Construction students learn basic job skills as prep for apprenticeship
“Excuse me. Did you forget to tuck in your shirttail?” Tim Krejci barked at a man in his 20s.
That’s just one of Krejci’s Âearly-morning greetings to students who are learning how to present themselves every day for good-paying construction jobs.
He has many more, all intended to remind students of the serious nature of construction work.
An experienced union carpenter and former project manager, Krejci is in charge of an eight-week training course for men and women who hope to graduate with job offers from contractors in the building and construction trades.
The course he shepherds is sponsored by Pride of St. Louis, a consortium of contractors, construction unions and customers. Pride has a four-year, $1.5 million contract with the Missouri Department of Transportation to train minorities and women to work in construction and building trades.
A similar course, created for the same purpose, is run by the Construction Prep Center under a separate MoDOT $490,000 contract. Both are free for students, who receive no pay for attending classes.
“MoDOT saw this as an opportunity to increase a ready, willing and able work force of minorities and females,” said Lester Woods, the agency’s external civil rights administrator.
If the students, like Bryan ÂLunceford, 31, of St. Ann, who lost his job at a tool company, can learn the basics under Krejci’s tutelage, they may get into an apprenticeship program in one of several unions.
After a few years, he could be earning a yearly income in the mid-$40,000 range, based on 2,000 hours of work a year.
“I would like this to turn into a lifetime job,” said Lunceford, who’s aiming at becoming a sheet metal worker or a carpenter.
St. Louis University Professor Todd Swanstrom said minorities and women in the St. Louis area are neither in the worst nor the best construction job market for them. In a study for the Transportation Equity Network released today, Swanstrom found that the gap between African-Americans in the local workforce and in construction is greatest in Virginia Beach, Va., Detroit, Mich., and Chicago.
The gap is smallest in Honolulu, Youngstown, Ohio, and Pittsburgh. St. Louis is right in the middle, with Kansas City a bit worse.
“Black employment in construction has been concentrated in the unskilled and poorly paid parts of the industry, such as hod carriers, helpers and laborers,” the report says. “Discrimination in the construction industry has been especially difficult to overcome because recruitment is embedded in tight family and ethnic connections.”
Lunceford credits the shutdown of Interstate 70 in 1999 with being the catalyst that brought these two training St. Louis programs into existence.
“We’ve got a lot of things done since Al Sharpton and others closed I-70. They did what it takes,” Lunceford said.
After the shutdown, a group led by MoKan, which includes minority contractors, many white contractors and labor unions, has tried to become more inclusive.
Many have been working to lay the groundwork for a more diverse work force and a longer list of minority- or women-owned subcontractors than exists today. Subcontractors typically come from the ranks of tradesmen and -women who want to go into business for themselves.
The Construction Prep Center is reaching out to minorities — mostly African-Americans — Krejci said, who come from “an atmosphere and environment where there is no discipline and no role model.”
In theory at least, learning a trade as a laborer, carpenter, mason, sheet metal worker or operating engineer will assure they can compete in the job market as the $535 million Highway 40 (Interstate 64) project unfolds.
By the time the 10 miles of improvements are done late in 2009, the graduates of Krejci’s and CPC’s basic-training-for-construction will have gained several years of valuable experience in trades. These trades are having trouble finding young replacements for retiring baby boomers.
“There is going to be quite a void in construction,” said Vivian Martain, CPC’s executive director, echoing the view of other observers of construction.
MoDOT has a goal of 20 percent of the work force, including apprentices, being minority and women by the time the project ends in a little more than two years.
“We’re more than sure that we’re going to reach those goals,” said Woods.
He added that contractors have a strong incentive to bring in minority and women workers.
A contractor whose work force is more than 20 percent minority or female will receive — up to a certain point — $10 an hour reimbursement in wages for those additional individuals, he said.
“This is a new creative initiative from MoDOT,” Woods said. “What makes this creative is we included the stakeholders from the beginning.”
He was referring primarily to leaders in the African-American community, as well as others, who have helped spread the word about these training programs.
When students finish their eight weeks of training, they will have been introduced to several trades. For instance, Krejci has each student build a small bench out of plywood. This exercise teaches measuring, precision, attention to detail and one of Krejci’s favorite teaching points: Every carpenter needs to know the increments of an inch instinctively.
“Each one will have about 240 hours of pre-apprenticeship training,” said Woods.
He predicted that for each class of about 30 students, 10 to 20 will get into a union apprenticeship program, where they will stay for three to five years before becoming journeymen.
“There is no guarantee that they will get onto I-64, but MoDOT has given them the training,” Woods said.
If graduates don’t work on the highway, he said, they still will be prepared to find jobs elsewhere.
Detra Brady is one who’s hoping the training she receives at the Construction Prep Center at 6347 Plymouth Avenue in the old Wagner Electric building in Wellston will be the ticket to a new life.
An ex-offender who served three years in federal prison for mail fraud, Brady wants to become a craft laborer, specializing in laying floors.
“Instead of just having a job, I want a career,” she said, adding that she believes strongly in the program because it teaches students how to dress, behave and become responsible workers.
“This course is going to give you discipline, if you didn’t have it already,” she said. “I’ve turned into a walking advertisement for it. I feel good about myself now.”
With file information from stltoday.com