Apprenticeship Corner: What is apprenticeship?

The MBCEA is making significant efforts to create a bustling apprenticeship infrastructure specifically designed to serve the metal building industry.  This is being done in support of the organization’s primary mission to support professional advancement and raise the profile of the metal building erection industry.  Apprenticeship provides a wonderful opportunity for employers to provide workers with the advanced training needed to take their companies and the industry to the next level.

A short history lesson is in order.  Apprenticeship dates back to the Middle Ages when master craftsmen employed younger people to work in their specific trade.  The arrangement allowed for the craftsman to obtain an inexpensive form of labor and the trainee an opportunity to learn a craft that would allow them to make a living.  It developed through the centuries into something that became primarily a training tool pairing on-the-job training and academic study in a wide variety of professions.  Abraham Lincoln himself was a trained apprentice in the law.  In fact, apprenticeship is where the term “practicing lawyer” originates. 

Apprenticeship can be a “charged” word for some since a number of battle lines have been drawn between organized labor and open shop companies on this issue.  The reality, however, is that apprenticeship should be viewed as advanced training for workers regardless of labor affiliation.  There is no better opportunity to provide people a meaningful pathway in the metal building industry.  By combining classroom work with hands-on training, the worker can make the practical connection between concepts and application in the field.  Moreover, all of this is done while also retaining them as employees.  It's a true win-win situation.