🔒Construction industry training programs yield new talent pipeline; some say more is needed, including hiring ratio reforms, to address labor shortage

Hiring rules and the workforce shortage in construction will become issues at the legislature this session, with numerous lawmakers drafting bills to address Connecticut’s apprenticeship hiring regulations.

“We are exacerbating the skilled worker shortage,” said Chris Fryxell, president of the Connecticut chapter of the Associated Builders and Contractors. “And we’re making it more difficult for Connecticut to meet our goals of improving our infrastructure and improving on things like affordable housing, improving our roads and bridges.”

Fryxell was lamenting the state’s 1:3 apprenticeship hiring ratio requirement on contracting companies in electrical, plumbing, pipe fitting, HVAC and metal-working trades. The rule requires contractors to have a certain number of licensed journeymen on staff for each apprentice they hire.

Contractors can hire up to three apprentices at a 1:1 ratio. That means a company must have three licensed journeymen on staff if it wants three apprentices. It would need two journeymen for two apprentices.

After the first three apprentice hires, the ratio increases.

So, a company with 12 licensed journeymen can only have six apprentices. To hire a seventh apprentice, the company must expand to 15 journeymen.

Smaller companies for whom this would be a burden are supposed to be able to apply for a waiver through the state Department of Labor, but many say the waiver process itself is lengthy, cumbersome and the outcomes uncertain.

“It’s preventing new workers from going after their goal of becoming a skilled craftsperson,” Fryxell said. “We would love to reduce that apprenticeship hiring ratio to one-to-one.”

Several Republican lawmakers have proposed bills in the Labor and Public Employees Committee that would lower or even eliminate the hiring ratio. Another proposed bill aims to expedite the application process for apprenticeship ratio relief.

Hands-on training

Fryxell’s organization represents about 250 companies in what’s known as the “merit shop” side of the construction industry — that is, non-union. It’s addressing the need for skilled workers with its own initiative — an associated nonprofit school called the Construction Education Center.

Founded in Rocky Hill in 2007, the school moved to Plainville in 2018 in search of larger premises.

“We weren’t able to offer the hands-on training portion of the curriculum,” said the school’s education director Marcie Addy. “One of the member companies took the lead on building this new facility for us. So now our entire building is 8,000 square feet, and we have the hands-on training rooms that are available for HVAC, electrical, plumbing, sheet metal and carpentry.”

The school currently has 142 apprentices enrolled. It also provides continuing education and certifications for people who are already in the skilled trades.

Addy says they have no shortage of applicants, and plan to continue expanding to as many as 280 apprenticeship places in the next four years.

“I do see more parents who are open to their children pursuing a career in the trades,” she said.

Tuition at the school runs about $2,500 a year, but Addy says many students are able to get either scholarships or employer sponsorships that cut the cost.

And the need does seem to be out there when they graduate.

“There are estimates that say more than one in five construction workers is 55 or older,” said Fryxell. “We’re losing people to retirement, and really we’re losing the most experienced skilled workers, and we’re not filling them in quickly enough. I still feel like we’re losing ground each year.”

Cyclical nature

Connecticut currently has 62,500 construction workers — one of the higher levels of employment since the 2008 financial crisis, which significantly reduced the industry’s workforce. The sector employed 69,000 workers in January 2008, according to state Department of Labor data.

Nationally, the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics forecasts that total construction employment will rise from 7.03 million in 2021, to 7.28 million in 2031, for a net need of more than 25,000 workers per year.

“Our members are very hungry for workers right now,” Fryxell said. “When we speak to ABC contractors, almost every single one of them are looking for additional workers to help the business grow and also to meet current demand in their backlog.”

And hence the dispute over the hiring ratio, which non-union shops and trade associations like ABC see as an unnecessary bottleneck in the workforce pipeline.

But not everyone agrees. Unions in the licensed trades, like the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, have opposed any fundamental changes to the ratio system.

Residential construction doesn’t offer the same level of wages that industrial and commercial construction does, and Sean Daly, the business manager of IBEW Local 90 in New Haven, believes that side of the business simply wants the ability to hire more apprentices to keep costs down.

“To ​me, ​it’s ​just ​a ​search ​for ​cheap ​labor,” Daly said.

He also points to the cyclical nature of construction. The residential market has been hot in the recent past, but fluctuates with interest rates.

“​They ​want ​to ​have ​as ​many ​apprentices ​as ​they ​want, ​and ​then ​as ​soon ​as ​they’re ​not ​busy ​they ​get ​rid ​of ​them,” he said. “Taking in ​too ​many ​apprentices ​would ​only ​put ​twice ​as ​many ​young ​kids ​out ​of ​work.”

And, he says, unscrupulous contractors sometimes don’t educate those apprentices properly, or even credit them with the worksite hours they need to become journeymen, keeping them trapped at a lower wage.

But Daly does agree that the waiver-request process — what’s known as ratio relief — should be a lot easier. That’s the compromise he’d rather see than legislation to change the ratio itself.

“Sometimes it takes 12 weeks,” he pointed out. “The Department ​of ​Labor ​should ​just ​set ​up ​a ​website ​where ​a ​contractor can log in and ask — ‘​I ​have this ​many ​journeymen ​and this ​many ​apprentices, can ​I ​get ​another ​apprentice?’ And they should be able to answer that real fast. We’ve ​been ​talking ​to ​the ​department ​for ​three ​years ​about ​doing ​it.”

‘Primary pipeline’

Marc Okun, the business manager for Carpenters Local 326, also believes that lower wages in the residential sector give an impression of a more acute worker shortage than actually exists.

“There isn’t a lack of people for higher-end trades,” he said. “I think where the people are lacking is probably in the residential or subcontractor market like the home remodeling, because they’re lower paid.”

For Okun, instead of considering the hiring ratio, a more helpful change the legislature could make this session would be to require that contractors who win large public contracts, like school construction, include apprentices in their bids.

He says young people’s interest in the trades is very high — the union’s apprenticeship program is currently oversubscribed — but fewer people make it through the selection process. He has about 250 active apprentices in Connecticut, and about 30 to 40 graduate each year.

“I think what we end up seeing is people think that it’s a way to make fast, easy money, and they don’t realize how hard it actually is,” he said.

Nevertheless, the union is seeking ways to improve the workforce pipeline. Last year it lowered the entry age for its apprenticeship program from 18 to 17, meaning that current high schoolers can join.

Brent McCartney, an education consultant with the Connecticut Technical High Schools system, says that change is exciting because it allows the schools and unions to work together to mentor students in the industry.

“Our goal is to be the primary pipeline for a lot of this workforce,” McCartney said.

The technical high schools system recently debuted its CTECS Career Center, a LinkedIn-style communication app for contractors and other employers to communicate with staff and students about their hiring needs. And the system’s work-based learning program allows students 16 and older to get work experience with employers for both a wage and school credit.

McCartney also says CTECS’ curriculum is changing to accommodate real-world developments in industry. Eli Whitney Technical High School’s carpentry offering, for example, was recently expanded into a building and civil construction program.

That change was prompted by the passage of the federal Bipartisan Infrastructure Act, which is expected to bring $5.4 billion in infrastructure funding to Connecticut — a boost to the construction industry.

“We couldn’t fit in those skills in a typical carpentry program, so we needed to adapt,” McCartney said.