Trades often treated as second best
But vocational training facilities in Europe are credited with lowering youth unemployment
In a corner of my woodworking shop there hangs a monument to futility — my failed attempt to cut a dovetail joint.
A finished dovetail joint looks deceptively simple. It’s an interlocking wedgeshaped pattern used to fasten two boards. But cutting and chiselling the two boards so that they lock together in a right angle is devilishly difficult. It’s a test of patience and precision.
On a morning in April at Carpenters Local 27 Training Centre in Woodbridge, a class of Grade 12 vocational students is cutting dovetails.
“Pretty hard,” says Nas Malek. But he’s not deterred. He has travelled here by bus from downtown Toronto. “Two hours here, two hours home.” When he graduates from Central Tech in June, he wants to return here for his carpentry apprenticeship. This high school program gives him a head start.
Lindon McQuilkin, a Grade 12 student from Archbishop Romero Catholic Secondary School in Toronto, also wants to earn his carpenter’s papers. But McQuilkin has other ambitions. He figures that three years learning how to build a house will make him better at designing one. He wants to become an architect.
Malek and McQuilkin are drawn to this facility by its up-to-date equipment, excellent teachers and a construction workshop as spacious as an aircraft hangar. Later on, they will benefit from office staff who act like den mothers, coaching them through the detailed record-keeping required of every apprentice. All this is special for the students.
YOU WOULD THINK there are many training facilities like Carpenters Local 27 in Canada. There aren’t, but there should be.
In Germany, Austria, Switzerland and the Netherlands, the kind of co-operation between union and employers seen at Carpenters Local 27 is commonplace. The seamless transition from training to the workplace is the norm. Though it has its flaws, the vocational education training system in these countries has been given a large share of the credit for low youth unemployment.
The Woodbridge centre was started in 1986 by Carpenters Local 27 and the Toronto Construction Association, which represents contractors. Unhappy with the quality of carpenters’ training at community colleges, they took matters into their own hands, building and funding the training centre jointly.
That collaboration between two groups that are usually at odds — a union and its employers — was remarkable. Deceptively simple, like a dovetail.
Cristina Selva, executive director of the Carpenters Local 27 Joint Apprenticeship and Training Trust Fund, says that today “when you look at the speed and the efficiency with which construction crews in Ontario put up a 30-storey building, compared with their counterparts elsewhere, it is quite staggering.
“The only way they’re able to do that is by having very highly trained productive people. That’s the bottom line for (contractors), right? If they can have the best of the best working for them, it means money.”
Safety is critical too, she says. “If you have people working for you that are not trained to the highest standards of health and safety practices, that’s going to affect your bottom line because you’re going to have increased injuries and accidents.” Accidents also mean employers pay higher workers’ compensation premiums.
The union members benefit, too, adds Selva. “The wider the breadth of skills that they have, the better able they are to work safely and efficiently. It enhances their employability. It’s (also) going to decrease, if not eliminate, the times they might be unemployed due to injury or illness.”
In other words, it is a win-win for carpenters, apprentices and their employers.
IN GERMANY’S “dual system,” schools and employers share responsibility for credentialed training of about 360 occupations, from carpenter to bank clerk to event planners. (In Switzerland and Austria, the credentialed occupations number 270 and 215.) Employers treat the credential as a prerequisite for hiring. Because they do, it sends a clear signal to students: if you want to become a bank clerk or event planner, here’s the path to getting hired.
Colleges play a subordinate role. Employers take the lead with on-the-job training. Unions, employers and the state set training standards for students and their teachers. However, employers design the curriculum to fit their needs. When new technology arrives in the workplace, trainees learn to use it right away. Employers also pay trainees. This “earning and learning” keeps students motivated.
Most critically, German employers control how many young people are admitted into training. Before a student is accepted into a credential-granting institution, he or she must land a trainee contract with an employer. Employers train only enough to fill their staffing needs. This means young people are being trained for jobs that actually exist.
This is something Canadian colleges aspire to, but with mixed success. In Ontario, for example, the province surveys students six months after they graduate. In 2009-10, one-third of college graduates reported that they were employed in a job not related to their program of study. Canadian colleges try to be attuned to the labour market, but they can never be as responsive to the needs of employers as employers themselves.
Most Canadian students go to college to learn skills that will land them a job in their chosen field. When they don’t, they feel betrayed and frustrated at their loss of time and money.
The German system avoids this scenario by obliging students to connect with an employer before they enter training. It works to their mutual benefit. For students, the training contract is a foot in the door, though not a job guarantee. For employers, it is a chance to get to know the trainee’s capabilities, and to teach her their way of doing things.
One of the most striking examples of company-driven training is run by Siemens, the engineering giant. The Siemens Technical Academy in Berlin trains 200 engineering technicians and professional engineers at any one time. The teaching of skills and problem-solving is top of the agenda. But close behind is winning the students’ loyalty. Siemens wants a return on its investment.
Tall, bespectacled, his grey beard close-cropped, Wilfrid Lammers headed the academy until his recent retirement. “Maybe at the entrance there should be a sign that says, ‘nobody gets lost,’ ” he told me when I went to visit. “We attract them. We select them. We try to find out if they have a team spirit and then we rely on the self-fulfilling prophecy. You are good, so you must be good . . . You’re not allowed to leave our program, so to speak. We’ll help you in any way so that you will be successful with our program.”
Afew years ago, the Siemens Technical Academy switched its language of instruction to English. With a presence in 190 countries, Siemens employees are deployed around the globe. A common language means a flexible workforce. It also sends an implicit message: stick with us and we’re your ticket to see the world. BACK IN CANADA, enrolment in apprenticeships is rising. Forecasts project strong demand for the construction trades (such as carpenters, electricians, plumbers, welders, crane operators), machinists, heavy-equipment operators and auto mechanics, among others.
Cristina Selva laments that, despite these opportunities, we value the trades so little in Canada. Official Ontario Ministry of Education policy is to treat the post-secondary options — college, university and trades — as equal. But many parents and teachers still treat the trades as second best, despite the employment opportunities.
Selva has observed a boomerang effect. The average age of apprentices at the training centre is 28.
“They have always had a passion for working with their hands or working with wood,” she says of her students. “But because of parental and teacher pressures, because they were academically strong, (they) were always encouraged to pursue college and university. A lot of our people come to us once they have the confidence to say, ‘You know what, this is really what I’d rather be doing.’ ”
Better late than never. But young people would spare themselves some grief if it were earlier.