Ironworker Outreach
Ironwork is primarily about building things: raising steel structures, working rebar to reinforce concrete, adding finer touches of ornamental metal—all of the work that lifts buildings and other structures up. (Then the rest of the trades come along and add to what we built.) It’s relatively straightforward. But building and maintaining an Ironworkers union, well, that’s not nearly as straightforward. Adding apprentices, bringing in new journeymen, maintaining standards—all of those things are necessary to have a strong union. And a big part of that is outreach.
What is Outreach?
It’s recruiting new apprentices, basically. Trying to let people know about ironwork as a career, and the impact it can have on a person’s life. Sometimes it’s just planting the seed in a high school student’s head; other times it’s showing someone who needs a new career that ironwork might be for them.
Who Do Ironworkers Reach Out To?
In a word, everyone. We’ve mentioned before that the Ironworkers Local #512 welcomes people from all walks of life. Our ideal Ironworker candidate is someone in their mid-20s who has tried a different profession or college and found it wasn’t a good fit. People in that situation typically have a keen interest in the benefits the Ironworkers’ Union has to offer; many of them have the kind of everyday responsibilities, like a spouse, child, mortgage, etc., that help motivate them to go to work every day. But it is very hard to find a place that gathers people with those specific circumstances in one place. So, we reach out to schools.
We hold more than 50 outreach events across all three of our regions each year, and most of that involves high schools or trade schools. College welding programs, in particular, are a good place to find future Ironworkers. They usually are full of people who like working with their hands, building things, and are often looking for alternatives to what can be pretty boring factory work.
Why Reach Out?
New Ironworker apprentices are the fresh blood of the union. They come in, start their “earn while you learn” apprenticeship, and they see the benefits in their bank accounts right away. On a jobsite, it also quickly becomes clear that by becoming a journeyman Ironworker they can build a long, successful career and enjoy a dignified retirement. But what isn’t as obvious is that their earnings also help support the Ironworker’s Union as a whole, which means helping to pay for retirement and health care for their older brothers and sisters, exactly the way those older brothers and sisters helped grow and support the union’s membership when they were apprentices. Ironworkers call each other “brother” and “sister” because the relationships are, in fact, almost familial (sometimes they literally are; ironwork seems to be passed from parent to child like brown hair or blue eyes). But we need new apprentices to keep the work going and the union thriving. That’s why we spend so much effort on outreach.
Ironworker Outreach Events
Our outreach events are kind of like job fairs, but centered on the construction trades. There will typically be representatives from the Ironworkers, of course, but also several other unions: carpenters, laborers, electricians, boilermakers, bricklayers, masons, and many more. These different apprenticeship programs will gather at some central location, like a high school. But it can also be a larger venue, such as Grand Casino in Hinckley, Canterbury Downs in Shakopee, the Rochester Convention Center, AMSOIL Arena in Duluth, the Boy Scouts Center at Fort Snelling, North Dakota State University’s Fargodome, and more. Students are bussed to these events, and we all pitch them on the benefits of a career in the building trades. Sometimes we talk to 1,500 students in a day at these events.
Another way the Ironworkers do outreach is to host students from area high schools and other community groups at any of our three of our training centers in St. Paul, MN, Hermantown, MN, and Bismarck, ND. These groups spend anywhere from a couple of hours to a few days learning what Ironworkers do, seeing some of the work, and getting a sense of what ironwork is like from Ironworkers themselves. These events are generally our most effective: people who are interested in ironwork can get hands-on experience and really get a feel for whether they think they’d like ironwork.
No matter how an Ironworker finds their way to Ironworkers Local #512, they quickly find they are part of a hard-working community that supports and lifts each other up. And that might be just as much of an appeal as the good wages, benefits, and retirement. (But those help a lot, too.)
