The trades are booming in Durham — but the apprenticeships pipeline is clogged
Well-paid jobs are available, but apprentices are failing to complete their training
This is the second article in a short series ‘Oshawa: The frontline of changing work.’ Under the cloud of General Motors’ impending closure, SCP has spoken to people throughout the Durham region to understand what the changing landscape of work means at a local level.
While the Durham region prepares for a mass layoff of auto workers, which we explored in the first article of our series, another sector is revving up for a hiring spree. Far from the “knowledge economy” often associated with the future of work, these new jobs are much more physical: the skilled trades.
With new infrastructure projects hitting the area — from highway and rail extensions to nuclear power plant refurbishments — the demand for skilled tradespeople is continuing to boom. It’s estimated that by 2021, one in five new jobs in Ontario will be in trades-related occupations, while nearly 20% of the current construction workforce are due to retire in the next decade.
Not only could this boom present potential new employment for laid off auto workers, but it could also help lower-educated young people find a path into employment. Youth unemployment in the Oshawa area is more than double the general unemployment rate, and the number of young people in Ontario who aren’t employed, attending school or in training is on the rise.
The apprenticeship system, however, may not be up to the task. Less than half of apprentices in Ontario complete their apprenticeships, while policymakers are struggling to convince employers to invest in training, and years of playing second fiddle to university education has reduced the pipeline of quality candidates.
So what’s going on in the trades in Durham, and what can be done to help people into it?
Going nuclear
One of the biggest job creators in Durham’s skilled trades is nuclear energy. Ontario Power Generation (OPG) is refurbishing its plant in Darlington, an area just south east of Oshawa, and is in desperate need of new workers.
“Work in nuclear is kicking off like it’s never been,” said Helen Viveiros, Manager of Resource Planning at OPG. “We’re going to start seeing a real squeeze in the next five to ten years.”
In response to the General Motors news, OPG has been in talks about taking on some of their staff. “There are a lot of similarities in terms of our industries,” Viveiros said. Those with strong backgrounds in electrical or maintenance, for example, could be taken on straight away by the trade unions as third-year apprentices or even journeypersons. OPG hires workers from unions, who themselves register and train tradespeople, sending them out to different contracts in the province or even across Canada.
As OPG await developments with GM, it is actively building a talent pipeline locally, and has launched a new training model in partnership with Durham College and the International Brotherhood of Boilermakers. A boilermaker builds all of the major vessels in a plant, such as distillation towers, furnaces and oil storage tanks. With the refurbishments planned, they’re in very high demand.
“I feel like high school tries to make it seem like there’s no potential in the trades”
Usually the Boilermakers union conducts the training, but they don’t have the capacity to meet OPG’s demand themselves. So in the first program of its kind, OPG is helping to fund a three-week pre-apprenticeship training course at the college to fast-track around 100 new people into the boilermaker trade, giving them a basic introduction into essentials like health and safety and welding.
Sage Nardolillo, a 19-year-old from Bowmanville, recently completed the pre-apprenticeship course. Within just two weeks he was learning on the job at OPG in Darlington. With pay starting at over $26 an hour, it’s a great first job, and the location is an added bonus. “It’s only 10 minutes away from my house,” he said.
Attracting new talent
In order to meet the increasing demand at OPG and elsewhere, the trades need to rebuild their reputation as a quality career choice. Among tradespeople in Durham, there’s an overwhelming sense that teachers, parents and governments have stigmatized the skilled trades in recent decades and put young people off.
“I feel like high school tries to make it seem like there’s no potential in the trades,” said Nardolillo. “They want everybody to work in an office.” For him and virtually everyone else you speak to, connections to friends and family in the trades — and not the education system — sent them down that route.
In recent changes, the Ontario government are making early exposure to the trades a priority, which is a popular move in the community. “They’re doing a very good job at trying to create a parallel,” said Adam Melnick, Director of Community and Government Relations at the local insulators’ union HFIL 95. “Kids in high school should be getting the opportunity to learn these skills.”
More needs to be done, however, to address the “elephant in the room,” said Tara Brodie, Director of Corporate Training Services at Durham College, which is women in trades. Vastly outnumbered by men, women can feel underrepresented and intimidated. “The tide is turning,” she said, “but you’re isolating potentially a whole demographic from these programs.”
