Number range CHAPTER U.S. DEPARTMENT of LABOR

EMPLOYMENT and TRAINING ADMINISTRATION

OFFICE of APPRENTICESHIP TRAINING

ADVISORY COMMITTEE on APPRENTICESHIP

Meeting

Day 2 of 2

Thursday, December 13, 2007

The Stanford Court Hotel

Stanford West Ballroom

905 California Street, Nob Hill

San Francisco, California 94108

Conducted by:

Coffey Consulting

4720 Montgomery Lane, Suite 1050

Bethesda, Maryland 20814

301-907-0900, telephone

301-907-2925, fax

www.coffeyconsultingllc.com

ACA Members Present:

John T. Ahern

Robert Baird

Linda Bien

George H. Bliss, III

Guarione M. Diaz

Rita DiMartino

Diana Enzi

Julie Flik

John S. Gaal

Mufi Hannemann

Kelvin D. Harrison

Thomas F. Hartnett, Chairperson

Stephen C. Mandes

Joseph A. Miccio

Robert Piper

Karen T. Soehner

Anthony Swoope

Michael L. White

Charles Wilson

Staff, Guests, and Presenters:

Joseph Jenkins, Office of Apprenticeship

Kenya Huckaby, Office of Apprenticeship

Laura Ginsburg, Office of Apprenticeship

Jamie Krause, Pacific Mountain Workforce Consortium

Elizabeth Smith, Washington State, Department of

Labor and Industries

M. Patricia Smith, Commissioner, New York State

Department of Labor

Dana Daugherty, Office of Apprenticeship

Stephen Jones, Office of the Solicitor

James Conley, Office of Apprenticeship

Patricia Garcia, Office of Apprenticeship, Region 6

Mandy Cawood, McNeely, Pigott & Fox

I-N-D-E-X

Continued Regulatory Update

and Sector Report Outs 9 and 59

Apprenticeship in New York 11

Education and Outreach 79

Summary of Major Accomplishments 119

Recommendations to the Secretary

and Next Steps: Motion to Endorse

Requests and to Revisit Requests

at the Next Meeting 125

Closing Remarks 127

Adjournment 132

P-R-O-C-E-E-D-I-N-G-S

(8:59 a.m.)

CHAIR HARTNETT: Good morning, everyone. Welcome to day two of our
meeting here in lovely San Francisco.

I\'m going to touch on the items we will be reviewing today, off the
agenda. But I do have a couple of preliminary comments I want to make.

First of all, last night was terrific, and it was really great to have
an opportunity to honor Tony and Patty for all their hard work. It was a
terrific evening. And I thank everyone around the table here for their
support and encouragement in making that happen.

Congratulations, Tony.

MR. SWOOPE: Thank you.

CHAIR HARTNETT: One of the members \-- and these are a couple of items I
just want to throw out that I want you to think about. We can discuss
them a little bit later in the day.

One of the members sent me an email, one of the members of the
Committee, regarding Marion Winters who we all know was \-- well, she
was kind of secretary to the Committee. She had been with the Labor
Department for \-- how many, 50?

MR. SWOOPE: Sixty-four.

CHAIR HARTNETT: \-- 60 some odd years \-- that the Committee recommend
some form of recognition for her and her dedication to the Department of
Labor, which could include some recognition in the lobby of the Frances
Perkins Building in Washington. So that to me sounds like a good
recommendation and one that I think the Committee would probably want to
make, but I want to give you an opportunity to think about it a little.
Maybe we can come up with some other ideas, in addition to what I
suggested, in terms of recognizing her contributions. So think about
that and we\'ll talk about it a little more later.

And then lastly I have put on everyone\'s desk in the area of getting
the word out about apprenticeship, a Trustee\'s Institute for Jointly
Managed Training and Education Funds, a brochure that reflects a
conference that\'s being run in Las Vegas, January 14th through the
16th. And our own John Gaal is the Chair of the Committee that works
with the Chair of the Committee within the International Foundation that
puts together the agenda.

So it\'s got a lot of the issues that we have talked about. And it\'s an
excellent opportunity to find out about new and innovative practices in
the apprenticeship area, as well as getting the word out. And I know the
Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce likes to use that phrase, \"What happens
in Vegas stays in Vegas,\" but that\'s not what we\'re intending with
this. We want this to be: \"What happens in Vegas spreads all over the
place.\" But, anyway, it\'s a good conference.

And if you are interested or your organizations are, I would highly
recommend it. I think Mr. Swoope will be one of the speakers, I believe,
on probably regulatory developments. John Gaal will be speaking and
others. So it\'s a first-rate operation, and I would encourage folks to
give it serious consideration.

Okay. With respect to the agenda, what we\'re going to do now is
continue the breakout that we started yesterday afternoon. Yesterday
Dana went through, in great detail, the regulatory recommendations that
were published in the record yesterday. And what we decided to do was to
break into groups for Public, Labor, and Employer to look at those
regulations and come back with some recommendations as to what action
this Committee would take next.

And I would ask you in those deliberations, assuming that we have some
general consensus that reflects accurately what we recommended, then I
would also ask the group to think about ways that the Public sector,
Labor, and the Employer community can help get the word out about the
Regs, the flexibility, the willingness to be responsive to industry
needs with respect to apprenticeship.

So there\'s essentially two charges. One would be continue the session
that you were going on yesterday with respect to the regulations, but
also think about how each one of these three groups: Public, Labor, and
Employer can create that environment of acceptance for these changes,
assuming that we are all on board with them. So unless there are any
questions or comments \--

Yes, John?

DR. GAAL: Thank you, Mr. Chair. If you don\'t mind I like to follow-up
on an issue Tony brought up yesterday. In my absence yesterday I was
over in Las Vegas. The Association of Career and Technical Educators is
having their national conference. And they wanted me to be over there
for some face time, because I was nominated for a vice presidency of one
of their divisions.

While I was at that meeting I ran into Tim Lawrence. Tony, as you well
know, is the Executive Director of Skills USA. So I proposed a question
to him that you brought up yesterday, that we\'ve discussed a number of
times.

Basically he had some approximations for me with regards to numbers of
kids involved with Skills USA, moving from those programs they\'re in
into registered apprenticeship. And so these are, again, just kind of
estimates.

In fact, it was under a broader category of entering apprenticeship or
other post-secondary training. So with that in mind, from the secondary
level, his numbers basically are six percent of 110,000 kids. So that\'s
about 6600 students.

With regards to post-secondary, the numbers are little bit more
enlightening. It\'s ten percent of 50,000, so around 5,000. So at least
we\'ve got a number to work from.

Obviously, we in apprenticeship would like to see a heck of a lot more
than five and ten percent, or six and ten percent. So maybe we can do
something with it now that we\'ve got a baseline to work from, Tony.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

CHAIR HARTNETT: Thank you, John.

Any other comments or anything this morning before we break into groups?
Yes, Steve?

MR. MANDES: Tom, is it possible, Tony, someone, that we get an
electronic copy of the two-page summary, so that we can get it out to
our groups?

MR. SWOOPE: Yes.

MR. MANDES: Thanks.

MR. BAIRD: Mr. Chair?

CHAIR HARTNETT: Yes.

MR. BAIRD: I\'d like to expand that. If we could get copies of both of
Dana\'s handouts electronically, it would be very, very useful.

CHAIR HARTNETT: That\'s good, Tony?

MR. SWOOPE: Yeah.

CHAIR HARTNETT: Good, okay.

Any other comments? Okay. Then, I guess, Public will stay here. Labor is
in Parlor 107 on the first floor. And the Employee Group is in the
California Room, which is on the lobby level.

See you back here at 10:30 \-- 10:45, we\'ll incorporate a break in.
Good. Thank you.

(Breakout sessions and morning recess were taken from 9:07 a.m. to 10:45
a.m.)

CHAIR HARTNETT: Okay. We\'ll go back on the record.

When we broke I indicated that we would meet in subgroups and talk about
the proposed Regs. And based on a quick discussion I just had with our
Labor Chair George Bliss and our Management Chair Bob Baird, I think the
consensus \-- and myself speaking for the Public \-- the consensus is
that the presentation Dana made yesterday with respect to the Regs
accurately reflects what we have recommended to the Department as a
group. So we can move forward from there.

I\'ve also asked the groups to come up with some ideas about how we can
meet with our various constituency groups and talk about the Regs. And I
want to come back to that later. So we\'ll talk about that probably
during our working lunch.

So, anyway, I congratulate the group, because I think the
recommendations that we made were sound. And I think the report that was
made to us yesterday shows that the Department accurately reflected what
we gave to them. So, again, thanks to the group.

So let\'s move on the Agenda. We next have a report which is from the
Commission of Labor from New York State, Patricia Smith, who is with me
here.

All of the recommendations that we\'ve made about apprenticeship all
have to do with expanding apprenticeship to

new occupations, greater accountability, greater quality in terms of the
apprenticeship programs themselves, whether it\'s in instructor
training, or curriculum, and the like.

And I thought it would be very good for this group to hear from a Labor
Commissioner from a large state that came in and looked at
apprenticeship and decided that she maybe wanted to take another look in
a systematic and reasoned way, declared a moratorium on certification of
new programs, and decided to evaluate the entire process.

So it\'s caused a lot of \-- I don\'t know, maybe \"controversy\" is too
strong a word, but a lot of concern and work and \-- but I think the
concepts that Commissioner Smith is after in a new program are the very
concepts that we\'ve talked about here over the last several years.

So without further ado, it\'s my pleasure to introduce Commissioner of
Labor from New York, Patricia Smith.

(Applause.)

COMMISSIONER SMITH: Can you hear me? I\'m very pleased to be here and,
frankly, quite humbled, because what I have been thinking about, you
know, in the last nine months this group has been thinking about for a
lot longer and a lot harder than I\'ve been thinking about.

So what I want to talk about what we are doing in New York and our
thoughts for going forward, I really hope that we can make this somewhat
more of a dialogue, because I think that there\'s a lot that I have to
learn from this group.

One thing I want to say is that I personally am a big fan of
apprenticeship training as a training and education mode. In my own
family I\'ve had relatives who have been through the apprentice training
program very, very successfully. And I\'ve also seen people in my family
who probably would have been a lot happier if they\'d used apprentice
training as the mode of getting into their careers, because they\'re
just personally much more suited to that.

When I took over this job last year, and I been in it just about a year
now, one of the biggest complaints I heard from the constituencies in
the Labor Department was that our Apprentice Training Program was just
not working very well. And as background \-- I want to give you a little
background to that \-- many years ago the highest court in New York held
that municipalities or anyone smaller than a state could not require
apprentice training programs on public works projects, because that was
against our lowest-bid requirement.

So maybe five, or six, or seven years ago now there was a push in New
York to amend the law to allow individual agencies, state agencies,
municipal agencies, school districts, to require apprentice training
programs for anyone who is bidding on public works projects. That law
passed.

I have to say personally, and I\'ve been dealing with apprentice
training programs off and on for 20 years. My background is before I was
the Labor Commissioner, I was the Chief of the Labor Bureau in the
Attorney General\'s Office.

So I had a lot of involvement from about with apprentice training
programs, particularly from the litigation side. So when there was a
problem I was involved.

And what happened after that state law passed was that there was a huge
increase in the number of applications for Registered Apprentice
Training Programs in New York. That was especially true with small
contractors, not exclusively though; especially true with small nonunion
contractors, again not exclusively; and especially true in the areas of
the state where municipalities were requiring apprentice training
programs. And that\'s particularly New York City, Long Island, the lower
Hudson Valley.

So there was a huge problem in the down-state area, because they were
having so much work being put into this whole new surge of apprentice
training programs that probably there wasn\'t enough time to look at
each one appropriately.

Now we fast-forward this year, early this year, and I\'m looking at
apprentice training programs. And in New York City they were \-- I mean,
I wanted to think there were hundreds, but probably not. But there were
probably close to a hundred programs that had never graduated an
apprentice, ever. And they were generally small programs. And that was a
cause of concern.

The other thing that I was discovering was that in a down-state area
very little monitoring was going on of apprentice training programs
after they were registered, in large part because of the push of the
work. I hear a lot of complaints about unequal treatment. Some programs
were pushed through. Some programs sat around for years before there was
registration.

There didn\'t seem to be consistency throughout the state, so that the
treatment one got in the up-state regions was different than down-state.

There was clearly no time or sense to think about what I want to call
the creative work, which was to think in a larger sense about what are
we going to do with apprenticeship, how do we want to promote
apprenticeship, where do we want to expand apprenticeship.

And then I was aware of the fact that about ten years ago there had been
a moratorium on apprenticeship, about a year\'s moratorium in New York
State. And a lot of people had done a lot of work. There was sort of a
semi-commission that was appointed in New York State.

But what I didn\'t realize until I got here was that that commission\'s
report was never finalized. And it was sitting on a shelf, not
finalized, and that none of those recommendations had ever really been
looked at. So we had gone through this whole process of a moratorium and
a report to no end.

And I guess eventually what made me decide that we really did need a
moratorium and that we really had to stand back look at our processes,
is that a program was approved and a background check had been done on
\-- it was a independent union joint program. A background check had
been done on all the contractors, but no background check had been done
on the union.

And then I discovered that the Union individuals involved had actually
been thrown out of the Laborers\' Union a few years ago on the
allegations of mob connections. So we weren\'t checking anyone
consistently. So that was a problem. With the full consent of the
Governor we did declare a moratorium, so we can sit back and look at
what I think are problems in New York State.

The first thing that we did was that we decided that we needed an
outside consultant to help us look, because I didn\'t want this to be a
long moratorium. I didn\'t want this to drag out like it had in the
past. We wanted an outside consultant to come in and help us do this. We
did put out some RFPs. And we\'ve recently hired Coffey Consulting of
Bethesda. And I guess they have a lot of experience in apprentice
training.

So they\'re going to come in. And their job is to look at other states,
to interview our staff, to interview all our stakeholders, and to try to
figure out what we can do for our programs. We\'ve already had focus
groups with our staff across the state, the apprentice training staff,
to talk about what they see are the issues. And I\'m sure that all of
these issues are going to be familiar to you. Again, I don\'t feel like
I\'m probably telling you anything that you don\'t know.

Obviously, the retention rates and the graduation rates are an issue.
The monitoring is an issue. They want to talk about test-based versus
time-based apprentice training programs, alternative instruction. I know
that\'s the big issue, especially in upstate New York in the north
country, where you know you could \-- just to get across a county could
be two or three hours travel. So the training in those very rural, very
large places has been a problem in the past.

