Ruth Barton wrote:

>So, Ken, where were you yesterday when we could have really used your famous, "I have a brick" speech!!!!
>
Wondering how to pay the bills.

>Are you saying that we are going to have trouble getting instructors for our program if we don't align with a union?
>
No. Not at all. I am saying that you should take what you can get from
the union but not be dissapointed if you get less than you need.

[I complain reluctantly about the union from my personal experience. My
grandfather was a master finish carpenter and union 100%. I very much
appreciate the idea of union, I just don't much appreciate the way it
has worked around me.]

I suggest that you seek educators wherever you can find them.
If you do align with a union then do so knowing the up and the downside.
If the union works with you then it likely means they feel a shortage of
workers and your students may have a good opportunity of finding jobs.
 From what I hear there is no shortage of adult workers and
under-employed in Vermont.
Chances are a majority of your students will have to go away to work.

A particular problem with union, especially in urban areas, is that they
tend towards only working one very narrow trade.
This means that the trades do not get a whole lot of experience working
in different media... and it also, I think, tends towards the trades
limiting advancement into project management. [People go to school to
learn to manage projects and often they have no hands-on trade.] The
tendency in the building trades unions is to do one thing and stick with
one thing and do not do anything else because that is the next person's
work, not yours. This can be good... leading to excellence in a narrow
niche... and it can be bad. So you do not find mason's who understand
anything about carpentry etc. My apocryphal experience is that trades in
historic preservation tend to be non-conforming and multi-talented...
which are both contrary to the spirit of union. People find their way,
in and out of the union. I think education should be about helping
people find their way. There is no right anwser most of the time... just
one step at a time and the resolve to keep stepping forward.

>I never thought much about unions here--sure we have them but usually only in manufacturing or the phone co or such.  Most of our plumbers, electricians, masons, etc are small outfits--one or two guys working for themselves.  Sometimes a bigger outfit with 5 or 6.
>
Do these small outfits need employees? If they are small are they family
operations? A family operation is less likely to hire a student from
another family. Family tends to look after family members. Where will
your students be employed? If they have to move away then you should
include courses on survival as a traveling trade.

>Does one go to school and learn the trade then join the union or join the union then go to school?
>
If the student wants to be in the union they usually need to get a
sponsor, who is in the union (an employer or family member or family
friend with connections), and then the union will train them. Sponsors
tend to come about through family connections and relationships. Some
unions are more difficult to enter than others. Usually the easiest
route is to get in the labor union then move from there into a more
specialized union. Family connections are what it is all about.

Or... if union is not the end-goal... go to school and learn the
trade... but include in the schooling how to survive as an independent
business person. Make sure they know how to get a bus ticket, manage a
hotel room, eat in a restaurant by themselves, and write a halfways
decent resume. Make sure they understand what small employers will
expect of them, and how not to get themselves used by unpleasant people.
Or... track them towards going onto a higher level trades school. Make
sure they know where the right-to-work states are. Your students can be
well educated but the union may not want them.

>The program we are contemplating is a high school program, not post high school.
>
I think it is an admirable plan.

>Do the stone have to be stuck together with something to be masonry?
>
Stone walls without mortar are considered masonry. I started on dry laid
stone walls helping my mother.

][<en

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