GLFEA / I.W.25 / OE324 Raising Gang Training
Takes Off with Dedication, 'Topping Out'

Howell, Mich., Nov. 1, 2002 - Enhanced safety, better trained, safer and more productive craftspeople, and fewer jurisdictional issues because future trades people will have learned their craft in an atmosphere that allowed them to get under the other person's hardhat. That's the hope and promise its planners expect from the new joint operator/ironworker apprentice training program begun recently in Michigan.

Developed by a partnership of the Great Lakes Fabricators & Erectors Association (GLFEA), www.glfea.org, Iron Workers Local 25 (I.W. 25), www.ironworkers25.org, and Operating Engineers Local 324 (OE 324), www.iuoe324.org, the joint Raising Gang Training Program is thought to be the first of its kind in the country in which two separate unions cooperate on apprentice education. And, the new 5-story structural steel practice frame, donated to the program by the employer group, GLFEA, is said to be the largest steel skeleton in the country currently used for apprentice training.

Speaking at the dedication ceremony prior to 'topping out' the new Raising Gang practice frame are, from the left: Gary Montie, Iron Workers Local 25 (retired); Gary Ganton, coordinator, OE324 Journeyman & Apprentice Training Fund Education Center, Howell; Sam T. Hart, Vice President, International Union of Operating Engineers and Business Manager and General Vice President, IUOE, Local 324; Richard Mee, Chief, Bureau of Safety & Regulation (MIOSHA), Construction Safety Division, Michigan Dept. of Consumer & Industry Services; Michigan Senator Dianne Byrum (D-Dist. 25, Ingham County); Stephen Brown, Director of Construction Training, International Union of Operating Engineers, Washington, D.C.; William Treharne, P.E., GLFEA Past President and current board member and chair, Iron Workers Local 25 Joint Apprenticeship Committee of Eastern Michigan, and Director of Administration & Engineering, Midwest Steel Inc., Detroit; Frank D. Kavanaugh, Business Manager and Financial Secretary-Treasurer, Iron Workers Local 25, Novi, and Michael Fitzpatrick, General Secretary, International Association of Bridge, Structural, Ornamental and Reinforcing Iron Workers.

The advanced program for third and fourth year apprentices and the practice frame were dedicated in a ceremony highlighted by a traditional "topping out," on Wednesday, Oct. 23rd at the OE324 Journeyman & Apprentice Training Fund (JATF) Education Center in Howell. More than 150 contractors, ironworkers, operating engineers, and other construction professionals were there to see the historic program in action.

The safety subcommittee of the GLFEA/Iron Workers Local 25 Labor Management Committee conceived the idea for the joint ironworker/operator training as a response to the then impending revisions to the federal structural steel erection standard, Subpart R of 29 CFR 1926.750-761, and to the Michigan standard, Part 26-Steel Erection, Michigan Occupational Safety & Health Act (MIOSHA) (www.michigan.gov/cis). The amended federal standard (www.osha.gov), became effective Jan. 18, 2002, and the revised Michigan rule took effect on Sept. 18, 2002.

"We don't have any idea how many lives we're going to save with this training," I.W. 25 Apprentice Coordinator Doug Levack said. Levack allowed that when his former boss, Ed Abbott, now a general organizer with the International Association of Bridge, Structural, Ornamental and Reinforcing Iron Workers in Washington, D.C., told him about the raising gang project, his reaction was: "This sounds too good to be true."

'Five Men and a Rig'

Before the first class was held on May 6 this year, the Raising Gang Training Program involved developing the program, designing and fabricating the practice frame, creating drawings, preparing the site in Howell, and writing a Collection of Best Practices for Structural Steel Erection for use in the training. The practice frame is approximately 50-ft. x 75-ft. x up to 60-ft. high and contains roughly 150 tons of various structural steel shapes, including one 75-ft. truss. At the site, apprentices gain hands-on experience while learning safe practices in the varied functions of a typical raising gang, the five ironworkers and one operator ? the "five men and a rig" ? who set structural steel for buildings and bridges: assembling cranes, loading and unloading trucks, and shaking out, hooking on, and erecting steel.

The GLFEA/Iron Workers Local 25/Operating Engineers Local 324 Raising Gang project is thought to be the only one of its kind and scale in the country in which two distinct unions, plus the employer group, are cooperating on a structured apprentice training program.