How do we look at apprenticeship in the context of the larger Workforce
Investment Act system, and how do we leverage that money, if possible,
in apprentice training? And just sort of doing technological updates,
you know, how do we sort of take apprenticeship, the processes of
approval into the 21st century, when it comes to computers and issues
like that, an issue which we are dealing, I promise you, in every aspect
of the New York State Labor Department is, is technology.

So that\'s what we\'re hoping to do with the moratorium. We are hoping
in three months or so to have a report. And then we can try to figure
out where we go from there.

In the meantime, I want to just talk a little bit, before I sort of open
it up, and I hope we can open it up for some discussion, that there\'s
things that I can learn.

Some things that we\'ve been thinking about in New York beyond the
moratorium and going forward. As I go around the state, it is clear to
me that we don\'t do enough to get innercity kids, youth dropouts, young
kids into the apprentice training programs. It is a huge problem in New
York City where in the African American community we have a high school
graduation rate of ten percent for African American males. And we\'re
looking at that in all kinds of contexts.

We also have in New York City a huge boom in construction. I mean,
probably the biggest boom in construction since Robert Moses built, you
know, built modern New York City.

And there has got to be an opportunity there with all this increase in
construction to deal with our out-of-school youth programs, a problem.
And, again, I\'m going to be very blunt. I think we also have \-- it is
a good time, also. I mean, I\'ve been involved with apprenticeship and
the building trades for 20 years now.

And 20 years ago when you sat down at the Union Building Trades\'
meeting in New York City, and my own family was involved in this, there
was always a sense that the building trades were a guild that you passed
down from father to son. And there was a resistance to opening that
guild up. And that\'s not true anymore. Now when you sit down with the
building trades, across the state, especially in New York City, you
know, there is a sense that we need to open up to keep this profession
going, that we have a huge retirement problem coming and we have a huge
recruitment. So I think that for all those reasons this is a really
opportune time to deal with these issues.

We are hoping, we\'re hoping to really therefore focus on getting into
high schools and doing pre-apprentice training programs.

Tom Hartnett and I sat down just about a month ago now, because there\'s
a lot of construction that\'s going on in Albany, with Albany High
School, to talk about doing pre-apprenticeship training programs with
that high school using the construction boom that the state\'s doing
actually where I am at the state campus in Albany.

We want to put out RFPs to do pre-apprentice training programs in high
schools. We know what we need. I mean, I talk to a lot of really
interesting programs in New York City that do not have any public
funding, that are privately funded. We need skills assessment. You know,
we need to get into those schools and do more career exploration,
because I think that we need to promote apprenticeship that way.

We need to do I think in high schools with this targeted group classroom
instruction for things that are sort of common to all of the
apprenticeable skills, you know, that type of math, and tools, and sort
of just very basic things.

We need to work on what they call the soft skills, which some people
tell me, \"Oh, no, those are the hard skills.\" The soft skills meaning
reporting to work on time, reporting to work, you know, teamwork, those
type of skills.

I was talking to someone the other day when I say that they say they\'re
the hard skills, they said \-- it was a welder \-- and they said,
\"Look, I can teach anybody welding, but I can\'t teach them to get to
work on time.\" So that\'s why they thought those with hard skills. So
that\'s the type of thing that we want to do.

The other thing that we really want to do in New York as we sit and
think about it is we want to expand apprentice training beyond \-- I
mean not that it already exists there, but beyond the construction mode.
The construction trades dominating New York State are registered
apprentice training programs.

And although we do have some apprentice training programs in the bakery
industry and some in healthcare industry, I think that there is a lot
more opportunity to expand apprentice training beyond those trades. And
I\'ve become more and more convinced about that in the last year as I
travel around the state and talk to folks, not about apprentice training
programs, but about internships.

And it is amazing how employers in all kinds of trades want career
ladders and internships. And what\'s an internship? An internship is
working on-the-job work as part of your education. And so although it\'s
not called apprenticeship and it\'s not exactly apprenticeship, there is
so much interest out there in the employer community for combining
classroom education with on-the-job training. And that\'s the basic
model behind apprenticeship.

So one of the things that we\'ve been done outside the apprenticeship
arena is working with the business councils, working with large
employers to develop more and more internship programs for college
students, for high school students to use those internship programs as a
way to educate the youth about those particular jobs.

In upstate New York we have a huge problem with, you know, with youth
leaving. And to connect the youth we have upstate to the jobs that we
have upstate. So those are sort of the things that we\'re thinking about
in New York with apprenticeship and like what I would call related
apprenticeship-type programs.

And I would really welcome any questions, or thoughts, or comments, or
ideas, or suggestions because we have a lot more to do, I think, in the
state.

CHAIR HARTNETT: Thank you, Commissioner.

Questions or comments? It is really interesting. I was making a list
here of all the issues that we\'ve discussed and initiatives that we\'ve
put forward in the past in terms of our recommendations to the
Department. And so many of them are exactly on point with everything
that you\'ve said.

There\'s a technical memo that went out from the Department with respect
to Workforce Investment Act money, to make it available, to make it
clear to everyone that WIA money should be available for
pre-apprenticeship programs and for apprenticeship programs. So that\'s
an area of concern for you. And that is something that\'s kind of in the
works right now.

Expansion into new industries, this is the group that\'s been pushing to
make apprenticeship flexible enough to be able to accommodate not only
the building trades, not only healthcare, but information, technology,
and that requires distance learning. It requires the flexibility to say,
\"One program might be four years, another one might be six months,\"
and, you know, the list goes on.

Our concern about at-risk youth, and some of the programs that we\'ve
recommended on that, quality programs, which is a huge, huge issue and
one that we feel very, very strongly about.

And graduation rates, and our concern about graduation rates, and
decertification of programs, where that might be appropriate if, in
fact, those programs are not doing the right thing by apprentices.

So much of what you\'ve have mentioned has been on our agenda for
awhile. And I think we\'d be very supportive. So I don\'t want to
dominate this.

Please go, Julie.

MS. FLIK: Can you share your experience with working with the Department
of Education in New York?

COMMISSIONER SMITH: Yes, I can. And it\'s not a pretty story. The
Department of Education in New York are the folks who certify the
educational part of the Apprentice Training Program. And they have one,
maybe two people, and that\'s it, responsible for the whole State of New
York. And they have \-- I\'ve been looking recently at some of the
programs that were approved right before the moratorium as part of sort
of my review of thinking about the moratorium.

And I saw a program where the \-- I think it was a landscape program \--
where the education was going to be provided at the Howard Beach Boys
Club. And I just \-- it was just \-- I mean, we won\'t even get into \--
but New Yorkers know about Howard Beach, but \-- so it\'s a real
problem, and we need to address that.

One of the problems in New York is that we have a regent system. So the
Department of Education is not under executive control like most
departments. It\'s under the control of the Board of Regents. So playing
\-- it\'s harder to get a strategy that can be sort of more
top-directed. It\'s hard to bring the Board of Education along if they
don\'t buy into it. And I don\'t know that they have bought into
apprentice training right now.

One of the things that we\'ve been doing is working with the \-- the
Governor appointed a Higher Education Commission in the New York which
does have people from the Department of Education. And in the Workforce
Development Subcommittee, we have really been working with them and sort
of pushing that they need to be looking more at apprenticeship.

And, you know, if I could take that part under my control, the education
part, I would do it, but I don\'t think I have that \-- that\'s not in
the cards.

CHAIR HARTNETT: Yes, Joe.

MR. MICCIO: Yeah. Just having grown up in New York City and worked in a
lot of the communities that you\'re speaking of where you have young
adults or young \-- actually school-age kids, I think you\'re on the
mark with the comment about really pushing in the high schools. They
need exposure to believing that there are opportunities for them to do
that. And I\'ve seen a lot of smart kids who don\'t have the direction.
So it\'s a tremendous \-- that\'s how it is about the Department of
Education issues. But, you know, I think if you can accomplish that, you
really will accomplish a lot.

COMMISSIONER SMITH: You know, one of the things that we\'ve been
thinking about in the Labor Department is that high school is too late.
And that really what we would like to push is more career exploration in
middle school, you know, in seventh grade and eighth grade.

And we\'ve been talking among ourselves about wouldn\'t it be great if
we could convince the Department of Education to actually do that. And
as part of their civics, or whatever they\'re doing, though, is have,
you know, more career exploration.

What I always say to the education folks is that we are educating people
for the world of work. I mean that\'s what \-- at least we hope we are
educating people for the world of work, because we\'re not \-- I mean,
otherwise what are we educating them for? And that we have to
incorporate more that idea of the world of work into that education.

We have a really terrific website, the Labor Department does in New York
City. But if you haven\'t ever gone to it, I think you should. It\'s
called CareerZone. And it\'s a career exploration site for kids. And we
were trying to \-- and it talks about, you know, all the possible
careers and what you need to do.

We really want to add a part to it, what we\'re working on. It\'s called
RealityCheck, which is you\'ll be able to say: Okay. You know, this is
where you live. You know, we have all kinds of in formation about, you
know, the job needs, how much does it pay, what is the cost of living in
your area? You know, all of that, to sort of put that all together so
you can make those decisions.

We find by checking out the hits to that website that in New York State
it\'s the suburban high schools, you know, who use that site the most,
that we\'re not getting the penetration that we need in both the rural
areas and in the innercity. And that overall the number one source of
hits for that website is the University of North Carolina.

So somebody is, you know, out there looking at it. And so we are \-- one
of the things that we want to do in the youth initiative, along with
their internships, is really try to promote within the schools using
CareerZone, in the middle schools. And we go around. I mean we go around
when we\'re asked, like we get a lot of the assembly people, congress
people in New York, come into my district.

We go to their middle schools or their high schools with our computers.
We set them up, our folks to set them up, to sort of show the teachers,
to show the students. But that\'s something that we \-- unfortunately,
of course, we lost funding for it. So now we\'ve got to find alternative
funding. But we will find alternative funding somewhere.

CHAIR HARTNETT: Actually, I was going to ask Mufi to \-- Mufi Hannemann,
who is the Mayor of Honolulu, when we were talking before about some of
the things that he\'s done, from an elected-official standpoint in terms
of recognizing apprenticeship and highlighting it that might serve your
purposes in New York, not only as a Commissioner, but also perhaps for
the Governor.

Mufi, maybe you could relate some of those things you talked about
before.

MAYOR HANNEMANN: Well, one comment I want to make is related to what you
had mentioned this morning of you and Tom taking advantage of the
construction boom to kickstart awareness and also to prepare in advance
for the need for apprenticeship for a lot of these jobs there.

In my city there are two areas that it\'s going to be very important to
have good apprenticeship training programs in advance in preparation,
because of the fact that we\'re embarking on the biggest capital
improvement project in the history of the state. And that is to finance
a lightrail system that\'s going to cost \$3.5 billion to do. So we are
already working, not just with the professionals, but especially
building trades unions, to start accelerating their apprenticeship
program because of the jobs that are going to come about.

And the other thing is that I\'m also spending an inordinate amount of
money of what mayors often put off and don\'t like to do. And that is
their sewage and their infrastructure.

I\'m under a mandate by the EPA that my predecessor never complied with.
So I\'ve got to fix this up that we didn\'t fix. And then also put us in
a better place. That has also given me an opportunity to push those two
areas across the board, because it\'s not just engineers. It trickles
down to the apprenticeship program and the trade unions, technologies.
It\'s getting a lot of resonance, if you will, because of the two major
opportunities that lie here.

I also think it\'s important for elected officials, something that
we\'ve talked in this Committee here, to proclaim their own
apprenticeship day, apprenticeship month, apprenticeship year,
what-have-you. And for the first time in our state at the city level,
which Honolulu is three-fourths of the state\'s populace, we actually
did that.

And I\'m trying to use that as an opportunity to get the other counties
to do likewise, as well as the state, working with the staff of the
Department of Labor locally in that regard.

And it was just wonderful. We brought them into City Hall. So it was
more than just a photo op. But we actually had our City Hall \-- two
weeks we dedicated to apprenticeship programs across the board. We did
speaking tours, and so forth. So it\'s just going to build; it\'s going
to get bigger. And I think this is something that we\'ve talked about
taking around nationally, so that we could obviously lead up to a
national apprenticeship day with major celebrations and observances,
which is what I think the 75th anniversary is leading to.

But I think what\'s really important is to identify champions at the
local level. It\'s one thing at the state government, but you\'ve got to
get the mayors involved, get those local officials so that oftentimes
\-- and I think we\'ve talked about it earlier with Diana. You know,
mayors can\'t avoid getting involved in all issues, and the like. Even
in things that we shouldn\'t feel we have nothing to do with, because
people often feel that\'s their first contact point.

And I think that that would be maybe a good strategy, too, for the New
York State is to get the local leadership involved. You get the folks in
Albany, get the local leadership involved to really buy into all these
apprenticeship programs that you like to see from a statewide
perspective.

COMMISSIONER SMITH: Great.

CHAIR HARTNETT: Yes, Bob.

MR. BAIRD: Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Actually, I like to share one thing, as well, Commissioner, is something
one of our chapters in Tennessee did recently, is they were looking to
build the workforce in their area and also to build the relationships
with the school systems.

And they decided they were going to take an outreach mode. And they
investigated and found the movers and shakers in the schools were
actually the assistant principals, and guidance counselors, and things.
And they found out they had no luck getting into the schools and talking
with people one-on-one. They couldn\'t get people out in the evenings
after school, but they found out that assistant principals like
breakfasts. So literally they invited every assistant principal in the
Memphis metropolitan area to an orientation breakfast, and invited the
Mayor, to meet with both our training people and with representatives
known as the major contractors in the area to talk about the needs of
industry from education and talk about what the apprenticeship system
could do to build on what education had done through the first 16, 17
years of these young people\'s lives. So how they could help each other.

And it\'s my understanding it was a very, very effective outreach
program. It got a lot of visibility and a lot of cooperation from the
school system, because it was exploring how they can help each other.
It\'s just a suggestion.

COMMISSIONER SMITH: Yeah, it\'s very interesting.

One of the things \-- and I don\'t know if this is unique to New York or
this is a common problem \-- but one of the things that I\'d seen is
that the guidance counselors in the high schools are so focused on
getting kids into college. And that that\'s sort of where all the
pressure is on those guidance counselors, that it\'s hard to get them to
concentrate on the kids that aren\'t going to college or, you know,
could go to college, but maybe would rather do something else rather
than go to college.

And I don\'t know if anybody has any experience cracking that nut,
because I\'ve not \-- I don\'t even know. I definitely haven\'t done it.

MR. AHERN: May I say something?

CHAIR HARTNETT: Yes, Jack?

