Individuals attending these schools have shown they are determined to enter into a piping related career.  They pay thousands of dollars of their own money and, depending on their previous experience, invest a minimum of six to nine months completing the pipe welder certification process.  The UA is taking a giant step toward securing the market of properly trained and certified welders.

Credit is given by the UA for training received through vocational welding training programs.  Completion of the 9-month Structural and Pipe Welding Program at the Hobart Institute of Welding Technology, coupled with successfully passing the UA welding tests, can shorten the candidate’s apprenticeship program in the UA as much as two years to those who qualify.  The normal apprenticeship program is five years.  Following Hobart training, that time may be less.  Hobart graduates who can document at least five years of experience may be placed as Journeymen within the United Association.

The UA initiated the recruitment program to enhance normal apprenticeship entry, local union organizing efforts, and to further strengthen the United Association’s position in the construction market.  The UA is currently experiencing a shortage of hundreds of welders nationwide and expects this shortage to increase dramatically.  This shortage of welders and other specialty skilled tradesmen represents a critical problem for the UA and signatory contractors.  An industrial boom is just beginning and the problem of manning UA jobs will increase significantly.  Whoever provides the welders will control the mechanical piping industry market.

The core group of Journeymen that make the UA contractors so successful are in their mid-forties.  Over the next ten to fifteen years, these members will be moving into well-earned retirement.  The UA must plan for the time when these craftsmen are no longer available.  During the past two years, 10,000 first-year apprentices entered training each year.  Over the next three years, the UA will be training 50,000 men and women.  This impressive number of apprentices will barely keep pace with retirements, deaths and attrition of present-day Journeymen. 

The recruitment of skilled workers is a viable means of increasing the UA pool of talented people.  The UA is a dominant force within the construction and service industries, driven by a well-trained and growing workforce.  The program is successful because it offers more than a good job – it offers a career and life-long learning.  Apprenticeship and training, organizing and recruitment are powerful tools that will insure a strong future for the United Association in the years to come. 

Hobart Institute graduates who are interested in the UA Welder Recruitment Program may contact UA Special Repersentative Randy Ward at 1-202-628-5823 - ext. 259 or randyw@uanet.org.