June 11, 2007

Labour Shortages

Record number of apprentices still not enough to satisfy labour hungry Alberta

98 per cent of SAIT graduate students are employed within six months of graduation

Suzanne Zwarun

Correspondent

A record 53,000 apprentices are in training in Alberta this fall—more than twice the number enrolled a little over a decade ago—and nearly half of the province’s 25,000 trades employers are training apprentices.

And that still isn’t enough to meet the demand in the labour hungry province.

Since the beginning of the year, trades employers have been hiring and registering 100 apprentices a working day, by Advanced Education Minister Denis Herard’s count. “This is good news for Albertans and good news for the province.”

Eight of the 10 trades with the greatest numbers of apprentices registered are construction-related according to statistics released by Herard’s office. Electricians, with 8,164 registered, lead the way, closely followed by welders (7,508). Other registered apprentices are training to be heavy equipment technicians (4,016), carpenters (3,813), plumbers (3,411), steamfitters/pipefitters (2,828), crane equipment operators (2,403) and millwrights (1,735).

Provincial government officials congratulate themselves on such initiatives as the Registered Apprenticeship Program (RAP) that allows high school students to start their apprenticeship training in high school and earn credit toward both an apprenticeship program and a high school diploma. RAP, which started with five students in 1991, now has more than 1,300 participating and the number of Government of Alberta scholarships available has climbed from 50 to 500, worth $500,000.

Still, many worry that the record number of apprentices registered isn’t going to meet the demand. There are only 172,000 people working in construction in Alberta and $138 billion worth of major projects on the books for the next decade. The provincial government is projecting a shortfall of 86,000 to 100,000 skilled workers to fill new jobs by 2015.

When booms go bust in Alberta businesses close for lack of work. These days they’re closing for the opposite reason—this year a Calgary KFC outlet closed temporarily and an area manufacturing company closed permanently for lack of staff.

Despite the old bumper sticker praying for another boom, Albertans are finding boom times present as many challenges as hard luck days:

• It’s hard to get people to work for free.

• It’s hard to get employers to hire apprentices when an employee can be lured elsewhere in a New York minute.

• It’s hard to train more people for the trades when classrooms are stuffed to their ceilings.

Programs such as the Calgary Construction Association’s youth employment initiative have far more employers looking for young people to fill entry level jobs in the construction trades than there are young people wanting the jobs.

The program is aimed at people aged 16 to 24 who are unemployed, not going to school and interested in pursuing a trade. Participants work for an employer on a construction site as an unpaid general labourer for three weeks and get the chance to sample a variety of trades. About three quarters are hired full time at the end of their program and the hope is that they will embark on an apprenticeship in a trade.

The trouble is, kids aren’t so keen on unpaid labour when there doesn’t seem to be a business in Calgary that doesn’t have a Help Wanted sign outside. Young people in Alberta receive a higher average hourly wage rate than the Canadian hourly average according to a 2005 Youth in the Labour Force Survey by Alberta Human Resources and Employment, which pegged the average at $11.08, dollars higher than the minimum wage.

Pilot projects have just been launched in Calgary and Edmonton to try to reach young people from a new direction. Advanced Education Minister Herard says the province is joining forces with the Boys and Girls Clubs of Calgary and Big Brothers-Big Sisters in Edmonton to introduce a three year program, beginning next year, that will partner young students with junior and high school mentors who will try to inspire the youngsters to pursue post secondary education. Mentors will be trained to help younger students discover their skills and interests and learn about apprenticeships as well as college and university programs. Other pilot projects connecting high school graduates with industry professionals and mentoring programs for rural and aboriginal youth are also in the works. Loyalty is a rare commodity in the construction industry in Alberta, by all reports. Labour shortages are allowing construction workers to pick from a vast array of jobs and jettison any one they don’t want, without notice, employers often complain. Furious poaching goes on, with employees often departing for another employer for 50 cents or $1 an hour more than they’re getting.

On the one hand, in boom times, employers might have to hire an apprentice because they can’t find a journeymen. On the other hand, they’re reluctant to make the investment in an apprentice who is likely gone to greener fields the day he gets his ticket. (Sometimes, it’s a she, but women still represent only three per cent of the apprentices in carpentry, for instance, according to Women Building Futures which introduces women to such non traditional careers as electricity, plumbing, masonry and mechanical.)

Loyalty has become such an issue, SAIT has worked with employers to develop a pre-employment trades program to address the issue. To convince employers that a student is serious about apprenticeship with them, SAIT devised an optional program under which a student takes on the investment of their first year of apprenticeship training, about $3,800, and at the end of the program can challenge the first year apprenticeship exams. This is meant to convince an employer the student is serious about a career and makes it easier for the students to get an employer to sponsor them through the remainder of the program.

With 98 per cent of graduates employed within six months of graduation, SAIT doesn’t need Mike Holmes, star of the hit Holmes on Homes renovation television show, barnstorming Canada to spread the word on the importance of careers in the skilled trades as he was this autumn. SAIT trained 7,500 apprentices in 2005, up 17 per cent from the year before and the number is expected to increase another 15 per cent this year. But where to put youngsters newly converted to construction trades is a growing problem.

More than a year ago SAIT announced it hoped to build a one million square foot trades and technology complex that would double apprenticeship seats by 2015 at a cost of $298 million. The price tag on the complex has now risen to $353 million but the expected announcement that the provincial government will fund most of it hasn’t materialized yet.

SAIT has more than $300 million worth of capital projects over the next few years on its wish list, construction that officials say is essential if the school is to meet industry demand. But the provincial government in August asked all Calgary post secondary institutions to scale back on their construction plans, paring back less critical projects and phasing in others.

“We are empathetic to government trying to balance priorities,” says Guy Mallabone, vice president of external relations, “But expecting us to consider scaling back is like asking us to have half a baby.”>

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