Alaska doesn't need Dunleavy plan for plumbers, electricians 'in name only'

Alaska doesn’t need to create a system in which workers without solid training are classified as plumbers, electricians, carpenters and other skilled members of the construction trades.

But the Dunleavy administration put forward an ill-conceived plan that would create such a system by destroying long-established construction apprenticeships.

A legislative hearing Thursday demonstrated just how poorly constructed this plan was, one that Labor Commissioner Tamika Ledbetter was defending a little more than a month ago as a way to create a “new career pathway.”

The idea was to get rid of government training standards and documentation on progress in learning construction skills. Instead, the state would assume that those who work full-time for six or seven years in a trade would be in a position to take a test to advance—with no requirement for training in specific tasks.

This would benefit companies that “don’t want the federal government dictating how they train their work force,” said Grey Mitchell, the state director of worker’s compensation.

Without the federal rules, we would soon have plumbers and electricians in name only. They would probably get paid less and many of them would probably not know what they were doing.

The hearing went so poorly that the next day Ledbetter temporarily pulled the plug on the regulations. She should do us all a favor and make that move permanent.

The state now plans to meet in March with construction industry experts, which is something that should have happened months ago.

The process is plagued by a level of distrust created in part because the state decided to claim that half of the public comments opposed to the proposal were “unclear.”

There were more than 350 comments against the plan to weaken or destroy the training system. There were two comments in favor of a portion of the regulations that is not controversial.

Mitchell said that since he believed the regulations would not weaken or destroy apprenticeship programs, as alleged, he was justified in calling the comments “unclear.” He is clearly wrong on this.

With this deception, the state tried to claim that about half of the comments on the regs were in opposition and half were “unclear.”

Ledbetter needs to have her department correct the public record. That Mitchell disagrees with public comments is not a justification to claim that the authors did not make themselves and their opposition clear.

Rep. Ivy Spohnholz rejected Mitchell’s logic on the “unclear” comments. She said the regulations proposed a pathway to avoid apprenticeships and would have required little or nothing in the way of documentation or standards, which would weaken or destroy the system.

She said the department was saying, “We’re not going to disallow apprenticeship, we’re just going to create something else that’s really easy to do that doesn’t have the kinds of standards that are required by apprenticeship. That’s effectively undermining apprenticeship.”

John Hakala, who works in the apprenticeship office of the U.S. Department of Labor, said the proposed “alternate pathway” was not a training program at all. He said the on-the-job training claim “scares the heck out of me.”

“You’re just not going to get proper training in a 12,000-hour OJT program,” he said.

“Registered apprenticeship is a proven workforce development strategy that supports local economies, builds worker skills and establishes career pathways to higher levels of employment and wages,” Hakala said.

The apprenticeship programs train union and non-union workers in 13 industries and 73 occupations across the state.

Deborah Kelly, a journeyman lineman, is the former director of labor standards and safety for the state and now the training director of the Alaska Joint Electrical Apprenticeship and Training Trust.

She said the state proposal included no training standards, replacing a comprehensive training program for apprentices with nothing.

“They keep calling this an alternate OJT pathway but there’s no expectation or requirement of on-the-job training,” she said.

“And so an employer can, and will, hire somebody as a grunt doing the easiest parts of those trades. So for line work, which I’m most familiar with, they’ll be shoveling, they’ll be potholing for buried electrical cables and they’ll be putting PVC pipe together,” she said,

“And maybe some day they’ll get that journeyman license and maybe they won’t. But if they do they are not at all qualified to then go up in the air and handle high voltages and understand why it’s so important not to open a neutral going to a home, and why you can cause a fire when you put copper over aluminum in a crimp connector. I mean these are things you have to learn. And a lot of these things need to be learned in a classroom or at least in a curriculum-type delivery,” she said.

The proposal would be unthinkable in other skilled professions such as nursing, flying, EMTs, etc. It is also unthinkable in the construction trades.

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