TRAINING UPDATE

Ready to Go to Work

The calls we get from members requesting training often cause us some frustration. Two kinds in particular:

1. Members call when they have just been laid off, asking for whatever training happens to be available or, more likely, for equipment training (Forklift, Zoom Boom, Bobcat). We may have a course scheduled but not right at the time. We offer the equipment courses, for example, several times a year. Unfortunately, we can’t schedule them to always coincide with the best times for individuals to take the training.

2. Members need WHMIS or Fall Arrest or some other specific safety certification in order to go to work. (Sometimes these calls come from worksites or from the union dispatch office.) These cause us even more despair because the courses are offered regularly (approximately every second Saturday morning) and the members usually had lots of opportunity to take the training.

As one example, the member had been laid off for a few months but, when he got a call to go to work the next day, he didn’t have WHMIS or Fall Arrest and couldn’t report without certification. If it had only been one course, an instructor would have been able to possibly help the individual. But to do both course in one day is impossible. No way the person could get the required upgrading quickly enough. But he could easily have taken both courses in the time he’d been laid off – and, in fact, could have done them on Saturdays when he was still working.

Moral: Make sure you’re ready to go to work, even when you’re still working. WHMIS needs to be kept up to date. Fall Arrest is required for work in construction. Sometimes it’s covered by training you took with your current employer, but unless you’ve taken our course or training through CSAO, the certification is not portable if you change employers. And, if you think Traffic Control or Propane Safety or some other training will help with your employability in the future, call the Training Centre and sign up.

Attestation of Competencies

A number of members have completed the application for grandparenting as certified Construction Craft Workers. Most have received the certificate or will in the next few months. A few are short of the required hours and will either have to obtain additional documentation or re-apply later.

Some members are missing one or two of the required skills on the Attestation of Competencies. We will be scheduling training programs to cover these gaps beginning in the fall. In particular, we’re planning short courses in Plan Reading and in Crane Awareness/Basic Rigging, these being the most commonly missed competencies. Members will be contacted when these courses become available.