MR. AHERN: You know, first off, we had the good luck to work with
Patricia in the Attorney General\'s Office. And we\'re very happy to see
Patricia take over the Department of Labor. And from the beginning, for
those of you that don\'t know her, she\'s always been somebody that has
done the hard work, not always the stuff that makes headlines in the
newspaper, but it\'s always been about the worker and it\'s always been
about the apprentice.

So as a union that runs an Apprenticeship Training Program, a
jointly-administered Apprenticeship Training Program, and as the Vice
President of the Central Labor Council, New York City, I salute the work
that you\'ve done.

We also have seen the problems with guidance counselors. And although we
don\'t take them to breakfast we do run series of career days that the
Central Labor Council sponsors, where we bring in not only building
construction trades, but all different types of trades, as far as hotel
and restaurant workers, as far as service employees, UPS drivers were
there at one time, but also some of the Firefighters and some of the
other trades, that are tests that people can take out of high school.

Maybe not always applicable apprenticeship training, but without a doubt
an opportunity to give people another choice besides college. And we\'ve
been working on that as a Central Labor Council for a while. But I\'m
happy to see that you\'re reviewing the moratorium.

You know, we felt pretty strongly that in previous administrations money
was spent on programs that did not put anyone to work, they did not
really educate anyone, and that in fact left people in worse positions
than they were before they went into the program. You know, wasted a
young person\'s time. In many cases, you know, left them with very
little hope, because they felt they had committed X amount of time to
work in a program and did their best at the program. And then to
graduate and not have any work, you know. There was no interrelationship
with employers. There was no interrelationship as far as the next step.
And they were kind of left out there to search around for another
program.

And, you know, I think that your moratorium is a step back to make sure
that the money is placed in the right position and that we make sure
that young people at the apprenticeship, you know, does have an
opportunity to be a step forward instead of just to be an opportunity to
line the pockets of some unscrupulous, you know, contractors that were
doing this. When I say \"contractors,\" I don\'t mean people that were
actually employers. I mean contractors that their only business was to
run training programs. And they would \-- that was their business. They
were in business to run training programs. But when they graduated
somebody, there was no employer attached to the other end.

You know, I\'m not talking about a contractor that actually is running a
corporation or a company. This was their entire business, was running a
training program. That was their business.

And, you know, I salute you, you\'ve done an excellent job, Patricia.
And we\'re very happy to have you in New York State. And I think it\'s
important that it goes on the record for what you\'ve done there.

COMMISSIONER SMITH: Thanks. You know, one of the things along those
lines \-- and this did not to make me a very popular person \-- is that
in some of the trades what we found was that they were taking in a large
class of apprentices, but when those apprentices got through they
didn\'t have enough jobs for all those apprentices, now that they were
Journeymen, and that \-- so in some areas of the state in some
occupations I\'ve actually limited the number of apprentices that can be
taken in until I see that there, you know, there are jobs in the area.

And it\'s a shame, because in one particular area, which was Long
Island, in a particular trade \-- and hopefully is not represented here
\-- I\'ll get yelled at \-- but it\'s sad, because we needed those
Journeymen. We just didn\'t need them in Long Island, right. We needed
them in Buffalo, or we needed them in Plattsburgh, or we needed them in
Albany.

And we hadn\'t figured out a way to, you know, take those apprentices
who did want to, you know, in and, you know, move them around where we
needed them in the state. So that was we sort of had to do. But if
anybody has an idea of, you know, of how we do that, how we try to look
at mobility of apprentices as they become Journeymen, I\'d be happy to
hear about that.

MR. BAIRD: Yes. At least from our organization\'s perspective, is that
obviously you try to balance the number you bring into the program, but
you did find situations when you do have, you know, too many Journeymen,
or too many apprentices at least in the case of our organization. We are
a chapter-based organization. And we do have referrals from chapter to
chapter.

And I\'m sure the trades do the same from time to time. So there are
mechanisms in place within national organizations to kind of level that
out. But certainly we don\'t want to discourage people from entering the
trades.

COMMISSIONER SMITH: No, I understand that.

CHAIR HARTNETT: Yes, George.

MR. BLISS: The term Journeyworker certainly means that that person can
travel. I mean, that\'s where it came from to begin with.

But what\'s happened, I think, Commissioner, is that we have a lot of
two-income families. And they have children to take care of. And the
wives, or the husband, whoever is unemployed, it will actually cost them
more to travel and get childcare, and support themselves on the road,
and to try to support their home, as well. The crafts are looking at how
to try solve that or provide help. But it\'s something that if the state
could help them with it, as well. I don\'t know anyone that would not
rather work. And we have the opportunity. You know childcare is a big
issue, even with the construction industry.

COMMISSIONER SMITH: No, childcare \-- I mean, what we see in New York is
\-- promoting living in upstate is an issue, right? I mean, I\'m
thinking about not just being on the road, but actually trying to
relocate the skilled population from areas of the state where we may,
you know, have more of the skilled trades Journeymen than we actually
need in that particular area. And trying to, you know, permanently maybe
relocate them to other areas of the state where we really have a
shortage at the same time as we\'re trying to build up that local
workforce, right?

You know, when I say \"local,\" I\'m really talking local now. And, as
you know, New York is a big place. And you\'re not going to be able to
commute from Long Island to Plattsburgh. You know it\'s a 10-hour drive.

CHAIR HARTNETT: Commissioner, one of the topics that you touched on was
Workforce Investment Act. And not only perhaps funding from that for
apprenticeship, which I think we touched on already, but also I guess
those boards make a plan going forward in the following, for the next
year, that talks about what part of the kind of the broad landscape of
training does apprenticeship fit. Is it part of the overall scheme of
things?

And that\'s going to be one of the requirements in this clarification
memo. And I was going to ask Tony Swoope to maybe just talk about that
for a moment.

MR. SWOOPE: I think that\'s a good segue. And when you talk about
strategies about, you know, how do you get people from A to B. I mean,
this conversation hasn\'t \-- it\'s been many years ago, we had some
labor economist would figure out we have a UI system, when jobs are
cyclical, going up and down, they\'ll just wait till the next six months
when work picks up. In some states they kind of look at, well, how do we
try to assist in some kind of relocation.

And I think there are some strategies that some states are looking at
and figuring out how they might be able to do that. But when we talk
about, you know, our TEGL, and we look at the sense of \-- we looked at
career advancement accounts. And, you know, there may be a lot of
flexibility that the WIBs and the One-Stops could apply for waivers or
find ways to kind of use the dollars to help the person to go where
there may be some training and alternative to continue on with their
education to do that.

So that as each local economy has some sense about where they\'d like to
go, or how they\'re trying to do that, how do they deal with the dollars
are there for dislocated workers that could be used for a way to develop
training strategy to get people from here to here, because they are
quite familiar that jobs might not be there in the local community if
it\'s a loss of a lot of manufacturing, et cetera.

And so I think that as we are asking the WIBs to come up with plans,
when you talk about economic development, why can\'t \-- you know, they
need to have some sense of, you know, where the workforce needs are,
where the economic and development is going to be for expansion.

Now how do you engage everybody in that conversation to come up with a
plan that apprenticeship could be a way to do that. For example, I know
that Jack has talked about doing some creative things for stationary
engineers\' apprentices, which is not cyclical where people can always
be employed in a good job.

And when you find you have difficulty recruiting people to come into the
industry, there\'s a gap, then maybe because students don\'t have the
right academics in high school when they need some pre-training that\'s
job-related, there is a connection to try to find a way to when the
workforce do their plans that you see how we can take the
underrepresented youth or dislocated workers and train them and provide
some assistance to moving them.

I mean, it\'s like \-- it\'s not rocket science, but it is bringing
everybody onboard at the same time to talk about where do you go. And I
think part of the discussion \-- and when we hear about the WIRED
concept. And we get caught up in I think the discussion about the money
and what we\'re doing. But really you\'re taking everybody that has some
impact into that regional economy. You bring them to the table and you
talk about: Now how do we now make it so that people can have mobility.
How do we have it so that we can have some discussion between a variety
of counties to talk about the workforce in a particular state. And I
think that leadership at the state can help make that happen to do that.

So when I think about when you listed your comments there \-- I mean,
she\'s quite accurate. We did some assessment a year or so ago or two
years ago. And we had this issue with this Independent Union, I should
say \-- that\'s what it was called \-- and their lack of not getting a
program approved and the process.

And I think that what you find is that, you know, by looking at the
processes \-- and I think we\'ve talked about this \-- we can get so
engaged in processes \-- everybody likes processes \-- and John Gaal\'s
favorite concern is what are the outcomes \-- is you just lose sight of
the outcome.

But I think that if it\'s driven by actual jobs, whether it\'s, you
know, wages, retention, wage gains, and those of the kind of measures
that we\'re all working under, you can find some way to integrate that.
I think Tom first talked about the BRAC, and realignment of people that
are in the jobs, and how they get engaged, and what\'s going to be the
construction that\'s going to be engaged on some of those facilities
that are going to be operated by private folks.

There\'s a tremendous need for engaging those employers in education to
kind of look at a pathway to show their students, whether it\'s a career
pathway or whether a pre-apprenticeship, that they can come to the table
to help to engage in.

So we\'re hoping that the TEGL becomes this beginning document. And I\'m
not going to put all my faith in the TEGL. But what it\'s really got to
be is that people got to come together and realize that here\'s your
need and how we deal with that need. How do we kind of look at what are
all the tools that are available to us, whether it\'s dislocated
workers, whether it\'s TAA, plant closings.

But we get caught up in the word \"apprenticeship.\" And, oh, I\'m 50
years old. And, you know, that I don\'t want to start off making 40
percent of the Journeyworker rate. Oh, there are some creative ways that
you could use dollars in education reimbursement to help the person to
kind of get at a level that they can sustain and move the process
forward.

And I think if they can see at the end of the road here\'s this job as a
stationary engineer, as an example, that\'s going to be continuous
employment, not down-cycle employment, and there\'s a way to make \$65,-
to \$70,000 a year \-- and I\'m only making 45,- now, I can see the end
of the road. And I think that that\'s when you bring people together.
People can engage in a variety of programs to do that. And we\'re hoping
that that will take place through the TEGL progress.

CHAIR HARTNETT: Thank you, Tony.

Other questions or points for the Commission?

Yes, Bob?

MR. BAIRD: Well, one \-- or it may be unpopular, part of what I\'m going
to say, but hear me out, if you would, is one of the things that I think
we stand for obviously is the welfare of the apprentice. There\'s no
question, we\'ve got to look out for the welfare of the apprentice.

On the other hand, I think in the apprenticeship system, we also need to
look at the welfare and needs of the American economy, at times, a
little bit.

And on the other hand we need to recognize that apprenticeship, yes,
well, on one hand we\'re an employment program, we\'re also an education
and training program. We\'re a little bit of both.

I mean, a lot of people spend a lot of money going to college. And
there\'s no guaranty of a job on the other end, okay, or they may have
to relocate, or they may have to go to something other than their
initial goal for a while.

Apprenticeship programs cost industry money. We invest a lot of money.
And we\'re not going to train a lot more people than we need. But
occasionally there will be situations where people don\'t immediately
get a job or may for a short-term be displaced. You know, is it a
situation where we just need to, you know, educate our young people in
the possibilities of downturns in employment cycles and whatnot, but we
are training them to be Journeyman. One time in my life I was
unemployed. And, frankly, I almost moved to Westchester, until I decided
I couldn\'t afford it.

COMMISSIONER SMITH: I can\'t either.

MR. BAIRD: But, you know, we are educating people and trying to get them
good jobs, but we need to realize that realistically sometimes we\'re
not going to have them employed a hundred percent of the time, or they
may need to relocate, or they may need to go on unemployment or get
other aid.

And we shouldn\'t necessarily say that as a negative to the system.
It\'s just a reality of life.

MR. AHERN: May I comment just for a second? I think the difference is
that when a student goes to college, they go to college with the full
knowledge that they are not guaranteed work when they come out the other
end, okay, and that they may have to move, or they may have to continue
their education to get a job.

But by virtue of an apprenticeship training program, these type of
programs, you know, the idea is that you are going to train somebody,
and there is to be a job at the end of the pipeline. And to train
somebody here, you know, for a job and then at the end to tell them that
there\'s no job, you\'re going to have to relocate, I think leaves them
in a much worse situation than any college student, or anything else.

You know, there has to be a compact between the program, the sponsor,
and the apprentice that the apprentice realizes that they\'re making
less money for a period of time, because they are receiving an
opportunity in return for accepting less money, for learning this
industry.

And I think that the sponsor in the program, you know, the sponsor says,
\"Hey, I\'m taking somebody who maybe is not a full employable person,\"
but they are going to be able to be a productive employee at the other
end. The program has a responsibility to let people know there are \--
there\'s a job there or there isn\'t a job there. And what happens is
\-- and I know that, Bob, you know, the group that you represent I know
has an excellent reputation as far as training apprentices.

But I think that we should all be aware that there\'s a lot of people
out there, there\'s a lot programs out there, not sponsors, but
programs, who don\'t. They don\'t let these people know that, yes,
we\'re training you for something, but I\'m sorry, they just don\'t do
that anymore in New York. It would be like training somebody to work on
the docks in the City of New York, to work in the shipping industry in
the City of New York, where there is very, very little shipping any
more. You could run a great program. I mean, there is a tremendous
history there. There\'s obviously water all over the place.

But you\'d have to tell the people that there really isn\'t an industry
for shipping out of New York. You\'d have to relocate. And I think
that\'s the difference that we need to, as a Committee, address. And
that particularly, you know, with the money that is being spent, whether
it\'s WebMoney, or, you know, however the money comes across, whatever
the new acronym is this particular year, I mean, I think that we have to
make sure that there\'s a job there. There\'s a responsibility to the
apprentice.

MR. BAIRD: Mr. Chair, if I may?

CHAIR HARTNETT: Sure.

MR. BAIRD: You know, I don\'t disagree at all, Jack. I\'m saying \-- and
programs like yours now, that\'s fully our intent. But with business
cycles we need to realize it doesn\'t always happen sometimes. You have
people on the bench. We have people temporarily. We need to realize we
can make provisions for them, loan them to other employers, other
Locals, whatever. There\'s provisions to keep them in the trade, keep
them employed in their occupation. And we need to look at those
opportunities and make them aware of it.

CHAIR HARTNETT: John Gaal?

