shop” values. By design, smaller companies don’t have the administrative staff to uphold the requirements. Even mid-sized companies struggle with the front office record keeping, so that’s less competition for union companies when they bid on public work. The result is taxpayers get stuck with a hefty bill without any guarantees that quality has actually been improved. As more and more public projects are enforcing these apprenticeship requirements, merit shop contractors will be forced to venture into government mandated apprenticeship programs. ABC’s trade school affiliate, SEMCA, has educational offerings that meet federal requirements. The question then boils down to who “holds” the U.S. DOL standards — IE. who is responsible for maintaining the records and navigating the voluminous requirements? There is an ability to hire an intermediary who is responsible for maintaining the records. Intermediaries can relieve employers of huge administrative burdens, not to mention the stress of inadvertently doing something wrong and ending up under federal U.S. DOL investigation. But, few exist in the state of Michigan. In the past, ABC SEMI has played such a role, but as the requirements have become more stringent, the chapter has become more reluctant to do so. Even so, as more employers are being forced into government mandated training programs, ABC is having to reconsider its position. Despite the newfound “hipness” of skilled trades, apprenticeship doesn’t equate to worker quality, but to immense government bureaucracy. If you have questions about how U.S. DOL apprenticeship works and what it takes to qualify, reach out to Deanna Morley, Vice President of Education at SEMCA at [email protected]. Non-Union Contractors Could be Forced into Apprenticeship By Keith Ledbetter
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