“The average dropout is around two years... You’re well past a six-figure investment at this point”
Mackenzie Rusaw, a 26-year-old woman from Newcastle who started her career in advertising, is one of very few women who’s been through the boilermaker pre-apprenticeship program, and is now working at OPG. She’s been fortunate to have a female boilermaker to show her the ropes, though lots of little things remind her that she’s breaking the mould. “Where there’s a man’s washroom, there’s not always a female washroom,” she said. “Little things like that.”
Failure to launch
The challenges of the trades in Durham, however, become much more complex and difficult when you look outside the large companies and unions. A majority of workers in the trades are non-union: only around 30% of construction workers in Canada are unionized. Especially among small and medium employers, the non-union world of trades is characterized by an unwillingness to take on entry-level apprentices.
The costs of taking on an apprentice — due to the loss of time, productivity, wages and training — are significant for a small company, and those costs are particularly high in the first year or two when they’re first learning the ropes. “The average dropout is around two years,” said Melnick, who has been appointed to advise the Ontario Government to help make the apprenticeship system more user-friendly. “You’re well past a six-figure investment at this point,” he said.
Many small employers, therefore, don’t want to risk investing in employees who may quit or be poached by others who can offer better packages. Financial incentives exist from the government, such as the Apprenticeship Training Tax Credit which offers up to $5,000 per year for three years, but these pale in comparison to the employer’s investment. Also, most of the incentives are not tied to apprentices actually completing their apprenticeship: there is only a one-time, taxable completion bonus of $1,000 for finishing training and becoming certified.
Filling a vacuum
These issues demonstrate how much more needs to be done to support and incentivize employers, especially small shops, to take on apprentices. Even the time-consuming bureaucracy and paperwork of registering an apprenticeship can put people off. “Running a small business, there’s only so many hours in the day and I already work six or seven days a week,” said Dave Wilson, who runs Fusion Electrical Services in Oshawa.
As was highlighted in an Auditor General report in 2016, the Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities (MTCU) has failed to adequately monitor training and provide help to employers whose apprentices are not finishing. This matters because, without the right support and organization, there are several potential points during an apprenticeship where apprentices may drop out of the process.
“The apprentices are lost on how to complete and report back to the ministry, because it’s not really ever explained to them and they don’t know who to ask,” said Huong Nguyen, Operations Manager at Support Ontario Youth (SOY), a non-profit which supports electrical apprentices. “There’s definitely a gap in terms of government support.”
Working closely with the Ontario Electrical League (OEL) and other organizations, SOY has created a pool of electrical apprentices themselves for employers to access when needed. SOY registers apprentices, works with electrical employers to place them in jobs, and provides wraparound support — such as ensuring they’re getting their hours of training and gaining different competencies. In a system beset by miscommunication and a lack of information, they provide a one-stop shop for apprentices and their employers.
“It’s not that big a community out here, so to borrow employees for a couple of days is no big deal”
Working with local groups of smaller employers, SOY is working to build a promising new model: shared apprenticeships, whereby apprentices registered with SOY can move around different employers. This allows them to gain different competencies, while also going where they are most needed — demand can fluctuate quickly in the trades. Evidence from Australia and elsewhere has suggested a shared model can overcome small-and-medium-enterprises’ barriers to participating in the apprenticeship system, such as lack of administrative support and the difficulty of giving apprentices time off for training.
It’s early days, but small electrical employers in Durham have expressed support for such a scheme, which sometimes already happens unofficially. Ultimately, a more widespread scheme depends on trust between employers at a local level. “It’s not that big a community out here, so to borrow employees for a couple of days is no big deal” said Wilson. “I wouldn’t steal a friend of mine’s employees.”
Redesigning the system
Surrounding the efforts of SOY and others is a complete revamp of the apprenticeships system by the Ontario government. Some of these moves have been controversial, such as the deregulation of traditional trades into “portable skill sets” whereby certifications are split into a number of smaller qualifications. While added flexibility could get more people on a job site, concerns have been raised about how this could be implemented, and whether it might harm health and safety standards.
What is clear is that the pipeline of new apprenticeships is clogged. Any reforms to the system must encourage employers to take on and support apprentices in completing their training.
In the long-term, policymakers can’t afford to stop promoting the trades. While the supply of workers is currently matching demand, huge projected increases mean the pipeline of talent needs to grow. Fortunately, making the argument for this work is actually fairly simple.
“You want to try and get these kids into the trades? Let them know that it’s one of the quietest ways to make 100,000 dollars a year or more,” said Wilson. “But you got to work for it.”