DR. GAAL: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

To Bob\'s point, I think that\'s the beauty of apprenticeship, if you
design it properly and you meet the needs of the industry, not just the
employer, not just the apprentice, but the industry and the community,
you design it so that they\'re thoroughly cross-trained. And then when
there\'s not work in hanging doors, there\'s work in putting ceilings
in. When there\'s not work in putting ceilings in, there\'s work in
something else, some other framing, metal, wood, whatever. So if it\'s,
you know, designed correctly, I think you can overcome a lot of those
issues.

To Jack\'s point, you know, I made some comments the last time we met
with regards to a specific program that the Department of Labor just
took over from HUD. And I just recently found out to my dismay that one
of the programs that I was mentioning, that was a nonperformer, was just
rewarded a new grant.

Honestly, that tears at me, because this is the same group that just in
March of \'07 let us know that for the last three years they had not
placed one of the graduates in a construction-related job. And yet the
Federal Government turns around and rewards them again by giving them a
new grant. Something is not right.

And so we can\'t reward programs for not performing, especially when the
operative word in their name is \"build.\" So that\'s one point.

But to get back to the Commissioner\'s point, I would like to just touch
on an issue that you brought up. And that is this whole notion of
counselors and the time they have. And most of us know we do what gets
measured, you know. And so counselors are being measured by their boards
of education on how many kids they send to Harvard and Yale, and so on
and so forth.

The unfortunate thing is the reality is that only 18 percent of our kids
that started the freshmen year of high school, this year, eight to ten
years out will actually graduate from college. It\'s a pretty sad note.

A think tank in Colorado just put out a study about a year or so ago. It
said that on average a hundred kids that start high school as a freshman
this year four years out only 65 of them are going to graduate. Within
three months only 32 of those are going to go on to college. But four
years from that point \-- in six years \-- they gave two different
numbers here. But essentially 18 percent of that hundred that started
within four years of getting out of high school are either going to have
an associate degree, or within six years of getting out of high school
are going to have any bachelor\'s degree.

And yet our education system focuses a hundred percent of their
attention on 18 percent of the kids. This is criminal. A hundred percent
of our kids are going to work. And we fail to do anything about that.
Time and time again, the counselors, you know, again, they\'re going to
focus where they\'re getting measured. And their school boards are
measuring them on how many kids they\'re sending on to college and what
percentage of those kids got, you know, scholarships and blah-blah-blah.

Well, I think it\'s incumbent upon us that the kids that do go the
apprenticeship route, that the value of apprenticeship is counted
towards a scholarship in those high school graduation programs.

Jack, I know your program has value. Bob, your program has value. Mine
has value. Why shouldn\'t it be this sitting in the back of a graduation
program just like anything else?

But we can\'t not look at who else is a player at the table with these
kids, and that\'s the parents. And, you know, with parents we\'ve got to
get to them in a different way than we\'ve approached in the past.

And I\'m just going to give you, you know, something that we\'ve done in
Missouri. Through our Department of Economic Development we have a
research on called MERIC. That\'s the Missouri Economic Research and
Information Center. And what they did was they took their labor market
information and they created a document that looks out ten years. And I
think the last one they produced was 2004 to 2014.

And they graded occupations based on the availability of jobs projected
and the availability of the knowledge of where they saw the wages going,
and those sorts of things.

We actually asked them to take it one step further. And the reason we
asked them to take it one step further, our state was one of the states
that was involved with moving towards a career readiness certificate,
which is aligned with ACT And WorkKeys.

And so we had those competencies from the three assessments of the
WorkKeys that make up the career readiness certificate, aligned with
those A-level occupations and B-level occupations, so on and so forth.
And so therefore in seventh grade, if you go into classroom and you see
half the hands go up to say they want to be a lawyer, well, you know
right then and there that when it comes to these functional literacy
skills on average a lawyer needs at least a level 4 in applied math. And
with regards to reading, for information, they need at least a level 7.
You have now a baseline to work with those children, because if you give
them the assessments and they have a 5 and a 3, respectively, you know
where the gaps are and where you have to work with them.

So these documents are available in very similar types of brochures
through this Department of Economic Development in the State of
Missouri. And we sent them out to not just the counselors but, more
importantly, to the parents. Because when a parent opens that up and
says, \"Okay, Annie, you want to be a lawyer, and I see you got a 5 in
reading, we\'ve got some work to do if you want to be a lawyer. You got
to get up to a level 7. So now you have some hard data.

You know, we talked yesterday, and I missed part of it, on common
measures and the common standards, these areas that are common
standards, because I am adamant about an A in geometry. And St. Louis is
not an A in geometry in North Carolina. It\'s not. But the beauty of a
nationalized standardized test like WorkKeys is the fact that a level 5
in math is a level 5 in math no matter where you are in the United
States. So we\'ve got to come to those realities, as well. Thank you.

CHAIR HARTNETT: Thank you, John.

Any other comments?

Commissioner, I hope this was useful for you, for your \--

COMMISSIONER SMITH: Very useful. Thank you.

CHAIR HARTNETT: \-- some different ideas and concepts. It was certainly
useful for us to hear about the New York experience, which I\'m a little
familiar with, but I heard some things today for the first time also. I
wish you luck with the moratorium, I guess, in terms of lifting it at
some point.

MR. SWOOPE: Tom, could I say one thing?

CHAIR HARTNETT: Sure, go ahead.

MR. SWOOPE: If I could. It\'s just like I find the conversation very
interesting. But let me say this, I mean, it\'s like someone said that
the term \"Journey-\" \-- George \-- Journey travels from location to
location. I think part of the challenge is that \-- you know, I can
remember at 22, 23 years old, out of work in Ohio. And if I wanted to
work, I had to go to New York. And I went to New York, worked on a
building, whole another environment, didn\'t get any money for, you
know, where are you going to live at? You know. Nevertheless, how do you
get to the job, coming from a small city? But you had to make that
transition.

And now we\'ve come accustomed to that thinking that, in the
construction industry, I\'m going to be here. And I\'m going to work
2,080 hours a year, to the rest of my life until I retire. That\'s not a
reality, it\'s not a reality check. I mean, how many companies are
staying in business a hundred years. I mean, you\'re seeing where the
old traditional industries are leaving. The same thing, the flexibility
\-- what\'s important is that the program is giving the person the skill
so that they\'re mobile, that I can go from point A to point B.

And I had that ability to at least have a income while I\'m doing that,
because I got a skill to offer. And so I think it\'s a reality check
that we need to talk to young people and students that: You\'re not
going to work and have work here in this one geographic area for the
rest your life. You might have to be mobile. That\'s the reality check.

Now, how does the system provide some assistance so that if I don\'t
have a car, you know, if I\'ve got other issues, that\'s how we value
the skills that they have that make them move from location to location.
And that\'s where I think the government, in some sense, can find ways
to provide assistance, not handouts, but something that will help Mary
and Johnny if they\'re going to move to another location, or if they\'re
unemployed how they make it through those transitions, because the worst
thing that you want to do is train somebody, get them prepared, and then
they\'re not mentally able to think about what am I going to do if I\'m
out of work for six months? Are we financially able to handle that?

So I\'m going back to the classroom instruction as an apprentice. You
know, we\'ve got to look at and redefine whether you call them soft
skills or hard skills, but it is about survival. And how do you stay
employable to do that?

That\'s really, I think, the value of whether I have to leave, and I
don\'t know about Brooklyn, to Albany. But it\'s a sense about you\'ve
got a skill and now it\'s transferable. And that\'s what the program\'s
intent should be able to do to help align people to do that.

CHAIR HARTNETT: Yes, Bob?

MR. BAIRD: You know, if I may, I\'d like to add a point and a
suggestion. One, as the other thing to remember, is we\'re not training
people for dead-end jobs, whether it be within our own occupations,
whether they move on to supervisors, or contractors, or whatever. But
many, many, many of our courses actually provided college credit
equivalency, so that they\'re eligible to go on for associate\'s degrees
and bachelor\'s degree, and beyond. So, you know, we do provide a vital
training resource.

The second thing, I would encourage you to, you know, become familiar,
if you\'re not already, with the Skills USA Organization and what
they\'re doing in New York and nationally. They provide somewhat of the
bridge over to the educational side. And it might be a useful activity
for you.

And I\'d certainly welcome you to Kansas City next summer for our
national conference. It would be an experience.

CHAIR HARTNETT: Thank you, Bob.

Any other comments or questions?

If not, Commissioner, thank you very much.

COMMISSIONER SMITH: Thank you \--

CHAIR HARTNETT: You\'re welcome to \--

COMMISSIONER SMITH: \-- to everyone.

CHAIR HARTNETT: \-- join us for the afternoon session.

(Applause.)

CHAIR HARTNETT: All right. We\'re going to have lunch, a working lunch,
in the restaurant, in the lobby level. Let\'s say about ten minutes or
so. Let\'s say twelve o\'clock. We\'ll meet up there at twelve o\'clock
for lunch. It will be a working lunch. We\'ve got a couple of issues. I
want to follow-up on some of the reports from the subgroups. And I\'ll
see everyone up there at 12:00. Thank you.

(Luncheon recess taken from 11:48 a.m. to 1:23 p.m.)

CHAIR HARTNETT: We have several members that have indicated a need to
leave a little bit early based on some weather conditions in the middle
of the country, and the like. So we\'re going to kind of compress the
agenda a little bit.

First, I just wanted to do one follow-up before I have our Education and
Outreach Panel come on. I want to just do a follow-up on a couple of
things.

First, one of the items on the Regs, because we only got them yesterday
and had a chance to look at them, there\'s been a request from all the
groups that they have a little more time to look at them and then
provide input to the various chairs of the Labor, Employer, and Public
sector for transmittal to the Department.

So in terms of process, we\'d like to get those comments to the
Department in two or three weeks. So what I\'d like is the Public
members can contact me and provide me with any input in terms of
comments on the Regs as well as the other issue that we talked about,
which was outreach to various groups that we could talk to about the
Regs.

There was request in my group, which I\'m sure probably spoke for some
of the other groups also, that there be a single sheet of kind of
talking points about the Regs, and the Department has agreed to put that
together. And they will get that out to all the members.

So for the Labor Group you\'ll be communicating with George Bliss.
George, do you have an email address you can \--

MR. BLISS: That should be on there.

CHAIR HARTNETT: Okay. And the Employer Group will be communicating with
Bob Baird.

The Public Group will be communicating with me. We\'ll get those
comments; we\'ll go over them and get them to the Department. And,
again, our timeline is two or three weeks.

MR. BLISS: Tom?

CHAIR HARTNETT: Yes, George.

MR. BLISS: Since Tony\'s going to be in either Aruba or Hawaii, who will
our contact be at the Labor Department?

MR. SWOOPE: Dana Daugherty.

MR. BLISS: Thank you.

MR. BAIRD: Mr. Chairman?

CHAIR HARTNETT: Yes.

MR. BAIRD: The Employer Group has decided we\'re going to be reviewing
the Regs. And we\'re scheduling a conference call, I believe, on January
8th. Does that meet your timeline sometime that week?

CHAIR HARTNETT: Sometime that week will be fine.

MR. BAIRD: Okay.

CHAIR HARTNETT: Yes, Karen.

MS. SOEHNER: I think that we did this yesterday, but I just want to make
sure. This document we\'re going to receive electronically?

CHAIR HARTNETT: I believe I heard that yesterday, yes.

MS. SOEHNER: Okay. And could I also have the original work that we did
electronically as well?

MR. SWOOPE: Yes.

CHAIR HARTNETT: Okay.

MS. SOEHNER: Thank you.

MR. BAIRD: Mr. Chairman, a correction.

CHAIR HARTNETT: I\'m sorry.

MR. BAIRD: I had said the 8th. Correct me if I\'m wrong. I believe the
7th is the date of our call.

CHAIR HARTNETT: That\'s fine.

MR. BAIRD: Okay. So you back up a day. Okay.

MR. BLISS: Tom, one more comment if I could, please.

CHAIR HARTNETT: Yes. Go ahead, George.

MR. BLISS: I\'d like to suggest that at least one member from each of
these groups work with the Department on resolving comments that are
sent to the Department.

CHAIR HARTNETT: I think that\'s a good point.

Julie.

MS. FLIK: Just to follow-up on that, I\'d like to suggest that the three
of you are the appointed people for that.

CHAIR HARTNETT: Okay. Yes. I think that\'s a good idea. To the extent
that there might be inconsistencies on the input received from different
groups that we would be responsible for working with Dana on that in
terms of what our final comments would be. Okay.

Yes.

MR. MANDES: I just wanted everybody to be sure that they saw the
*Register*, that when your comments, if they are submitted directly in
response to the *Federal Register* are published in toto, completely,
along with any personal information that you send them. So you would be
wise to be very, very careful of what goes in there.

MR. BAIRD: Mr. Chair?

CHAIR HARTNETT: Yes.

MR. BAIRD: A follow-up to Steve\'s point, I read that as well. And it\'s
not going to be published. It will be published on the web live.

Oh, I apologize. Bob Baird. I just wanted to say that following-up on
Mr. Mandes\' statement, all comments are being published not only hard
copy but on the web, so they will be live for anybody to see anytime.

CHAIR HARTNETT: And just for a point of clarification for the record,
the comments that I\'d be receiving as the Public chair, and George and
Bob would be receiving, we\'ll work together ourselves to reconcile
those. There will be final set that is sent to the Department. That will
be the collective thoughts of the three of us. The Department would not
be involved prior to that. Okay.

Before we do the panel, because a couple of folks have to leave early, I
do want to get back to the issue that we were charged with over our
working lunch, which was to answer Doug\'s three questions.

And I can\'t speak for the other tables. But at our table the discussion
was so dynamic and so interesting that I would propose that the
information that we get to Doug not be part of the \-- just the overall
report of these two days of meetings, but be a separate transmittal to
Doug from the Committee, you know, just based on some of the really
outstanding thoughts that I thought I heard at our table. And I\'m sure
there\'s some on the others.

But what I\'d like to do is, I think we designated a person at each
table to give a kind of synopsis of what was discussed at the table. And
I don\'t know who those folks were at the other tables.

But let me start with Jack: Were you going to do ours? Let me start with
Jack Ahern, and let\'s get those comments on the record. And, again,
I\'d like to have that in a separate report to Doug, because I think
they were very worthwhile.

Go ahead, Jack.

MR. AHERN: Yes. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

We had a very in-depth discussion, and we answered all three questions.
And really this is a compiling of what was discussed.

We stated very clearly and it was agreed at the table that there needs
to be a better partnership between business, labor, public officials
and, of course, education going forward.

CHAIR HARTNETT: Jack, just one second. Could you just \-- do you have
the three questions?

MR. AHERN: No, I do not.

CHAIR HARTNETT: Okay. Let me just read them quickly here.