The entire GLFEA membership is totally supportive of the new raising gang program, GLFEA Executive Director Jim Walker said. "It's a very real advantage for contractors to be confident they can call up a union hall and hire a well-trained and highly skilled workforce," he said. "This special raising gang training has significantly raised the level of apprentice training and will make Michigan ironworkers and operators the best trained, safest, and most efficient and productive professionals in the country. Future plans call for using the practice and developing a program specifically for steel erection foremen and for architecture and engineering students. In addition, the frame is ideal for research or studying constructability issues in structural steel construction. "

Following welcoming remarks by Gary Ganton, coordinator of the OE324 Howell Education Center, IUOE Vice President and OE324 Business Manager and General Vice President Sam T. Hart emceed a short program of speakers prior to topping out the practice frame. "Training and education is the difference between us and the competition," Hart said. "The unions that train and educate their members will always, always be out in the forefront. Those that don't will be gone or absorbed by somebody else. The training program we're commemorating today is a very, very important step," he continued. "We have to educate our members today, tomorrow, and into the future, and that's going to be the difference between us and the competition."

Hart said the joint raising gang training program is the "first step toward eliminating jurisdictional problems because those that work together, train together, and know each other - someday in the future those jurisdictional problems will be minimal because everybody will know each other. They'll know each other from going through joint training programs like the one we're doing here today. Everybody will know the other person's problems in the trades."

The Raising Gang Project's new 5-story high practice frame consists of approximately 150 tons of structural steel shapes featuring a variety of sizes and connections to enhance its educational value. Engineers Ruby & Associates Inc., Farmington Hills, Mich., designed four building configurations to offer students several erection options.

'Best Raising Gang Training in North America'

GLFEA Past President and current board member William Treharne, P.E., expressed particular pride in the cooperation among the two unions and employer association. "All these people came together with one goal, one focus in mind, and that is to provide the best raising gang training in North America," he said. "It's not done yet, but we've got a great start here."

Treharne, director of administration and engineering at Midwest Steel Inc., Detroit, (www.midweststeel.com), chairs the I.W. Local 25 Joint Apprenticeship Committee of Eastern Michigan. He said he's convinced the trade union concept is the "most efficient and safest way" to get structures built. "The keystone is trained craftspeople," he said. "I'm really proud that everybody came together with that goal, and we've put our money where our mouth is." He described I.W. 25's apprentice program as having a "million-dollar-a-year budget. This past year, the union has also spent close to $400,000 on journeyman upgrading with the Safe2Work safety training classes developed by GLFEA and the Great Lakes Construction Alliance. Approximately $300,000 was spent on producing the training frame being used in the new program. "And the operators have donated more than $1 million of equipment just for the raising gang training."

"Between us and the contractor, we pay for it all," Hart added. "Nobody's going to do it for us. That's the bottom line. We have to train our own if there's going to be any training done."

The frame can be erected in four different building configurations offering a variety of erection options and can be used to train two raising gangs at one time, explained Gary Ganton, Coordinator of the OE324's training facility in Howell. "As a training tool, it exceeds the expense by the value of it." In the four months since the first apprentice class held its week-long training session in May, Ganton said the two unions have logged more than 1500 hours of raising gang training. Eighty apprentices have gone through the class so far, taking advantage of "over 150 years of experience with the instructors working on the program."

For OE324, that includes crane instructors Mike Sherwood and John Hartwell, and for the ironworkers, in addition to Levack, there is Dallas Compeau, I.W. 25 Flint Campus instructor and recipient of the 2002 Craftsman of the Year award from NEA - The Association of Union Contractors (www.nea-online.org), and Mike Relyin, assistant apprentice coordinator. In addition, both ironworker and operator apprentices are benefiting from the expertise of four retired I.W. 25 journeymen who have been donating their time and talent to the project since the beginning: Gary Montie, Mark Morton, Al Friend, and William "Sonny" Wilburn.

'Recipe for a Good Hand'

Montie, who along with the other retirees wrote the best practices booklet, told the assembled construction professionals "there's a recipe for a good hand. It doesn't matter if you're and ironworker, an operator, or a librarian. There are some key ingredients. First and most important is you've got to have a good attitude. You've got to be workwise on the job and you've got to be safety minded. And you've got to be proud of what you do." Praising the ironworkers who supervised him and the other retirees when they were coming up in the field, Montie said they weren't just ironworkers, they were 'bridgemen'."

