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Detroiter Quentin Murray is a sterling example of graduates from the Michigan Regional Council of Carpenters and Millwrights’ new Detroit training center.

Murray, now a journeyman carpenter, graduated from the council’s Detroit center as one of many city residents who now have a much better opportunity to learn their trade in what historically has not been an open industry.

“He’s a great example of the outreach we’ve done in the city of Detroit to make sure that Detroiters have the opportunities for these transformational projects,” council spokesman Steve Purchase said.

Transformational in this case has been the US$4.6 billion (C$6.4 billion) Gordie Howe International Bridge connecting Detroit and Windsor, Ont., which started in 2018 and is nearing completion.

Murray has now moved on to other projects but did concrete formwork on the bridge as a member of Carpenters’ Local 687.

Purchase said historically projects had been cordoned off to local residents.

“If you look over the longer arc of history the trades weren’t always the most open to new people and a lot of times to get into a unionized trade, you’d have to know somebody so that was a significant barrier.”

Moreover, for a long time a developer might come to the city or a project might be sited in Detroit “and the bulk of the workforce would come from outside the city then they’d leave when it’s done.”

The council, with 14,000 members, has now “averted that model” by allowing candidates to apply for an apprenticeship before they even have a first job, he said. This has even dovetailed to many pre-apprenticeships “to build the foundation” to pursue a successful career.

“To make sure they have the math skills, and they understand the expectations of how jobsites work (job site culture), and the basic hand skills so that when they start their apprenticeship and they start at their jobsite on day one they’ve got a little bit of proper experience to help guide them through,” Purchase said.

So, the council built its newest training center in Detroit.

“We are very intentional about making sure that this opportunity is open to everybody.”

Apprentices in the tuition-free four years are paid for class time, typically one day every two weeks and the rest of time in the field. Some do block scheduling a week every quarter.

“We teach everything that your members need to know, all your carpentry skills, floorlaying, millwrighting, mass timber, solar installation, concrete formwork, metal stud drywall, drop ceiling, scaffolding – a whole host,” Purchase said.

There are currently 1,600 apprentices. Newer trends include solar and high tech.

“Michigan was really in the forefront of solar, so we’ve done a lot of training and onboarded a lot of new members especially for utility scale solar installation, all your racking right through to setting the panels,” he said.

“Clean rooms are really big right now for battery and chip manufacturing, so we’ve done a lot more advanced training (for those). Mass timber is starting to take off as some of the codes catch up.” 

Clean rooms are “like building a building inside the building,” he said. “You’re typically leveraging pre-manufactured clean room systems (but) you have to build them to exacting tolerances because it’s all about the air quality and preserving that cleanliness inside of those spaces.”

This includes “having an awareness of positive pressure systems and ensuring that those systems are delivered to specifications so they that perform as they’re intended.”

Besides the Gordie Howe Bridge, millwrights have been seconded to the auto industry for new factory and plant retooling, or a new Amazon distribution warehouse where “our millwrights installed some 27 miles of conveyance systems.”

As part of its pre-apprentice outreach, Purchase said the council hired people “directly from the neighborhood” at entry levels like material handlers.

“That translated into a really a solid percentage (80 or 90 of 150) of those folks becoming full-fledged millwright apprentices,”

Many projects utilizing city incentives have a 50 per cent worker residency requirement.

An alternative is the city’s so-called STEP program which allows contractors to team with a body like the council, where 25 per cent of an incoming apprenticeship class are residents.

“We tend be north of 30 per cent.”