The first one was: How will an apprenticeship operate in a changing
global economy.

The second was: How would you like apprenticeship to look in the future.

And the third question was: How can you champion the changes necessary
to create that vision.

I\'m sorry, Jack. Go ahead.

MR. AHERN: That\'s okay.

Just to restart, you know, our table dealt with all three questions
together. And like a lot of artistic people, we answered the last
question first and went from there.

As I stated first, the better partnership between business, labor,
public officials and, of course, education needs to be a strong partner
as far as apprenticeship is concerned.

We need to work hard to change the image of apprenticeship, both with
parents and with public administrators across the entire spectrum,
whether it be education or, you know, some of the elected officials, the
public officials, who are not as enlightened as those that are
representing public officials here today.

We also wanted to support vocational education in schools. We would like
to be able to tap into some funding to make sure that there are programs
available in high schools and in grammar schools that people will be
able to learn some of the rudimentary skills that they need throughout
life and in this way help steer them towards apprenticeship.

We had a discussion concerned other countries and the fact that we are
in competition with a number of other countries, that we need to be able
to compete with them and we need to be able to study their methods and
to be able to have a system that can assist our growing industries and
our apprenticeship programs in areas where we are most competitive.

You know most of our apprenticeship training programs are
occupation-specific. You know, different fields, there\'s a different
type of training. However, there is a strong, central, you know, thread
that runs between all programs as far as the process being the same; as
far as teaching, instructing, and making sure that there are some basic
skill levels as far as apprenticeship is concerned.

However, we came back and said: We need to participate on an
international level and raise our standard. And we need to have,
perhaps, a membership on this Committee, on the Advisory Committee, for
a number of international people maybe to bring this Committee a little
bit more global, to have an opportunity to have apprenticeship directors
and those officials that, you know, that handle it in the other
countries maybe sit in and talk to this Committee and see where we have
areas that we are in agreement or maybe some best practices that we
could have.

There was a comment made about Skills USA. There was a comment made
about some of the work that goes on in some European countries. In
particular, Switzerland was mentioned where almost 70 percent of the
population attends one type of apprenticeship training or other. There
was a comment and some discussions regarding programs running in Eastern
Pennsylvania that involved a tri-enrollment between work, college
credits, and really has an opportunity for an apprenticeship also.

We talked about facilitating articulation agreements to make sure that
the apprentices were aware of exactly what was going on and to foster a
system where an apprentice had something that they could hold onto and
that it was spelled out for them exactly what they would be receiving at
each step of the way.

There was a suggestion made that at our different meetings that perhaps
this would be a great opportunity to invite the labor commissioners from
the areas that we were meeting in or from what other areas could
possibly come, and we should issue an invitation to have them come and
both confer with us and maybe speak and see what\'s going on in the
different areas.

There was a discussion on participating in some of the other conferences
that deal with apprenticeship training. And mentioned was the Eastern
States Conference, the Apprenticeship Conference, that is run, I
believe, every other year. I\'m not positive. But it was just run in
Washington, I think, just this past July. I think that would be
important that we run some joint committees with that.

There was a discussion on how we need to get closer to the Department of
Education. I think it\'s very important for us that the mission of the
Advisory Committee on Apprenticeship be a dual mission, not just with
the Department of Labor but also with the Department of Education and
that in each and every step of the education process that there is a
realization that apprenticeship should be playing a very equal part.

There was a discussion on recruiting qualified applicants and how all of
the other points that we had discussed would go towards aiding different
programs and sponsors who were having the problems. You know we talked
at the end about different things that we thought the Department of
Labor could possibly do.

Number one, everybody at the table was very complimentary about what has
been done by the Department of Labor so far and, of course, yourself,
Tony. And what was, you know, what was done at this conference. But, you
know, we do think that there\'s a need for maybe some new things or new
avenues that we could try to maybe jump start it just a little bit more.

You know everything is going well. We really feel that there is a lot of
hard work that\'s been done but, nonetheless, you know whether it\'s a
different grant program, whether it\'s inviting the commissioners of
labor of the different states to make them aware of what we\'re doing,
inviting people from the global apprenticeship community to come and
speak here, you know, maybe have an opportunity to view and see what
kind of competition is going on.

There was a discussion on apprenticeship competitions that take place
throughout the world. George had recently attended a competition that
was held in Japan where there were 42 countries or more involved.

MR. BLISS: More than that.

MR. AHERN: More than that involved. Only six people from the United
States were involved in that competition.

So I think that ideas like this are a good start. And then,
unfortunately, they brought coffee, and that was the end of the
discussion. Thank you very much.

Thank you very much.

CHAIR HARTNETT: Thank you for the good report.

Who is the recorder or the presenter for one of the other tables?

MR. BLISS: They asked me to do our table.

CHAIR HARTNETT: Okay.

MR. BLISS: And we want to include within this, this is going to
intertwine some of the discussions that the Labor Group had, as well.

And, first of all, part of the first question that Doug Small asked was
about how can we do more without any government money, like we actually
get government money anyway.

But our suggestion is that the apprenticeship system needs money, and
they should mandate, not just take seven-to-ten-percent of the WIA funds
for registered apprenticeship so that we can have moneys to work with.
Every other country that I\'ve ever visited, the federal governments
support registered apprenticeship programs. And we think that\'s
important that we do.

So far as with the Department of Education I see that as a lost cause.
We work with adults. We all think we ought to be working through the
Labor Department where we can get some response. In my tenure on this
Committee, which is not short, I think I\'ve seen Education once, maybe
twice, over 10 or 15 years. And it was merely a cup of coffee and gone.

I\'m not sure Commerce has ever been here, even though they are listed
as ex-officio members. So let\'s stay with Labor \-- they deal with
adults; we\'re adults \-- and see if we can go forward with that.

To build on what Jack was saying, we think that Skills USA should be a
part here, and we should be a part with them. And building off of that,
they will send their champions to the World Skills Contest.

Now the World Skills Contest is very hard for the U.S. to compete in,
because they have an age limit. You can\'t be 22. So in the U.S. many
times our high school students are still trying to figure out how to
stop text-messaging long enough to choose a career by the time they\'re
22. So it\'s going to be hard, but that doesn\'t mean you shouldn\'t be
there. We ought to be able to influence that and give our working people
the opportunity to compete.

It was embarrassing to see six people follow that U.S. flag across a
stage in Japan and two of those were from the United Association
sponsored by the United Association. They would have only had four when
Korea sent 60. We had the people from Italy, it looked like about 45 of
them at least, and they were all dressed in Armani suits. And it was
very impressive until our big flag came across with just a few people
trying to get across to the other side of the stage. I think we can do a
better job than that, and I think we should do a better job than that.

So far as what the Committee should look like in the future, we think
that there ought to be a series of focus groups looking at what the
younger people who are going to come in here need to think it looks
like.

In other words, I can tell you what I think it should look like and it
might not impress any high school kid. So those focus groups ought to
look at that to decide which way the Committee should go. And members of
this Committee, whoever they should be, should be on those focus group
teams. That has happened in the past. It can happen again in the future
and with this as a specific outcome.

I think that\'s about what we did. Thank you.

MR. MANDES: May I comment?

CHAIR HARTNETT: Yes.

MR. MANDES: May I ask a question?

George, I really commend you for participating in the international
competition. But we estimate that the cost of sending a candidate there
to be at least a hundred thousand dollars in the machine competition,
because it requires someone on a payroll for a year really not doing
anything else but preparing for that competition. It\'s expensive.

Skills USA should be able to raise the funds. In the other countries,
most of the other countries had sponsors. And on the toolboxes it would
say they were sponsored by x, or y, or z company, or clothing company,
or some kind of a company. It is expensive, because you have to send a
coach with each contestant. There should be a team leader. They should
be appropriately attired and clad.

One of the people that we sent was told he would get steel-toed boots
when he got there. Well, they didn\'t have them. And I\'m running around
Tokyo trying to found a size 15 steel-toed shoe for him. And we never
quite got a 15, but he got his feet stuck in what we could find. And he
toughed it out, you know. He didn\'t score well, but he did the best he
could. But the next time we\'ll know better.

What Steve says is true, but I think if we work together with Skills USA
and get some sponsors together or tool manufacturers. There are all
sorts of people who have money that could help in this endeavor.

If I can make a recommendation, you know, I think that maybe Kelvin
could take that back to Caterpillar who would be an ideal sponsor there.
Thank you.

MR. HARRISON: Thank you, Steve.

Thank you. We\'ll take that under advisement.

CHAIR HARTNETT: Very well. Those are great comments. There were three
tables. Who was the third reporter?

MS. ENZI: (Indicating.)

CHAIR HARTNETT: Oh, okay. I\'m sorry.

MS. ENZI: This will be a very condensed version of a very lively
discussion at our table. We really could solve a lot of problems if
they\'d just give us free rein over at our table.

How will apprenticeship look in a continually-changing global economy?
It will have to be flexible. It will be mobile. And we talked about the
industries who have apprenticeship programs, and they move them from
site to site which are all over the world now. And so they have to learn
in other places and probably will have to certainly have the skill sets
that John talked about this morning.

How would we like it to look after the regulatory process? We decided
similar to you. We really need to ask 18-to-24-year olds what should
this look like, because we\'re operating on the old model and these kids
aren\'t doing the old model on anything. So probably we\'ll have to have
a text-messaging apprenticeship conference, or something. But I agree. I
think that\'s really important to see what they think.

And then how can we help champion the changes. We really feel that we
preach to the choir all the time in this group. We never talk to new
people. So we think we need a speakers\' panel of those of us on this
group, and we will go to the decisionmakers, as Mufi says.

We will go to the National Conference of State Legislators, the National
Governors\' Association, anybody that will have us. We\'ll go and speak
at their place to tell them about this. The National Council of Mayors.

We can try the school boards and all of that, too, but we might as well
as go to the people who appropriate and who decisionmake and skip the
other people, and get them as excited about it as we are and let them
vision with us what it will look like in the future. So very condensed
but very lively. You know we have a whole bunch of other suggestions,
but that\'s condensed.

CHAIR HARTNETT: Thank you. That\'s very good.

I could open it up now for any discussion. I thought those are some
excellent ideas, as certainly pursuing some of the institutional
operations, but recognizing that if that\'s not going to bear fruit,
then you need to go somewhere else. You need to go to a different group.
And if it\'s the NCSL, or it\'s the Governors\' Association, or
whatever, I think that\'s a terrific idea. The Conference of Mayors.
There\'s any number of organizations that are out there that I think
would be very receptive to this message and many of the other points.

So we will take those points, if there are no other comments, and kind
of condense them down and make that a separate, kind of freestanding
report back to Doug in response to the questions that he had.

Yes, Mufi.

MAYOR HANNEMANN: I just want to amplify on what Diana said and what our
group was saying.

I just think that we\'re just also knocking our heads against the wall
in trying to get the Department of Education and folks there to embrace
the points of apprenticeship and the nexus between apprenticeship and
education.

So it just seems to me, as Diana was saying, if you go to the different
stakeholders who had the ability to influence their budgeting, their
programs, their priorities, then the pressure to bear may bring about a
different result.

And I\'ve seen that time and time again when you\'re going to the source
and it ain\'t happening, they\'re not listening, if you go another way
then all of a sudden the lightbulb goes on. So hopefully we\'ll make
some progress going this way.

CHAIR HARTNETT: Any comments?

Okay. Let\'s go back on the agenda for the Ed and Outreach.

MR. CONLEY: Thank you, Senator \-- Congressman \-- Chairman Hartnett \--
I apologize \--

(Laughter.)

MR. CONLEY: I want to cover my bases.

\-- Administrator Swoope and esteemed colleagues of the Committee.

Last June the Advisory Committee came up with a number of
recommendations on how we might promote apprenticeship. And to that end
the Department of Labor listened. Mr. Small and Emily DeRocco found some
money for us in the terms of about \$500,000 through some marketing
efforts.

And if you\'ll look in your summary of ACA recommendations, the last
one, number 42, to refresh your memories, are the recommendations that
were brought forward.

With the 500,000 we approached a PR firm, McNeely, Pigott and Fox of
Nashville, Tennessee \-- Mr. Small talked about that yesterday a little
bit \-- to assist us to promote a registered apprenticeship for the 70th
year and beyond.

We realized that a lot of the products we\'re going to produce have a
shelf time of probably only a couple years, so we have no grand plan to
use it much more beyond that.

But, in any event, the contract runs out at the end of 2008, but what
the particular contract \-- and I\'m the Project Officer for it in the
Office of Apprenticeship, what the contract will do that involves
McNeely, Pigott and Fox is, one, to create a cadre of apprenticeship
ambassadors to engage outreach, education, and networking at conferences
and events and targeting speaking engagements, things that we have been
talking about here all week, web and One-Stop presentations in other
venues.

The cadre consists of former ACA members, current ACA members, NASTAD
members, former members or retired personnel from the SACS and our
particular organization, the Office of Apprenticeship, retired and
current apprentices, and current program sponsors. So we\'re fulfilling
pretty much what the recommendation said, we hope.

Secondly, McNeely, Pigott and Fox will conduct a study of apprentices
and apprenticeship graduates over the last 70 years and post success
stories on the web.

Third, we\'ll conduct special targeted group forums in four cities, of
which we\'ve done \-- management will give some details on that \--
around the country with five groups in particular: Parents, guidance
counselors, dislocated workers, college students, and under- and
unemployed youth to explore the perception of the potential of
registered apprenticeships among these groups.

Next we need to develop outreach material, a lot of it based on the
product from these forums, that highlights the next generation of
apprenticeship as embodied by the revised Regulations. The products to
be developed will include a professional video highlighting success
stories of our apprenticeship programs; material for guidance
counselors, parents, dislocated workers, and the rest of the folks in
the groups we looked at; and finally the work of the apprenticeship
staffs to enhance the Office of Apprenticeship web page.

Finally, they will develop a rolling roadshow for the Workforce
Investment System, including One-Stops, new webs. The idea is to take
the market basket or the basket of products we have, marketing products
we have that are apprenticeship related, and take them, develop them on
a roadshow where we\'ll go around the country and use these products to
fully integrate both the One-Stop System and ours.

I\'d like to introduce Mandy Cawood. She\'s a Vice President at McNeely,
Pigott and Fox, and she\'ll brief you on the progress so far on the
contract.

MS. CAWOOD: Thank you, Jim.

Good afternoon. We have the coveted post-lunch spot where hopefully
we\'re going to keep you awake and be brief, but give you some
interesting information from the focus groups.

