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The St. Louis
Electrical Connection
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Management
and labor are training workers to keep buildings connected to the
high-tech world.
By William Poe
If you think of labor and management as manning opposite ends of
a tug-of-war rope, you haven’t seen labor and management at play—or
work—in the St. Louis area. Here, labor and management are increasingly
working together to pull a rope of labor-management programs that
increase the strength of both sides.
In the latest example, labor and management are working together
to provide the skilled labor needed in the high-tech electrical
and data/telecommunications field. The St. Louis Electrical Connection
serves both sides of the construction equation by providing management
with the skilled craftsmen it needs for its construction projects
and by maintaining union membership in the process.
A cooperative program of the International Brotherhood of Electrical
Workers (IBEW) #1 and the St. Louis Chapter of the National Electrical
Contractors Association (NECA), the St. Louis Electrical Connection
is providing much of the trained labor needed by area building contractors
for high-tech electrical, data collection and transmission, and
telecommunications installations.
“The program is unique in that we’re very concerned about meeting
the needs of the St. Louis business community for electrical and
telecom workers, and we’re customizing training to produce electricians
to install virtually any technology a customer wants to install,”
says Douglas R. Martin, executive vice president of the St. Louis
Chapter of NECA.
Since 1992, officials say there has been explosive growth in the
demand for installation of building systems including voice, data,
and video, and for installation of commercial building controls
and industrial process controls. Industry statistics show that high-tech
systems installations accounted in 1992 for 23.3 percent of all
electrical contracting sales nationally, or $9.4 billion of $40.25
billion in total industry sales. By the end of 1999, these systems
installations had grown to 33.5 percent of total electrical contracting
volume, exceeding $25.6 billion of $76.5 billion in sales. Overall,
the industry is now said to be growing at an annual rate of 20 percent.
Pat Murphy, executive vice president of PayneCrest Electric Co.,
the area’s third largest electrical contractor, says the company’s
voice-data-video business has grown 400 percent in the last four
years. “The field is expanding greatly,” Murphy says. “There has
been a need to train more of the electricians that had been used
to running traditional pipe and wire to bring their skills up to
date with fiber optics, electronic terminations, and other high-tech
areas.”
With high-tech labor needs accelerating, the St. Louis Electrical
Connection recently launched an ambitious effort to increase the
supply of qualified electricians with advanced systems training.
NECA and the IBEW last year spent $2.5 million to modernize electrical
training programs and to overhaul the St. Louis Electrical Industry
Training Center—its first major expansion since its 1966 opening
at 2300 Hampton Ave. The result was the creation of a sophisticated
electrical learning laboratory that is considered to be a model
for the industry. There, officials say more than $1 million is spent
annually to train qualified union electricians.
The maturation of the information age has driven the training center
to record levels of enrollment. The center now has 380 electrical
apprentices in training—nearly triple the 1992 enrollment. About
700 journey-level electricians are enrolled each year in continuing
education programs—nearly four times the enrollment of just four
years ago. In January, 36 apprentices began instruction in a new
telecommunications apprenticeship program that is one of the first
of its kind in the midwest. Officials expect a second class to also
form this year.
NECA’s Martin says that, prior to inauguration of the telecommunications
apprenticeship program, “contractors had been training their own
personnel for high-tech installations, and we found that apprenticeship
was a better way to provide that training. The program is breeding
more highly qualified electricians.”
“The contractors were struggling for a while to get people trained,”
says Steve Schoemehl, business manager for IBEW #1. “And several
years ago, we would hear complaints when we attempted to secure
work for our members that we didn’t have the qualified trained personnel
to do that work. That is not an operable statement any longer. This
will really be a boon to the industry.”
The training center now provides Internet access, Martin says, to
allow instructors to custom-tailor training to the needs of a particular
contractor or wiring project. “Using computers, we can reach out
to a manufacturer of components or systems that a contractor needs
that might be new to the St. Louis market and bring the training
specs right into the classroom. We offer lots of customized components.”
The telecommunications training program is one of three main training
components that also include traditional construction electrician
school and a residential construction program, Schoemehl says.
“The important thing is that we’re capable of supplying workmen
who are fully qualified; we have a joint labor-management interest
in doing that,” Martin says. “Really, the most challenging thing
with construction is that you don’t have a set workforce. The biggest
challenge as an industry is making sure we have an adequate supply
of people and that we have enough people trained to fit all of those
tech slots needed on the job.”
he St. Louis Electrical Connection helps build a better community
in other ways as well. Since 1995, the organization has sponsored
the installation of free exterior lights and security motion detectors
in some 600 homes in 27 St. Louis city neighborhoods and provided
free electrical system maintenance at more than 6,000 new homes
throughout the St. Louis area. The value of the free installations
exceeds $200,000.
Martin says the Electrical Connection is a sterling example of “the
ongoing commitment and value the union-management partnership has
brought to the community.”
William V. Poe is principal of Poe Communications, a St. Louis
advertising and marketing communications firm. |
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