News

BART Credits Center & Transit Elevator/Escalator Consortium w/Helping to Maintain its Skilled Labor

Posted February 2017

BART has a lot of elevators and escalators to maintain. In a recent article, the Elevator/Escalator Consortium member recognized its involvement in the Consortium as an important part of its ability to maintain the 175 escalators, 132 elevators and three wheelchair lifts within the agency’s system. In order to keep the pipeline of highly skilled El/Es technicians moving, BART runs an in-house, formally recognized, registered joint labor-management apprenticeship training program. BART’s frontline maintenance workforce is represented by SEIU Local 1021.

The program, established with help from the Center is based on the Elevator/Escalator Consortium model. Andrew Lee, Apprenticeship Consultant with California’s Division of Apprenticeship Standards, stressed, “There are so many things that you need to do to stay in compliance, each apprentice needs to be exposed to all of the different duties and have classroom instruction as well as many hours of on-the-job training.” “There is a shortage of transportation workers, absolutely, and the apprenticeship program seeks to fill that void. Across many different industries, businesses are having a hard time finding skilled workers. The best way is to train them in-house so that you are investing in them, and then you reap the rewards. It really helps in terms of loyalty to the organization,” he said. Two El/Es Consortium Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) featured in the article, George Younger and Phill Collins, are involved in the training of BARTs “newly skilled workforce.”

For more information on the Transit Elevator/Escalator Training Consortium:
-    Contact Project Manager Jim Kinahan
-    View sample courseware on Transit Training Network

Apprenticeship Highlighted at National Skills Coalition Skills Summit

Center program manager, Tia Brown, participated in the 2017 National Skills Coalition (NSC) Skills Summit on February 5-7, 2017. The focus of the summit was to tackle a range of federal policies that impact the shared skills agenda. Topics included the Apprenticeship, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) reauthorization, the Higher Education Act and Perkins Act Reauthorization, and rebuilding and up-skilling the workforce. There were over 300 participants that came from across the country to participate in this skills summit. The final day of the conference consisted of over 200 meetings with congressional staff and members on Capitol Hill. These meetings were held with state delegations to discuss the future of the workforce within the new administration. For more information about the National Skills Coalitions and/or the skills summit, please visit their webpage at: http://www.nationalskillscoalition.org/.