A model to prepare workers for the future: organized labor training centers
Updated after a 2024 visit
As we’ve spent more time studying what organized labor offers our society and economy now, and how business leaders can better understand the value of organized labor, we’ve visited three centers with a wildly-well-working model for the future of work, one where people can continuously build new skills and adapt to changing technologies.
(And, where many workers are organizing over the effect AI may have on their occupations, these models may offer a promising direction.)
In Nevada and in Texas, three different unions have set up a powerful model for preparing workforces for the future. Jointly supported by industry and organized labor, and driven by unions, the Culinary Academy, Carpenters International Training Center, and Operating Engineers International Training & Education Center may be the most impressive training facilities I’ve ever seen.
They start by elevating their occupation’s game: celebrating the culture of the occupation and welcoming trainees with a sense of place.
As far as the “syllabus” goes, each center offers a wide array of possible classes (excavating waterways, drone site surveying, rigger and signaler, solar installer, scaffold qualification, OSHA rules, just on the days we were there).
They recognize that learning is a matter of mind as well as body. The Carpenters center offers courses in leadership and emotional self-regulation that rival (or better) those at an elite business school.
They learn on versions of the real thing, like a proper ballroom for catering and mock hotel rooms for cleaning, or in virtual reality like operating different cranes. Training different occupations in the same facility allows trainees to consider career moves (both up within their chosen occupation, and between various occupations).
They study advanced techniques…
Trainees can access equipment beyond what they might see in their typical day-to-day work.
Manufacturers bring in their latest prototypes, to test them out. In addition to offering training, this practice speeds up innovation in the profession (as manufacturers perfect their offerings).
Ideology takes a backseat in the name of practical learning. Even Duke Energy (yes, owned by the Koch brothers) believes the facility is useful enough to collaborate with the center on their equipment.
The trainees even create new inventions, like this modular housing that could convert the insides of unused warehouses into low-cost homes…
The centers make the effort to include folks, even when the legacies of the unions themselves are sometimes problematic.
Trainees even get to show off and celebrate their excellence.
The unions also show their role doing things that benefit their members and employers, like hiring. See this sponsorship of a NASCAR race, by the Operating Engineers…
And these centers make the experience convenient, and enjoyable. The Carpenters center has its own adjoined hotels, and you can even check in to your flight from the center itself.
The Operating Engineers include essential social infrastructure… a bar. And a beautiful pool, gym, and more. Workers deserve both skills and an experience while they’re learning them — bread and roses, so to speak.
Organized labor and business partner to build these facilities: the funds come from contracts (collective bargaining agreements), and the management includes input from both. These training facilities do things that no one company could do on their own. They also orchestrate with local training facilities run by the unions’ own local chapters.
They do differ: the union runs the Carpenters’ facility, which serves members from across the country (and Canada, so international); the Culinary academy’s leadership includes both management and union representatives and serves the region.
The results are similar: equipping workforces with skills, providing value to employers and to manufacturers, adapting an industry to changing technologies and practices, demonstrating the usefulness of unions to members and to their employers, and also bringing the cultures of these industries forward.
Where else might we see this approach? For eaxmple, how could a center like this support knowledge work, where workers (journalists, project managers, engineers, and more) could study the latest in AI or other technologies?
I left wondering: should every occupation get this treatment?
Thank you to Liz Shuler, D. Taylor, Tom Kochan, Wilma Liebman, Sam Emke, and Ken Baerg for making our visits happen, and to Christopher Treml, John Downey, Brett Jenkins, Royce Peters, Edmund Wong, Ana Puljic, and Ted Pappageorge for taking the time to show us around, and to my teammates Angela Martin, lori berenberg, Siena Chiang, and Liba Rubenstein for learning about these with me.
