Name: Marion Williams
City: North Tonawanda
Union: Plasterers and Cement Masons, Local 9
Title: Journey Worker
Age: 28
I understand that you were just promoted to journey worker? Yes – that was about 2 weeks ago
How long did that take? How many years was the apprenticeship program? Six. Originally it was four years and during about my 3rd year they changed it to six years. And now recently they just changed it to 8,000 hours so that’s basically eight years if you figure you work about 1,000 hours in one year (Note: plus classroom training).
That’s a long apprenticeship. Why did they change it? It’s because some guys were going through the apprenticeship in about 4,000 hours with just learning one skill in the trade. The problem is then you get sent to a job where you have to do conventional plastering, but you don’t know how to do it because during your apprenticeship you didn’t do a lot of it. Guys were becoming journeymen (journey-level workers) without knowing everything about that trade. So that’s why they upped the hours.
How did you find out about the pre-apprentice program? My neighbor was in an adult learning program for welding and he told me one day “You should come try it out. It’s free”. So I went and tried it. It was about three or four months of training and I thought it was kinda cool. I stuck with it. And I met this lady named Kelly Navarro (NYS Department of Labor) there. After that welding program was finished Kelly told me to go downtown to the Department of Labor and look on the board that has postings from the building trades, manufacturing, and a bunch of other opportunities. I saw something about a free building trades program that was taking place in City Hall. I told Kelly I was interested in the program, and then I got a call about it. At the pre-apprentice program I met Dave Meadows who was teaching the course. He took a liking to me because he saw I was interested in the trade. Dave talked to Paul Brown (Plasterers Local 9) and told him he liked me and thought I was really interested in the Trades. Paul told him to keep me there and keep training me. After about 3 months Paul sent me to my first job and I’ve been in (the Plasterers) ever since.
Was the three months of training paid? Yes.
And at that first job was that the actual apprenticeship? Yes – as soon as I stepped on the job my apprenticeship began.
Tell me about a typical day. Are you on a job for a couple of months at a time? Are the jobs anywhere in the area? Sometimes it can be in the area but most of the time it may be out of town. As far as out of town you have to travel an hour, an hour and a half, or 2 hours even. Or it could be in another city or another state. It’s not always local.
Has it been consistent work? Yes it’s always consistent work.
What is your interaction with the union? The union trainers have been very supportive. Every trainer I have met in the union hall I have worked with on the job site. I’ve gotten my training from them on actual sites not just going through the union hall.
Have there been any goals you’ve been able to achieve as a result of the job? My goal was to become a journeyman (journey-level worker). The Building Trades is hard work; it’s not easy. When you’re first starting off you have your doubts (just like with anything). So my goal was to continue and keep going through the ranks year after year and convince myself to finish. It has helped me the most with maturity. I started in 2015 and throughout that time it matured me a lot as far as having responsibility. It trained me to get up every morning at so many different times. For instance right now I have to get up at 4:00 in the morning every day to get to work by 7:00. Things like that mature you because now you realize you have more responsibilities as an adult and it trains you to be motivated to get up and go to work day after day. After a while you get used to it. It matures you a lot. It matured me.
What were you doing before this? I was in and out of temp agencies going from job to job to job.
Is there anything that you would want someone to understand about the building trades apprenticeship programs? You get paid to learn and that’s what actually caught my attention at first. You get paid to learn a skill so why not try it? I would say to anybody, but especially to somebody that is young, that if this is something that you want to do, start while you are young. Even if you do decide this is not for me, then you’re not too old or at a point where you have to find something to do because you have a family or something. Start young. And that way, if you don’t like it you still have time to figure out what you want to do.
