Again, it's about support. There are a lot of things that come into play.
When somebody gets started in our trade, the word on the street is if you become a union apprentice in the electrical trade, there's a very good wage to be had at the end of it all, with benefits and pensions and some security. The attraction is there right up front.
Throughout the whole process, they know they're going to get support. For instance, we talked about a tuition fee. Most of our locals reimburse the tuition fee for that apprentice, provided that they achieve a certain level of academic results.
Books are another expensive thing. We talked about EI coming in late and everything else. On top of that, in Ontario you have a $400 fee just to go to school, and then in our trade you have to buy another $300 to $400 in books. Then you've got to sit there with no money and you're making a low wage anyway, so we support all of that: we make sure they've got their books and we make sure they're going to get their tuition money back.
If they're having problems with their math—and generally the problems are with math and sciences for us—we have tutors for them. We have training centres. We have training directors. We make sure that we tell them to get in here and see us early if you're starting to have problems and you're falling behind. You've got to remember that often people don't start until they're 28, so by the time they go to trade school, they're 30.
By now, most of them have families or they've got bad habits as far as learning goes, and they're thrown into a school environment where they've got eight weeks to get up to speed. They cram everything into you in a very short period of time. There's a lot of information you have to absorb in eight weeks, so if you fall behind in the first week or two, you're not going to make it. It's as simple as that.
Most apprentices, if they don't have the union behind them, are left to their own devices to try to catch up, whereas we have something readily available. All they have to do is pick up the phone and say “Look, I need to talk to somebody here to get me up to speed or get me back on track.”