"These guys started in an era when they might not even have had hardhats or gloves," he said. "What they brought with them was a lot of gung-ho (enthusiasm) and a lot of pride." He said he and the other retirees on the Raising Gang project hoped they could give to current apprentices what the bridgemen of years ago gave them. "So instead of just operators, down the road we're going to have some long boom operators," he said. "And at the end of their apprenticeship after four years instead of just ironworkers, with time and experience, we're going to have some bridgemen."

In the audience, retired I.W. 25 apprentice instructor Don Nothelfer was full of praise for the new training program and practice frame. A member of the Local 25 since 1940, Nothelfer hired on in 1956 to teach at a school established on the Mackinac Bridge construction site and he also taught in Saginaw and Detroit. "They cleaned out a coal bin for me to have my class in the old Saginaw high school," Nothelfer said, illustrating how much things have changed. Learning from journeymen on the job sometimes works, and sometimes doesn't, he said, voicing emphatic approval for the structured program now in place. "Most were real good (about sharing what they knew)," he said. "But, once in awhile you'd get a clinker who wouldn't tell you anything."

Training is becoming more and more important for the trades, observed Richard Mee, chief of the Construction Safety Division of the Michigan Bureau of Safety & Regulation, Department of Consumer and Industry Services.

"The single most cited violation in MIOSHA (Michigan Occupational Safety & Health Act) is the accident prevention program which most often translates into training," Mee said. "About one out of every eight employers that are inspected who have violations also have a violation for the accident prevention program. And when we go into investigate accidents we find that half to three-quarters of the employers cited in accident investigations also have training problems. So training is related to a lot of accidents and that's becoming increasingly so as the workplace becomes more complex."

Expressing his pride at representing MIOSHA at the Raising Gang dedication, Mee said "… it's obvious that there's a lot of forward thinking here, a lot of progressive thinking." He related how he'd answered his 5-year-old granddaughter's question about his schooling by telling her when he was young there were no schools and people back then had to find a smart person and follow them around all day. "With the direction all this is going in, I think everyone … will recognize that operators and ironworkers are well-trained professionals and no longer will anybody in the building trades in Michigan have to find a smart person and follow them around all day."

Stephen Brown, director of apprentice training with the International Union of Operating Engineers in Washington, D.C., said IUOE General President Frank Hanley " … would be proud to be here and see this effort. It's a great effort and this is something to be proud of. But it's also a chance for us to develop meaningful respect for each other. This is where we get a chance to learn and where we get inside each other's craft. The idea behind this is to prevent fatalities and career-ending injuries and (learn to) produce for the contractor."

Training is the Backbone

Observing that training is the backbone of both of our organizations," Iron Workers International General Secretary Mike Fitzpatrick said joint training like the I.W. 25/OE324/GLFEA Raising Gang program is a major step toward achieving a goal of reducing jurisdictional disputes among unions. He said current changes in safety regulations, the certifications that are now needed, and on-going efforts to "keep contractors in the black" are things unions should be coming together over. "You walk off a job it never does anybody any good," Fitzpatrick said. "You're a hell of a lot better off staying on the job and figuring out what is wrong and getting it settled." He said having a joint training effort like the Raising Gang program is " … certainly going to bring us into the future and make sure that we're always going to be there."

Michigan Sen. Dianne Byrum (D-Dist 25, Ingham County) pledged her support for prevailing wage and crane certification legislation as she congratulated the two unions and the employers' group for the raising gang program. "We have to be progressive in our thoughts and that means we have to invest in training and education," Sen. Byrum said. "To be able to have a joint training program - the Joint Raising Gang Training Program - that brings the two trades together and demonstrates that the business side and the labor side of the economy can work together for the benefit of not only the workers and their families but for the entire economy and business sector of Michigan is something that we should stand tall and celebrate."

I.W. 25 Business Manager Frank D. Kavanaugh allowed that "ironworkers are even a little bit more than progressive.

"We're aggressive. And we have an aggressive group of contractors, particularly the Great Lakes Fabricators & Erectors. It's nice to see in this day and age when we do have so many problems with jurisdiction that there's still a spirit of cooperation that exists to benefit the youth that are coming into the trade.