I do want to jump right into what we\'ve accomplished so far and touch
briefly on those before we get into focus groups. Our team was eager to
quickly get started and learn as much as we could about apprenticeship.
We\'ve done that a few ways. I was at the meetings in Chantilly,
Virginia earlier this fall and also spent a couple of days in Charles\'
home state of South Carolina with Ron, the state director there,
shadowing and attending some of his meetings where he was pitching
apprenticeship.

And then we\'ve also done a whole lot of phone calls to state directors,
regional directors around the country \-- some of you have received
those phone calls, I think \-- where we asked some basic questions: What
do you do when you\'re pitching apprenticeship? What materials do you
take? What is working? What would be more helpful? How can we make you
do your jobs more successfully?

In addition as a follow-up to those phone calls, we created an online
questionnaire that has been distributed out across the country. Some of
you have seen that. We were looking to identify those success stories
and find the good stories that we want in our back pockets that will
help us with the media, with attracting more employers. And we\'ve got a
lot of those already. And I got some more here this week. But I would
say we have dozens, probably at least 50 or so of those at this point.
And the good thing is they are coming in from different regions of the
country and from small, small kind of programs and larger ones, as well.

And if you all have more, I would love to spend five minutes with you or
give you my information for you to send me some more from your area.

Otherwise, what we\'ve been doing so far, we\'ve done some key messaging
for the Apprenticeship Office that we have sent and plan to use in our
materials. And we\'ve just completed a web audit of the Office of
Apprenticeships\' website and are going to work with their team in the
National Office to hopefully refresh and take another look at the
website so it\'s a little more user-friendly for employers and students
as well.

What I\'d like to do now is review the Focus Group Report with you all
and kind of go over some of the key findings from that. I think Amy has
those materials for you all. I\'ll jump in while she\'s getting those
and start a little bit on where we went.

We went to four cities. And these all happened in November. We were in
Philadelphia, Chicago, Atlanta, and L.A. And Jim mentioned earlier the
groups that we touched on. And you\'ll also find those in your handout.

We targeted college students. We targeted under- and unemployed youth,
dislocated workers, parents, and guidance counselors. And with the
guidance counselors\' group we were looking at guidance counselors in
public high schools.

Does everybody have the handout now?

I thought I\'d jump to key findings, because that\'s probably the most
interesting part and what you all might want to hear about the most.

The interesting thing across the board in all four cities is that the
parents and the guidance counselors \-- and I know I\'m probably opening
a can of worms. We talked about them a little bit already today \-- but
the parents and the guidance counselors seemed extremely open to the
program, hearing more about it, sharing information with their kids and
their students about it.

Parents were very receptive and, you know, clearly have an understanding
of when they have a child who\'s headstrong, ready for college and
headstrong and not ready for college or not interested in college.

And with the counselors it seems like, you know, they\'ve got what they
see as their college kids, and then they\'ve got the other category. And
a lot of what those kids are hearing is military. And we heard that in
all four cities that military, military, military. They\'re
text-messaging the kids. They are making home visits. They\'re doing
face-to-face with, you know, guys who are coming in and selling military
to the kids and doing it year-round and starting young. And that\'s kind
of the other category that they are picking from at this point.

They did seem anxious to receive more and beyond with more information
and to welcome speakers to come in and talk to the kids about
apprenticeship. They did feel like \-- which I think, you know,
different members of this group have talked about that junior high is
not too early to start talking to these kids about apprenticeship.

The website web, as you all know, is an important outreach tool for
almost all groups. But what\'s interesting with the kids is that easy to
navigate is more important than flash or a flashy, kind of fancy
website. But if they can\'t find something in four clicks, they\'re
moving on to the next site. So easy-to-navigate is much more important
than a fancy and flashy kind of look.

We did find that men and women\'s interests in a career seemed to be
different as far as their initial choices. And most of the men in all of
the groups stated money is the most important factor, while females seem
to mention something that they enjoy going to do each day. And we felt
that was interesting.

Again, touching on something that several speakers have already spoken
about, there\'s an extreme disconnect on what fields pay and what a
student wants to do and how much that\'s going to pay them and how do
they get from point A to point B. It\'s not something that parents or
counselors are always sharing with them.

Government affiliation of apprenticeship is a good thing. People in all
of the cities say it adds credibility to the program.

Testimonials for younger students and kids are the best way to share
information about the program. They said they\'d rather hear from
someone who\'s in the trenches, who\'s doing it. They\'d rather hear
from that person than a celebrity who is not in an apprenticeship
program. So peer-to-peer is what they want to hear.

So those are some of the key findings. I thought we could jump to
challenges. We did find, you know, in all four cities there is a lack of
awareness about registered apprenticeship. They were surprised to know
that this program is in its 70th year.

The Chicago and Philadelphia groups did seem to know a little bit more
about it or associate it with unions in their cities, because they\'re
heavy union towns. And the interesting thing with some of the younger
kids is, you know, the first question out of the box kind of what comes
to mind when we say \"apprentice\" or \"apprenticeship,\" and they say
the Donald Trump TV show. So that is kind of where their heads are with
the word.

The program, another challenge, once we started getting into it, some of
the people felt like it sounds like it takes too long, you know, there
would be a lot of bureaucracy, you know. It\'ll take a long time.

And another myth I would say that we found is that college is the only
choice for a career. You know, they felt like if you\'re going to choose
a career that college is what you need to do. This was especially
prevalent in a couple of the cities.

So now the opportunities, the good news. We see opportunities with
face-to-face with the guidance counselors going into the schools,
bypassing the departments of education and the boards and going directly
grassroots to guidance counselors to get in the schools.

And just like colleges have college fairs, we need to be with a booth at
those kind of tables. So one parent said very eloquently in \-- I think
she was in Chicago \-- that students are made to feel bad about
themselves if they aren\'t going to college, and that there is this kind
of just feeling they had if they don\'t choose college that they feel
badly about themselves. And we need to fix this. And this is a career
choice. And this allows them to feel positive about their future. And I
feel like that\'s a message that kind of the whole group was nodding.

You can focus on a career without debt. A lot of these kids are very
money driven and speaking their language by saying: You\'re not going to
have debt when you leave this program, it\'s a good thing, as well as
long-term job security.

For Next Steps, we feel like zeroing in on a couple of audiences in the
first phase makes the most sense and that we get the most bang for our
buck by doing that. By going after the guidance counselors we do see
opportunity there. They seemed hungry for more information about it. It
makes sense from a financial and an outcome perspective. They have
meetings. They have conferences. There are databases of educators. We
can do this. We can reach out to that group.

Employers make sense. We saw with a lot of our phone calls throughout
the country that a lot of \-- I know a lot of you do this \-- a lot of
the employers have their own budgets to market apprenticeship. And so
while we may not have financial means to reach out to everyone, by
targeting first the employers they then can reach out to potential
apprentices.

And we want to arm the field staff with materials that speak directly to
businesses. A lot of people we talked to felt good about the materials
that they\'ve got, but they don\'t have one thing that they can walk
into a business meeting and say, you know, the main things that they
want to know: What\'s in it for me? What do I have to do to sign up, and
how much is it going to cost me?

And we can say that simply and succinctly in a piece of paper that goes
to employers. And we really want to arm the field staff with materials
that speak to businesses in their language and also update the website
to have a page that speaks business language.

So that\'s kind of an overview that comes from this. We have provided
the National Office with DVDs from the focus groups. They all were taped
and verbatim. You know, the notes were typed up in kind of \-- they have
a much bigger report than you all are seeing here today, but we\'re glad
to answer questions or provide more information.

MS. ENZI: I have a question.

MS. CAWOOD: Yes.

MS. ENZI: How did you recruit the guidance counselors to come to this
and did you have any trouble getting them to come?

MS. CAWOOD: We worked with a company that has offices in all four of
those cities that recruits for focus groups. And so they took that role
for us but, no, there was no problem in getting them there.

MR. MANDES: My question is similar. How were the students chosen?

MS. CAWOOD: They were chosen by the focus group company with the
parameters that we gave the screeners on ages and what cities and\...

MR. MANDES: So you don\'t know how they were chosen?

MS. CAWOOD: They publicized them through Craigslist, through newspaper,
through campus \-- you know, newspapers, and posters, and that type of
thing.

MR. MANDES: I\'m amazed at the one conclusion that the general public is
aware of Job Corps. That astounds me.

MS. CAWOOD: We heard in a lot of the focus groups that the kids know
about Job Corps and military from a government perspective and didn\'t
know about this option as much.

MR. SPEAKER (Microphone not on): Do you have (Inaudible), Steve?

MR. MANDES: Oh, yeah. We did a lot of work with the Job Corps. And our
employers certainly know nothing about Job Corps. And I\'m amazed that
the children of those employers would know. So maybe Job Corps is doing
something that we all \-- and I know you guys do work for Job Corps.

MS. CAWOOD: Um-hum.

MR. MANDES: Then maybe they\'re doing something that we could take
advantage of. Maybe they \--

MR. SWOOPE: I think it\'s something like a \$1.5-billion budget.

MR. MANDES: Well, when you get the seven percent that George is giving
you, that will take\...

MR. CONLEY: They do a lot of PSAs at three o\'clock in the morning when
these kids are up. And they were saying, \"How come you do that?\"

And we said, \"Well,\...\" We didn\'t really answer their questions. We
just asked them \--

MS. CAWOOD: Jim was there for one where they asked specifically, you
know, \"Why don\'t you all have the money for an ad buy that Job Corps
does?\"

CHAIR HARTNETT: I asked someone once \-- I have never seen a Job \-- I
didn\'t see any Job Corps commercials on TV. And the person I was
talking to said, \"Do you watch Jerry Springer?\"

And I said, \"No.\"

And they said, \"Well, that\'s why you haven\'t seen one,\" because they
focus a lot in that area.

MR. CONLEY: One problem that we heard in Philadelphia is, \"We\'re tired
of hearing about Job Corps. When are we going to hear about
apprenticeship?\" And we didn\'t have an answer for them. It\'s kind of
sad.

MR. AHERN: If I can make a comment, Mr. Chairman.

We operated a Job Corps Program in New Haven, Connecticut, which we\'ve
been very successful using as a method for some applicants to come then
into the apprenticeship training. And that Job Corps site in itself has
been \-- it works with a number of the other different construction
trades and has contacts with four or five different industries in that
area of Connecticut, which they feed people into. So it\'s been pretty
effective. And it\'s worked well with us with apprenticeship, so\...

CHAIR HARTNETT: John.

DR. GAAL: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I look at the Next Steps, and I would hope that before a whole lot of
effort is put into the Next Steps that you all would take the time to
survey the group here as individuals to find out what we\'re already
doing with regards to our outreach to counselors.

I\'ve always believed that this is kind of a three-legged stool. And in
St. Louis I felt we\'ve done a pretty good job of reaching out to the
students in the high schools, in the grade schools. In fact, we\'ve got
a \-- I\'m a firm believer that middle school is too late. We actually
have to get into the elementary school. We have a program in St. Louis
called, \"Craft Career Readiness\" and \"Readiness for Tomorrow.\" And
we start with the first graders.

I\'ll tell you, you know, there\'s nothing wrong with copying stuff that
works. Junior Achievement works in this nation. And what they do is
instill business, management, and economic topics from grades 1 through
12, and they just build on those building blocks each year.

And we saw that model. And we said, \"You know what? We need to emulate
that model with regards to apprenticeship.\"

We do over 150 career days a year in St. Louis. And people probably
around this table have heard me say this before. And it\'s now to a
point where we do them because we have to do them, instead of we want to
do them.

Often what we find is \-- our big bubble in the school schedule is
April, because teachers are trying to find ways to placate the kids for
another month until they get rid of them. And so it\'s not about career
readiness; it\'s just about babysitting. And so it\'s kind of a
damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don\'t situation.

If you don\'t go there you\'re a lousy, no-good. And if you do go there,
you\'ve got to put up with the nonsense. You know, often teachers walk
out of the room.

So what we started to do to address that second leg of the stool, and
that\'s the teachers, counselors, administrators, and so on and so
forth, is we actually started an annual one-week boot camp for these
individuals. And we bring them into our apprenticeship school and we
stick them through a first week of pre-apprenticeship. That way when
those kids walk into those counseling offices they can speak from
experience what it takes to become a first-term carpenter apprentice in
St. Louis.

And, you know, it takes a lot of money, Steve. But you know what? You
can\'t stick your head in the sand, you know. As my boss says, \"You can
do the right thing or you can do the easy thing. And the easy thing is
stick your head in the sand,\" you know. So it costs, but it also costs
not doing anything.

So a third leg of the stool, I think at least you included them in your
focus group is I, you know, as I said before, I think \-- and we have
not done a good job because I can\'t find the silver bullet to reach out
to this group other than that document that I just gave to Diana with
regards to the career outlooks in Missouri, is that we\'ve got to get to
the parents.

And I think that\'s a big piece that\'s missing here, because I bet you
if you would interview some of George\'s programs as well as Jack\'s, as
well as Bob\'s, and so on and so forth, around this table, we all have
these efforts going on in the grade schools and the high schools dealing
with the counselors, and teachers, administrators.

But I don\'t know that any of us have done a spectacular job, because
I\'ve been through a number of conferences and no one\'s told me what
the secret is to reaching parents. And so I think that\'s one piece
that\'s truly missing here.

So going back to what George said on a previous topic, you know, when
you do focus groups it might behoove you to bring in some of the people
around here on a focus group so that we don\'t go off in a wrong
direction or recreate and reinvent a wheel that\'s been tried and really
not getting us a lot of traction.

Thank you very much.

CHAIR HARTNETT: I want to have Mufi say something in a moment, but I
want to just ask a follow-up question.

How do you get school counselors to go for a week through an
apprenticeship program?

DR. GAAL: Well, go back to Steve. It\'s called \"money.\" We\'re paying
them a hundred dollars a day. And then there\'s three \-- no, excuse me
\-- two graduate hours of college credit attached to it.

So what we do is we put 250 upfront for the week that they physically
are there and they have to do some, you know, callback stuff to get
their college credit. But to finally get their last 250 bucks is that
they have to go to a callback session where we get together and we
report out to one another how they integrated into their school system
what they learned during that week.

And if they don\'t come to that session, they don\'t get the rest of
their money. And let me tell you a lot of these teachers are looking for
things like builds\' experiences during the summer instead of really
getting a real job.

CHAIR HARTNETT: That\'s, you know, that\'s very interesting, because I
don\'t know of a program that I\'ve ever gone to with folks that
haven\'t been impressed when they go in and look at the apprenticeship
program. They look at the curriculum. In some cases they look at the
building. They meet the instructors when they get a chance to view all
that.

