At a time when wages for many Americans have stagnated, and in a city where unemployment outpaces the national average, trade unions still offer young people an opportunity to earn things that seem almost lost to the pages of history books: a living wage, health insurance, a retirement pension.
Cory McCray, an organizer with IBEW Local 24 and presumptive delegate for the 45th district, at a training school run by the union in Baltimore. (Photo by Roberto Alejandro)
For Cory McCray, an organizer with the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 24, and one of the presumptive delegates to the Maryland General Assembly for the 45 District in Baltimore, the trades offer an important opportunity not only for young people who may not see college directly in their future after the completion of their secondary education, but for the city as well.
“The trades offer an occupation where you don’t have to have a college degree, maybe something similar to the nursing service or construction, just that, in general, where you can still make a decent wage,” said McCray during a recent conversation with the AFRO at a training school for apprentice electrical workers run by IBEW Local 24. “That’s very very hard to find where you don’t have to have a bachelor’s or a master’s and still be able to make $60, $70, $80,000. So that’s one thing that offers to the city.”
To Tim Medford, an instructor at the training school in his 23rd year of teaching, that economic stability represents an asset that one can take wherever they go and that never expires.
“Once we teach you how to use those tools, they can never be taken away from you,” said Medford.
First year apprentices, about 100 of which IBEW Local 24 takes on every year, earn a stipend while in school and are also regularly in the field, earning a wage, from the beginning of their apprenticeship period, which lasts five years. That includes overtime on Saturdays and double-time on Sundays should the apprentices work on weekends. Three dollar annual raises are guaranteed for those who meet all the program requirements, a rare benefit in today’s economy.
According to the Economic Policy Institute, a nonprofit think tank that seeks to include the needs of low and middle-income workers in national economic policy discussions, median hourly compensation has only improved by 11 percent since 1973, despite an 80 percent growth in productivity during the same period. Since 2000, productivity has risen 23 percent, yet median hourly compensation has only increased 4 percent.
But economically viable young people is not the only benefit offered by the trades to the city. IBEW has sought to be active in the community, putting on a day of action on Oct. 18, at McElderry Park in east Baltimore, where Local 24 members helped to clean the park and maintain its gardens.
More importantly, however, McCray sees the trades, whether electrical, plumbers and steamfitters, carpenters, roofers, etc., as important partners for the city in building a sustainable wealth and tax base here in Baltimore City, keeping the city’s investment dollars in the local economy as opposed to flowing up I-95 to contractors from Pennsylvania and New Jersey.
“We need to take advantage of we’re doing a lot of building, we have many hospitals, we have many college institutions, we need to take advantage of those private sector employers and make sure that we have some form of partnership to make sure that we bring the best for the residents of the city of Baltimore,” said McCray.
ralejandro@afro.com