Searching for an advantage

Two electricians walk onto a job site and start wiring overhead lights.

Their work is identical. They both follow state and local codes. They're professional in their work habits and courteous to the client. When they leave, it's impossible to tell who did what wiring because all the lights work just fine.

So, who was trained in a union apprenticeship, and who graduated from a nonunion program? Who cares? What difference could it possibly make as long as they did a good job?

The competing union and nonunion programs care. They want people to see a difference between those two electricians because if there's no separation, then recruitment boils down to a crapshoot. It's a 50-50 gamble, and there's precious little either side can do to improve its odds, especially considering that precise training regulations leave both on equal footing.

But that won't stop them from trying to get an edge. They've just got to find new ways to market themselves as superior to their competitors because the traditional differences just don't play with 20-year-old students.

The philosophical and ideological rifts between union and nonunion grow smaller and smaller as they sift down from the groups' leadership to the apprentice level. What college-age kid contemplating the trades gives a second thought to the benefits and drawbacks of project-labor agreements?

So now we've got these competing programs, which, for the most part, define their existence based on their opposition to each other, on this awkward and reluctant common ground. They're forced to max out their offerings within a relatively confined context. They need to create separation, so they tout better training facilities, better pay rates for apprentices, more qualified teachers and more hands-on experience. Each scratches and claws to position itself ahead of the other, but the end result is always the same: Both programs keep putting out qualified tradespeople whose work is, by and large, equal.

But let's hope that the union and nonunion programs keep fighting because it's their rivalry that puts the tag of quality on Wisconsin's work force.

Chris Thompson