You know, they come with one notion of what it\'s like. And then after
they leave, an hour later after the tour, they have a totally different
idea. In many cases some of the centers that I\'ve been through, you
know, in terms of their presentation are far superior to some four-year
colleges, quick frankly, in terms of the physical plant and the folks
that you meet in the course of it.

DR. GAAL: It actually has some great outcomes in the terms of what
you\'re talking about, Tom. They become some of your best salespeople,
because they didn\'t even know this place existed. George is probably
tired of hearing it; I\'m tired of hearing it, that we\'re the best kept
secret. You know I\'ve heard that so many times. You\'ve heard it a
zillion times, you know. You kind of want to beat your head against the
wall.

But the bottom line is \-- you know, we do over 150 career days a year.
I don\'t know how many more I can do to say that that\'s enough. And
obviously that\'s not enough because I keep hearing we\'re the best kept
secret. That\'s on the good side.

On the bad side is you often find out things maybe you don\'t want to
know. For instance, for our apprentices to remain in our system beyond
their 180th day anniversary of their indenture date they have to score
at least a level six on WorkKeys Applied Math. And guess what some of
those teachers and counselors and principals score? Less than a level
six. And these are the people teaching our students, our future.

MAYOR HANNEMANN: I want to second what John\'s been saying. I think the
most important part for me for this study is the Next Steps. And I think
there\'s some experiences we can glean from each other at this table
here.

So I would think that that could be one of the Next Steps, is to call
through the list of folks who are on this Committee. And I\'d like to
share with you what we\'re doing in Honolulu that has been working well
for raising the awareness of the Apprenticeship Program.

I think that Job Corps, for example, is very successful in my community.
And they do some good public outreach stuff. So I think that would be a
good exercise to hear what John\'s doing, other folks here to share
their experiences so that \-- as we go through these Next Steps here.

And I also want to echo the \-- I think we should do a really thorough
job in trying to identify some folks who have gone through the program.
You know, we\'ve been spending a lot of time trying to find us a
national spokesperson.

I really believe at the end of the day is having a young person up there
who said how the apprenticeship program changed their life. I think
that\'s the best way to maybe try to reach the parents who are
struggling with one of the children, having problems, so forth, to hear
somebody\'s actually done it and done it well.

So I think this becomes \-- you get a person who sort of introduces the
subject and then identify the success stories throughout America that
have gone through this apprenticeship program. The military does that
all the time, you know. And that\'s why \--

MR. CONLEY: We were hoping that we\'d get this kind of response. I mean,
you know, we\'re working on your recommendations, to begin with, you
know. And we\'re just presenting this as an interim report hoping that,
you know, you, first of all, would tell us: Yeah, you\'re going in the
right direction, you know. And now this grant was \-- this contract is
limited. It\'s only a half a million dollars. It doesn\'t buy everything
that you recommended. And we\'d love to go as far as we can but, you
know, we certainly encourage your assistance in trying to make the
biggest bang for the buck here.

MAYOR HANNEMANN: Yeah. Well, I think that\'s critical of Next Steps, is
to come back to this Committee, let us be part of the Next Steps in
terms of identifying how we drill down on the strategies of what works
in our various cities, states, what-have-you, and then go forward with
it.

But I think the peer, identifying someone who\'s actually gone through
it, I think that\'s a marvelous way to just \-- actually the success
stories of someone who pulled themselves up, apprenticeship has made a
difference in their lives. And then the spouses, you know, have seen
their husbands, you know, sacrifice, struggle with their husband, their
wife, what-have-you, their significant other. You know that might be a
way to touch families.

CHAIR HARTNETT: Thank you.

Yes, Bob.

MR. BAIRD: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

A couple things I want to mention. First Mandy, our National Association
president, was a graduate of our program. He would be a great success
story.

Also I have just had a problem when John was talking here about getting
the counselors and instructors involved. And it goes back to the pay
thing. But maybe it can help both of us, is what if at a local level the
individual programs hired the counselors and the voc ed instructors to
come in and analyze their programs and offer recommendations as to how
they could better integrate into the educational process, summer-intern
positions of some type, paying them to help us in more ways than one.

The other thing I was just thinking, I\'ve mentioned this several times
at other meetings, is as far as outreach opportunities I think in
addition to \-- you mentioned parent-teacher organizations, I believe,
but you know public service organizations, whether it be like the
Knights of Columbus or the American Legion, or whatnot, or even, you
know, the 4-H Club is another venue that might be interesting groups to
talk about and see what their perceptions area.

CHAIR HARTNETT: Yes, John.

MR. BAIRD: Thank you.

DR. GAAL: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I just wanted to piggyback on a couple of comments that were just made.

Bob, I tell you it does a lot to bring those instructors in from the
area of vocational high schools and let them teach side-by-side with our
instructors during the summer, even if it\'s just for a couple of weeks,
because a lot of times those instructors in those high schools don\'t
have the variety of backgrounds that we deliver at the apprenticeship
school.

And so they may be great wood framers, or something along those lines,
but they do very little in the area of metal framing. And so it\'s just
a great opportunity to let them get exposed to our program, to our
apprentices, and then take that back obviously to their students and
give them some real-life examples.

The other issue is the point that Mufi made about peer-to-peer. I think
what you\'ll find, if you scan and scour all our apprenticeship
programs, you\'re going to find some pretty neat people with character
in our programs.

I can tell you right off the top of my head I have a professional
ultimate fighter, a professional ring football player, a professional
country rock singer, you know. So, you know, these people at a local
basis, you know, could be pretty neat representation. So just give it
some thought.

MR. CONLEY: We had surveyed basically the people in our system, the
Office of Apprenticeship folks and just SAC directors. But we did not,
you know, survey you folks. Please, if any of you have success stories,
please contact us. You can get in contact through Tony, through me, and
I\'ll get back to Mandy.

MS. CAWOOD: We could send the survey to you.

MR. CONLEY: Sure. We have a survey document. This is just an executive
summary. We have a survey document. We\'d be glad to send it to all of
you. And, please, we\'re looking, you know, \--

MS. CAWOOD: We want to hear them.

MR. CONLEY: We\'re a firm believer in OPM, other people\'s money.

CHAIR HARTNETT: Kelvin.

MR. HARRISON: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

There\'s a couple of comments I want to make.

First, I want to tie in to what John has said about bringing in the
educators, the counselors. We\'ve tried several of those methods, very
similar to what John did. There was a grant available for summer
education so the teachers got paid. They came in. And at the end of that
\-- they were out in our sweaty shop during the summer, you know, almost
100 degrees, 120 degrees.

Besides that or getting past that, they learned that a machine operator,
the equivalent math skills that they displayed during that time was past
what a four-year degree would require. So these people had the
equivalent or a cumulative education of a bachelor\'s degree at least.
So they were very impressed with that.

So after that, though, what happens when they go back to their school
district? And this is where disappointment comes in. It\'s almost like
it didn\'t exist once they get back in their own environment.

So then they go back and cascade that information. They may add
something to their class that they actually teach, but it doesn\'t
expand past. So we can\'t reach all of those educators, all the
counselors, or all the teachers in a school district. So how do you get
the masses.

We didn\'t build enough numbers to hit everybody, so we couldn\'t hit
everybody in our area. But it was effective for that short period of
time that we did it. You have to bring them back every year.

I want to go to another point that Mandy brought up. And that is the
counselors. They seem very interested in learning more about the
apprenticeship program. And a lot of reasons they show interest is
because they have kids at risk, and they want to place these kids at
risk somewhere.

And the problem we have with that as an employer is we don\'t want the
kids at risk, because they had soft-skill issues and all of those that
go along with that being at risk. We want those kids that they\'re also
targeting to go to college so we can start them and not have to
remediate. We don\'t want to start and remediate these kids to get them
up to a level where we can train them to be quality Journeymen and at
some point go into management.

But they want to give you the kids that are at risk. So that\'s okay,
but that\'s not the only kids that you want. We want to help those, too.
But you want some quality kids also so you don\'t have to remediate. And
that\'s true at the community college level, because if we\'re footing
the bill, which we do have to do to remediate the candidates to get them
into it so they can actually start the curriculum, then that\'s extra
costs for us to pay for the remediation.

So we want the kids that already have the abilities to go right into the
apprenticeship, if possible. And, if not, how do we improve their
education to allow that to happen.

But I don\'t want us to think that we are going to settle for just the
kids at risk. We still want the kids that are designated to go to
college.

So in your focus groups and your advertising we want to target the ones
that are capable of entering right in, not just the kids at risk. I
don\'t want to limit it to that.

CHAIR HARTNETT: Thank you.

MR. HARRISON: Thank you.

CHAIR HARTNETT: Bob.

MR. BAIRD: Yeah, I need to add to something that Kelvin said here. Yeah.

We\'re forced to take all different levels of individuals, and we will
remediate. But I just want to point out that, you know, math levels need
to be eventually at least at the tenth-grade level, if not higher. And
reading, the codes, the standards, and technical documentation the
tradesmen are dealing with in the electrical trade are 13th grade level.

So somebody can come in eighth, ninth, tenth level and bull their way
through it, but they\'re not going to be comfortable. So we are looking
to compete directly with college-bound students.

MS. ENZI: Can I make a comment?

CHAIR HARTNETT: Sure, Diana.

MS. ENZI: Something I think that maybe we\'re missing here is we talked
about military are recruiting kids. Colleges are recruiting kids. I know
how heady it was for my own children to get a letter in the mail saying:
You\'ve been brought to our attention, you know, as a really outstanding
student or, you know, person who could excel in this area.

And so we take the leftover. But we really ought to be doing the
recruiting. We ought to send letters to them. And I have always said we
wait till way too late. But, you know, send it to them in the eighth or
ninth grade, at least, and say: Somebody told me about you and that you
would be an excellent person in our program. And we\'re looking for
people that we can send on a career path and, you know, train to be a
manager.

You tell them that in the eighth grade and they will think that\'s
really an important career. But if you wait until into college when they
didn\'t get in somewhere, or they\'re not interested in going, and then
saying: Well, we have this program here for you, it\'s not quite the
same thing.

Maybe we need to develop our own recruiting tool and send it out there
and tell kids because, you know, that\'s what colleges do. That\'s what
colleges do for athletes. That\'s what the military does. And maybe
that\'s what we ought to do, too.

CHAIR HARTNETT: That\'s actually consistent with some of the things that
John and Mufi said in terms of early intervention. It\'s just a question
of how you do it.

But I think, based on what I\'m hearing around the room, that if this is
a phase of an ongoing study that we want, we\'d like to see some more
activity in this area with some focus on some of the points that were
made earlier, one being, you know, the spokespersons and who would be
good spokespersons.

And it could well just be apprentices with interesting backgrounds and
successful apprentices, that we\'d want to have some further study group
with the actual members of the ACA. I think that was also an important
point.

And then various levels of early intervention from bringing folks out,
counselors and the like, to look at an apprenticeship program to provide
them with the information that they need so they can talk to young
folks, as well as some of the other things we\'re talking about a little
more aggressively, perhaps with a letter or something else. Those are
all good concepts that I think you guys ought to look at.

Yes, Bob.

MR. BAIRD: Yeah. Along those lines, and I\'ll venture to speak for some
of the other organizations as well, you know we have our National
Apprentice-of-the-Year competition; Bob has the Skills Olympics, various
organizations have ways of identifying top people in their recent
graduating classes. You know, certainly, we can make available, you
know, some of our guys for interviews, or focus groups, or surveys, or
whatever.

MR. CONLEY: The focus groups was just part of the tool chest, so to
speak. We\'re doing plenty of recommendations. We weren\'t going to do
any more focus groups. As you might suspect, they\'re very expensive. To
get folks to come there we used stipends. You can\'t get people to come
otherwise. I mean this was basically in the afternoon, you know,
rush-hour traffic and everything. And we offered anywhere between 85 to
125 bucks for folks to attend.

So I mean we\'re not planning any more focus groups. I mean 500,000
doesn\'t buy you that much. You know, we had hoped with these focus
groups \-- and your input\'s been fantastic. What we were hoping with
these focus groups now we would have at least some material, something
to work with so we could develop marketing material.

CHAIR HARTNETT: Bob.

MR. BAIRD: You know, Mr. Chair, I actually was thinking maybe not a
focus group, but conference calls, or surveys, or whatnot, from
successfully graduated apprentices that have ranked pretty highly, see
what some of their perceptions are.

MS. CAWOOD: Um-hum.

CHAIR HARTNETT: Okay.

MR. BAIRD: Thank you.

CHAIR HARTNETT: I\'ll give Tony the last word, and then we\'re going to
break for this session for about a ten-minute break.

Tony.

MR. SWOOPE: I think all of you really have added a lot of value to \-- I
guess it\'s a multifaceted approach \-- to change the image, because
generally when you hear someone speak about apprenticeship, it\'s when
they do a program where youth are going to prison, or it\'s a program to
assist kids that can\'t find their way about life and they need to work
with their hands.

You don\'t hear it in the vein about academic achievement, you know,
math and science, and how do you do that.

And so I hope that when you have the conversation with Mandy as they\'re
working through this process that, you know, it\'s a multifaceted
approach about, you know, this is like not a second-chance program. It
can be, because you can now apply the application with the actual
practical side of that to do that. But it\'s about somebody coming in
here with work-ready skills to be successful. And you need math and
science and all these other skills that are necessary to be successful.

So when it\'s really approached, all the time I hear, when you hear
about dollars coming from any organization, whether it\'s a private
sector or\... it\'s like how do we address these youth integration with
the prison. I mean we had that.

And you think about the dollars that have been expended for Youth Build,
which is a good concept, but it started off trying to help kids so they
could learn how to do this with construction. Now it\'s up to a, what,
probably about a \$50-million program that they give grants, or larger,
and they think they need more money. The same thing with Job Corps.

I\'m not speaking against them. All I\'m saying is that when it\'s only
viewed as it\'s less than, then we wonder why, when we talk to people
and we want to compare that with other occupations, it\'s viewed as a
second-chance program.

And much as we think that how good of a job we do recruiting, when you
talk to the students and they hear \-- there\'s a disconnect someplace.
They don\'t even know anything about it. The parents say: Oh, I wish
they could get into it, because they want them to get a job.

And then we\'ve got the school people saying this. I just think that
this overall approach that all of you had has got to kind of be kind of
tied together. Five hundred thousand dollars is a little bit of money to
kind of say: Here\'s what the problem is. What are the Next Steps?

And then we need to do some longitudinal studies to show the research
behind those who complete, where they go after that. But I think that\'s
the basis for really taking it to another level. But we have to ask the
question and you have to ask the question: Where do we really want it to
go so that we\'re not viewed as second chance.

