Thank you for this opportunity to share our experience and our views on the important topic of apprenticeship. We welcome the standing committee's interest in this issue and look forward to the publication of your report.
My name is John Grimshaw. I am the executive secretary-treasurer of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, Construction Council of Ontario. The members of the local unions that are affiliated to the council comprise approximately 14,000 journeypersons and apprentices in the electrician trade. The vast majority of the journeypersons hold a Red Seal certification that ensures the recognition of their trade qualification across Canada. We also represent approximately 750 line workers in the high-voltage line trade, and we also represent approximately 400 communications workers.
Let me first share with you our strategy for ensuring that virtually all apprentices in our union successfully complete their apprenticeship.
We estimate that the completion rate for our apprentices is around 90%. The province of Ontario is all I am speaking about; I'm not talking about the country. We understand that the completion rate for other apprentices is between 50% and 60%.
First of all, we need to understand the number one reason apprentices drop out: they are laid off by their employer and are unable to get a job with another contractor who wants to hire an apprentice at the same level of training as theirs. In our union, we have a system that overcomes this problem. Each of our 11 local unions operates, in full partnership with employers, a joint apprenticeship committee. This committee, not individual employers, formally sponsors each apprentice. The union can dispatch an apprentice to any of the more than 800 employers that have signed a collective agreement with our union. In this way, if an apprentice is laid off by one employer, he or she can be reassigned to another employer, provided, of course, that there is work to be done.
In the construction industry, this system of sponsorship by a joint committee is far superior to sponsorship by an individual employer. The joint committee system removes most of the risk that an apprenticeship will be interrupted by a long spell of unemployment. In addition to this, an apprentice can receive a traveller's card that allows him or her to obtain work in any of our union's locals anywhere in Canada. Many apprentices, as well as journeypersons, do this.
The second important point we need to understand is that most young workers do not enter an apprenticeship immediately after high school. In Ontario, the average age of an apprentice in the electrician trade, according to our college of trades, is 28. That means that there is often a considerable gap between the time when young workers finish high school and when they start their apprenticeship training. Some of the math and science skills learned in high school may have eroded, as well as some of the classroom learning skills. Those skills, however, are critically important in our trade. To be a competent electrician requires a solid foundation in trade math to understand the formulas that are central to a large portion of electrical work.
In our union we provide significant additional support to our apprentices. For example, in our Toronto local this support includes 13 weeks of compulsory Saturday school to cover key topics in the trade, so as to better prepare our apprentices to succeed when they go to trade school at a community college; an additional 34 hours of compulsory training on safe working procedures; and regular meetings between the apprentice and representatives from the joint committee to ensure that the apprentice is getting the support he or she needs and is also getting the practice experience he or she is supposed to get.
Most of our other locals—for example, my own Hamilton local—provide similar support to apprentices. This support is absolutely fundamental to achieving a high rate of successful completion. The absence of this support is another reason that the completion rate is so low in some segments of the electrical contracting industry.
In northwestern Ontario, our local union operates a special program for first nations young workers to bring their educational standards up to the level that is required for success in one of our apprenticeships. Over the last five years, our Thunder Bay local has graduated 30 young first nations workers from this program. They have gone on to be successful apprentices, and many have now completed their training. Without that initial support and then the ongoing support that all apprentices in our union receive, there is no way that many of these young first nations workers would have succeeded in their training.
The third point we need to understand about completion rates is that successful completion requires a joint investment: both the apprentice and the employer have to be committed to the successful completion the apprentice's training.
In the system that our union runs with our employers, that joint investment is a given. The joint committee selects, sponsors, and meets with the apprentices to ensure that they are taking both the courses that we require and also their trade school courses. The joint committee also meets with the apprentices to confirm that they are getting full exposure to all facets of the trade when they are on the job.
What is true for our union and our employers is not always true of other employers. There are many employers who see apprentices only as a source of low-cost labour. Those employers have no intention of hiring the apprentice when he or she completes training, and indeed they don't care whether he or she completes the training: as long as they have not completed their training, they are cheaper. Quite often those types of employers also make no effort to expose the apprentice to all facets of the trade. It is not surprising that so many apprentices drop out or fail their trade school examinations in that environment.
That brings me to federal programs to support apprenticeship.
Grants or tax subsidies to employers are a useful incentive. We support them. However, and this is a key point, those grants or subsidies should be back-end loaded: the employer should receive a grant or subsidy when the apprentice successfully completes different stages of the apprenticeship, and the amount of support should increase in the latter stages of the apprenticeship.
The current grant and subsidy programs give opportunistic employers an incentive to churn first- and second-year apprentices through their workforce without ever actually investing in their training or committing to support them through to completion. Economics still works. When you subsidize bad behaviour, you will get more of it, and that is precisely what is happening.
It is easy to fix: reconfigure the support you give to employers so that they receive increasing amounts of support as the apprentice completes each stage of his or her training.
The fourth point I want to make pertains to changes in policy that have had a negative effect. There are two that are relevant.
The first goes back to the mid-1990s. Historically, when apprentices left their jobs to go to trade school for eight weeks, they received eight weeks of EI benefits. As you know, that was changed so that apprentices, like any other unemployed worker, had a two-week waiting period before EI benefits commenced, so instead of receiving eight weeks of EI wage replacement benefits, they now receive only six weeks. I want to urge you to take a look at this issue again. Young workers do not save their money. The prospect of going for two weeks without any income is inevitably a deterrent to some young workers and discourages them from going to trade school. As a result, they abandon their apprenticeship training, and the subsidy that was paid to the employer is completely wasted.
The second policy change—I realize it is not a federal responsibility—is that in Ontario, the provincial government allowed the colleges to impose a tuition charge on apprentices. At present, that fee is $400 for each eight-week session of trade school. The combined effect of eliminating two weeks of EI benefits and adding a tuition charge has been to significantly increase the cost of training that must be borne by an apprentice. Again, I think economics still works. When you raise the price of something, you will get less of it. When you raise the price of going to trade school, you will inevitably get fewer apprentices completing their training.
You have to acknowledge that there is a tension, if not a contradiction, between our aspirations and our policies. On the one hand, we are all anxious about the large number of apprentices who do not complete their training. On the other hand, the subsidies to employers encourage employers to churn first- and second-year apprentices through their workforce but give employers no incentive to invest in the apprentice's successful completion of his or her training. At the same time, joint committees that invest substantial resources in supporting apprentices receive little or no support for their work. Then, to compound the problem, other changes in policy have significantly raised the cost to an apprentice of completing his or her training.
We need more consistency between our aspirations and our policies. We sincerely hope that you will address this problem.
Thanks again. If you have any questions, I would be pleased to provide you with answers.
