"The Pipe Trades have helped protect public health and the environment by their campaign for safe building materials." - Tom Adams, Board President, California League of Conservation Voters
Apprentice Training
Stephan Schnell
When Stephan Schnell, 26, of San Bruno, CA, graduated from high school in the late 90s, he chose a career in plumbing because he knew he wanted to work with his hands. At the beginning of his career, he entered the Plumbing Heating and Cooling Contractors Association (PHCC)'s apprenticeship program for more education.
During his tenure with PHCC, Stephan found the program to be consistently substandard. The instructors "taught straight out of a textbook and didn't have much experience as a plumber day to day," he noted. One of his instructors was only an occasional handyman who knew how to fix minor repairs and couldn't answer most of Stephan's and his classmates' questions.
Stephan became increasingly dissatisfied with his training. He quickly learned that many of the good plumbing jobs involved new construction and that he needed real training to be eligible for those opportunities. After two years, he left PHCC and became an apprentice with the California State Pipe Trades' program at Local 467.
Stephan was happy to find that the union apprentice program invested more resources in hands-on training for pipe fitting systems and offered more demonstrations for students to learn how to do plumbing installation. In contrast, the PHCC program offered only two demonstrations in the two years Stephan was an apprentice there.
Now in his fourth year of the apprentice program, Stephan hopes to keep working with his current employer when he graduates and to eventually become a foreman.