In 1990 the school-to-work, for example, it started off was that kids
just didn\'t have a relationship to work and work-based learning and
education.

So how many billions of dollars were spent on that effort to try to
apply some applied science and work with work-based with education.

Now we\'re in 2007 and still asking the same question about where we
are. So, clearly, I mean the agenda has got to be: This is high level;
this is, you know, in my opinion not the other degree. It is the same or
better than a college, not an associate degree, an undergraduate degree.
And how do we now build that so that it is viewed as this high-level and
you got to \-- it\'s competitive \-- and you got to be able to perform.

Now that you\'ve tried \-- how do you take other ways to help kids that
don\'t have the ability? It\'s not about they don\'t have the ability,
that the school system has let them down in how they can really learn
and how they apply the applications to working with their hands and the
classroom portion of that.

So I would hope that we could find some ways to not have it viewed by
\-- this is going to be a second-chance program. I know we saw the money
that the U.K. spent more for apprenticeship, a lot more money. They
almost tripled the budget into the millions in their dollars. But it was
based upon \-- so we can try to get those kids that are dropping out of
school and how we can get them to a next level. And so that\'s how
we\'re viewed.

And we\'ve got to really find some other ways to take it from the top
and from the bottom to get everybody engaged that it is a profession and
how do we build off of that aspect.

So I hope you\'re able to at least kind of get the basis of how you now
move that research forward so we can try to build off of that.

CHAIR HARTNETT: Okay. Thank you, Tony.

Let\'s take about a ten-minute break, and then we\'re going to come
back. And I think we\'re probably going to conclude fairly rapidly. I\'m
going to give you a summary of some of our accomplishments. I have one
more issue I want to talk to everyone about. And then some closing
remarks. About ten minutes. Thank you.

(Recess taken from 2:34 p.m. to 2:58 p.m.)

CHAIR HARTNETT: Okay. If we could be seated, please.

I\'m going to consolidate a couple of the \-- we\'re back on the record
\-- I\'m going to consolidate a couple of the sessions. I think we might
break a little bit early today.

Two items are left on the agenda. And one is a summary of major
accomplishments, which we\'ve kind of done during the course of the day
anyway, but I do want to go back and just recap a couple of those.

And then our recommendations to the Secretary, which I think we\'ve also
done already through our discussions about the TEGL, through our
discussions about the Regulations, through our answering of the
questions that Doug gave us.

But let me just do a very quick recap that Tony\'s staff put together
for some of the activity that we\'ve been involved with over the last
four years, which is the current term of this Committee.

We have made 42 recommendations to the Department, 30 of which have been
fully implemented and two of them partially implemented. And those
ranged from major issues like the TEGL, which I think is universally
accepted as a fairly monumental achievement, to some of the other
aspects, one-time activity of marketing \-- and I know we\'re not
supposed to use that word \-- apprenticeship to the folks that we\'d
like to see embrace it.

So some of the activities, what we refer to as \"high-impact
initiatives,\" was advancing the apprenticeship initiative itself, the
education and outreach strategies.

A lot of the training that Tony has done for his staff to focus on the
sales-oriented customer, kind of focus and driven training approaches
both for his staff and the staff of the folks at the state level that
administer apprenticeship.

And then, of course, the revisions that we recommended to the
apprenticeship Regulations, the presidential proclamation, and all of
the activities in the year-long commemoration of the 70th anniversary of
the National Apprenticeship Act, which kind of the half-time show was
the dinner, which was great, but it is only a half-time show. There\'s a
second half, which is what we\'re involved in now.

And then, of course, the issuance of the TEGL, which I think is going to
open up a whole area of funding for a lot of innovative programs, not
only pre-apprenticeship programs, but also apprenticeship programs
themselves.

So I think all of those are very significant. And I think this group
ought to feel very, very good about the recommendations they\'ve made
and the support that they received from the Department in the person of
Emily, and Doug, and others within the Department.

I do want to spend a moment, though, because there is one more
recommendation that I feel strongly about that I\'d like to share with
this group. And I think George touched on it a little bit when he made
his report and talked about Workforce Investment Act funds and the
potential for \-- I forget what the number \--

George, yours was five to seven percent, or some number.

MR. BLISS: Seven to ten, yes.

CHAIR HARTNETT: Seven to ten. Excuse me.

MR. BLISS: That\'s all right.

CHAIR HARTNETT: He\'s still negotiating.

What I wanted to mention though is that if you look at all the
recommendations that we\'ve made, we\'ve taken a process that was almost
kind of a cookie-cutter approach. This is apprenticeship. It\'s four
years. It\'s this structure. It\'s this amount of input. It\'s this
number. And we\'ve said: If that process is going to survive, and
blossom, and flourish as we go forward, it needs to be much more
flexible.

And with flexibility comes a lot of accountability. So when you look at
the program approval process that\'s part of the apprenticeship now
where you have a provisional approval and then every program gets looked
at every year, which may or may not be happening right now.

When you look at the remediation for programs that are not living up to
what they should be doing, both in terms of retention, and graduation
rates, and all those other issues, when you look at the TEGL and some of
the things that that does in terms of incorporating apprenticeship into
the forward-looking next year human resource development plan for a
particular state, when you look at all the 70th anniversary activities
that the apprenticeship staff have been involved in, when you look at
new industries and emerging technologies and how apprenticeship needs to
be out there in the room talking about, hey, this is apprenticeship. If
you\'re thinking of training these people for these kinds of jobs, this
is the kind of process that you ought to be embracing.

All the technical assistance that they offer, all the recommendations
that we\'ve made, when it comes down to it, require some resources to do
those things.

So I feel strongly that we ought at least include with all of those
recommendations for flexibility, all of which ultimately become
labor-intensive, that you ought to also be saying: By the way, there
ought to be some model staff that, if not racial, at least a group that
we could say: This is what would be ideal.

Now the Department is certainly free to embrace it or to say: We can\'t
do it. But I think we\'d be foolhardy to make a recommendation with all
that flexibility if we don\'t have the horses, if you will, to pull the
wagon.

So I don\'t have anything in mind other than I asked Tony in advance of
this meeting to put together a sense of what that might be. I trust his
judgment on that, but I do think that it would be good to have some kind
of a recommendation forthcoming from this group to say: We have added a
whole lot of labor-intensive work so that apprenticeship can be as
flexible as it should be and that we would recommend a staffing plan for
that that would be the optimum plan.

Now whether or not it ever realized it or not, that\'s another story.
And I realize that there are budgetary constraints, and we\'re not
looking to add to anybody else\'s problems. But we do need to have a
basis upon which to move forward.

So I don\'t know if, George, you want to comment or add anything to
that. I know that we\'ve had this discussion ourselves.

MR. BLISS: No. I certainly do agree that \-- I wouldn\'t know how to put
it together, what you\'re talking about. I think Tony and Dana are
probably the best ones to do that. But if we don\'t get the enforcement
and the promotion necessary, training necessary, then all the work that
we have done will be for naught.

CHAIR HARTNETT: Yeah.

Bob, do you want to\...?

MR. BAIRD: Yes, Mr. Chairman.

You know, I totally agree. We looked at the list here. I knew we were a
demanding group, but I didn\'t realize how demanding until I saw the
entire list here. And, you know, obviously we\'ve asked for the moon
and, you know, maybe we won\'t get that. We may get some things. But,
you know, how would we even know how to prioritize our requests,
suggestions, unless we have some idea of what the call for resources
actually is.

CHAIR HARTNETT: Um-hum.

MR. BAIRD: I think it would be wonderful to have that kind of
information, and we could finetune our recommendations.

CHAIR HARTNETT: All right. I would ask that maybe this group endorse our
requests to have that come back to us as a group and at our next meeting
we could probably adopt it.

Is that something that everyone agrees with?

MR. \[SPEAKER\]: Yes.

MR. BLISS: Do you need a motion for that?

CHAIR HARTNETT: Yes.

MR. BLISS: I would so move.

MR. BAIRD: Second.

CHAIR HARTNETT: All in favor?

\[MEMBERS\]: Aye.

CHAIR HARTNETT: Opposed?

(No audible response.)

CHAIR HARTNETT: Okay, good.

(Motion approved.)

MS. ENZI: Mr. Chairman, may I make one comment?

CHAIR HARTNETT: Yes.

MS. ENZI: All of you need to go to your representatives and say: Get the
Workforce Investment Act passed. It has been sitting on the table for at
least three years. And it\'s all politics. It really is. Both sides, I
got to tell you. It really is. And they\'re not going to pass that
thing, and so \-- we can say we need more money in this budget, but
until they get that off the table to train the workers in this country,
that\'s what needs to be done. And it will just continue to be a
continuing resolution until we kick in the pants and make them get it
done.

CHAIR HARTNETT: Okay. The last comment before we open for public comment
is the recommendations to the Secretary. And I think we have heard a
whole lot over the course of the last several days in terms of the
questions that Doug put to us that we have answered, I think, in some
significant detail this afternoon. The dialogue on the Regulations, the
ongoing activities for the second half of the 70th anniversary.

So I think the staff has a fairly comprehensive list of what we\'ve
talked about and what we\'re recommending.

So at this point I would open it up for a general discussion, if anyone
has any comments, or the like. Any issues, comments?

Tony, do you have anything that you want to\...?

MR. SWOOPE: Yes. I\'d like to take this opportunity to thank \-- as I
came in this morning and forgot to sign the book, Amy reminded me that I
need to sign to check in. And she says, \"Just think, this is your last
signing in the book.\"

And I said, \"Do I sign in as Tony or Anthony?\" And so I signed in as
Anthony, but I thought about what you said, Rita. But I just think I
want to thank each of you. You know, you think that you have asked a lot
out of us, but you have given so much to us. And from the bottom of my
heart and our staff, we thank you for your efforts.

You know, I learned \-- I\'ve been working with this Advisory Committee
since 1990 when I first came into office, came up here for a one-year
detail. And I found out that \-- we used to give recommendations and
you, the Committee, would fire them off to the Secretary, and the
Secretary would send them back to the Assistant Secretary, and they\'d
send it back to me to answer why we can\'t do that.

And so I thought that process through for about three or four years. And
my grandmother and my mother tried to raise me kind of you better start
work and you ought to do something differently. So then we\'d find a way
to get the Committee engaged in the process.

And I look back now as Tom talked about the recommendations that you\'ve
had, the 42, and we\'ve done 32 of them, and we\'re still working on
some of them, that that is really a significant accomplishment, and
it\'s all because of you.

And when you think of the 12 that might not be done yet, what I would
always do in my day when I was here would plan those for the next year.
And then somebody would always ask, \"Well, Tony, do you have any ideas
on here?\"

I said, \"Yes, I do.\" And we\'d write a \-- not a two-pager, but a
couple paragraphs to whet the appetite. And then there would always be a
way to get other people\'s money.

And so with that I thank you for kind of keeping the system alive. You
know, you are the public\'s input. I remember Marion Miller coming to
the Committee, showing you that 1920 or 1940 film \-- it\'s updated now
a little bit \-- just talking about the responsibilities of the public
and advisory committees.

I have really taken the adversary committees really very serious based
upon her input and Marion Winters\' input because, you know, you happen
to be the voice of our customers that are people that are looking for
opportunities and people that are engaged in the process.

It\'s nice that we have the Department of Labor. It\'s nice that we have
state government. But you actually become the voice. And my role and our
position is to listen and how do we make something happen from what you
say.

If there\'s any success that we\'ve had as a system it\'s all been
because of you guys. All the work that you\'ve done, all the input. And
you may think at times that things that you say is not taken, if we
don\'t use it, but if you think back again \-- and I remember Lester
saying last night the Apprenticeship Impact Project, and that was before
WIA was passed. And we were ahead of the curve.

The Advisory Committee said, \"You need to think some thoughts about how
apprenticeship can apply to the Act?\" So we did the focus groups. We
did all the stuff. And then the Act finally passed, and we had some idea
that we could begin the dialogue. Now it\'s 2007, going to 2008.

I am proud to be a part of this program, and I\'m saying not goodbye,
but saying thank you. And I will see you again. And as life goes on, all
the accomplishments we have I thank you from the bottom of my heart for
your personal sacrifice in coming to the meetings and helping Americans
have a better way of life.

Thank you very much.

CHAIR HARTNETT: Thank you.

(Applause.)

MS. SOEHNER: Well, it is the end of the year, and I always speak up at
the end of the year. And I just want to say a special thank you to the
OA staff for working so diligently to make all of our ideas happen and
to Coffey Communications for making our travel and our meeting so
pleasant and comfortable.

And, Tony, you are such a hero. I have met so many people from one end
of this country to the other who just want to emulate you. And in my few
years on the Committee I have watched apprenticeship soar like an eagle.
And I\'m absolutely convinced that you have been the wind beneath the
wings of that success. And you will be sorely missed. But even so I wish
you health and happiness and may God bless you in your retirement.

CHAIR HARTNETT: Thank you.

George.

MR. BLISS: On behalf of all the members from Labor, we wish everybody a
safe home and happy holidays.

CHAIR HARTNETT: I think I\'m going to get the last word here.

I had the job once that Patricia Smith had, who spoke to us earlier, the
Labor Department. And when I was Commissioner, I remember first walking
into the building, and everything I saw I thought needed to be changed.
Everything.

And then about five years later when I decided to leave, part of the
reason I decided to leave was I was starting to get comfortable with a
lot of stuff that I would have thought needed to be changed. So I\'m a
strong believer in change and people bringing new energy and whatever.

And I\'ve been on this Committee now for \-- for I don\'t know how long
actually \-- but I\'ve been Chair for at least the last six years or so.
So my appointment ends in April of 2008.

And I\'ve spoken with Emily and indicated to her that I\'d be happy to
do whatever I can to be helpful to the process, but that the Department
ought to appoint a new person as the Chair to bring a new look, and a
new energy, and whatever, to the process. I have thoroughly enjoyed
working with all you guys who made this very, very easy in terms of
making some really concrete, terrific recommendations. You\'ve really
moved the process forward. As I said early on, everybody has something
to contribute.

You know some people have been apprentices, and then been in the system,
and then now oversee a system, or you\'re a union president, or you\'re
a college president, or you\'re from the East Coast or the West Coast,
but all the input has been superb. And it\'s made the job very easy.

And whoever is the new Chair of the Committee after April, it\'ll be a
pleasure working with this group. You\'ve been terrific. So thanks very
much for all the support you\'ve given me through the years. And on that
I think we\'re adjourned.

(The Meeting was adjourned at 3:15 p.m.)

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