TUALATIN, OREGON — Local 290’s Training Center got a visit May 9 from two high-powered guests: Congresswoman Suzanne Bonamici (D-Oregon) and Congressman Bobby Scott (D-Virginia). Scott, the most senior Democrat on the U.S. House Education and Workforce Committee, was visiting Portland-area programs related to his committee’s mission, hosted by Bonamici, who also serves on the committee.
The two members of Congress and their staffs came to United Association of Plumbers and Steamfitters Local 290 to see what a state-of-the-art union apprenticeship training center looks like, and were given a tour by Local 290 training director Clare Shropshire and her husband, Local 290 business manager Al Shropshire. The enormous facility — funded entirely by union members and employers — has 30 classrooms and millions of dollars worth of technical equipment. Bonamici and Scott saw parts of it, including classrooms for training on med gas piping, HVAC systems, back-flow control devices, and orbital welding equipment.
Local 290 members install, maintain and repair pipes, not just in construction but in all kinds of high- and low-tech industrial applications, from paper mills to hospitals and semiconductor chip plants. About 400 apprentices are currently enrolled at the Tualatin training center and six satellite campuses around Oregon and Northern California. It’s a five-year training program that combines 8,000 hours of paid on-the-job training with 1,080 hours of job-related classroom training — two three-hour classes per week, tuition-free. At the end of it all, the apprentices become journeymen plumbers and steamfitters, and earn wages of $42.83 an hour plus $23.42 an hour in benefits.
What can Congress can do to help the training center succeed, Bonamici wanted to know. Just make sure young people get a good K-12 education, replied Al Shropshire. Local 290’s training program requires only a high school diploma or equivalent, but applicants have to have good reading comprehension and familiarity with basic math — especially algebra and trigonometry.
That — and tell people not to overlook careers in the trades — Clare Shropshire added.
“Most parents assume their kids should be on a college path, and don’t think about the trades,” she said, “but we have applicants with bachelors’ and masters’ degrees. These are good jobs.”
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