Legislature(2021 - 2022)BARNES 124
03/07/2022 03:15 PM House LABOR & COMMERCE
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| Audio | Topic |
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| Start | |
| Presentation: Workforce Development in Rural Alaska | |
| Adjourn |
* first hearing in first committee of referral
+ teleconferenced
= bill was previously heard/scheduled
+ teleconferenced
= bill was previously heard/scheduled
| + | TELECONFERENCED | ||
| + | TELECONFERENCED |
ALASKA STATE LEGISLATURE
HOUSE LABOR AND COMMERCE STANDING COMMITTEE
March 7, 2022
3:20 p.m.
MEMBERS PRESENT
Representative Zack Fields, Co-Chair
Representative Ivy Spohnholz, Co-Chair
Representative Liz Snyder
Representative David Nelson
Representative James Kaufman
Representative Ken McCarty
MEMBERS ABSENT
Representative Calvin Schrage
COMMITTEE CALENDAR
PRESENTATION: WORKFORCE DEVELOPMENT IN RURAL ALASKA
- HEARD
PREVIOUS COMMITTEE ACTION
No previous action to record
WITNESS REGISTER
MIKE ANDREWS, Former Director
Alaska Works Partnership
Anchorage, Alaska
POSITION STATEMENT: Gave information about the history of
Alaska Works Partnership.
GARRETT BOYLE, Federal Co-Chair
Denali Commission
Anchorage, Alaska
POSITION STATEMENT: Presented about workforce development in
rural Alaska.
AARON PLIKAT, Business Manager
Plumbers and Pipefitters Local 367
Anchorage, Alaska
POSITION STATEMENT: Gave information about workforce
development within the Plumbers and Pipefitters Union.
RYAN ANDREW, Assistant Business Manager
International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 1547
Anchorage, Alaska
POSITION STATEMENT: Gave a PowerPoint presentation, titled
"Alaska Workforce Development and the Infrastructure Investment
and Jobs Act."
MIKE HOFFMAN, Executive Director
Yuut Elitnaurvat
Bethel, Alaska
POSITION STATEMENT: Discussed workforce development in rural
Alaska.
KARLA HEAD, Director
Alaska Technical Center
Kotzebue, Alaska
POSITION STATEMENT: Read from prepared testimony about
apprenticeship and workforce development in rural Alaska.
JOHN NICHOLS, Manager
Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium
Anchorage, Alaska
POSITION STATEMENT: Discussed Water and Sewer Projects in rural
Alaska.
ACTION NARRATIVE
3:20:02 PM
CO-CHAIR ZACK FIELDS called the House Labor and Commerce
Standing Committee meeting to order at 3:20 p.m.
Representatives Snyder, Nelson, Spohnholz, Kaufman, and Fields
were present at the call to order. Representative McCarty
arrived as the meeting was in progress.
^PRESENTATION: Workforce Development in Rural Alaska
PRESENTATION: Workforce Development in Rural Alaska
3:20:49 PM
CO-CHAIR FIELDS announced that the only order of business would
be a presentation on workforce development in rural Alaska.
3:21:11 PM
MIKE ANDREWS, former director, Alaska Works Partnership,
explained that Alaska Works Partnership is a nonprofit created
by Alaska's construction trade unions in 1996. The mission of
Alaska Works Partnership is to increase Alaska's infrastructure
occupations statewide through apprenticeship-training programs
including Helmets to Hardhats, Alaska Construction Academies,
and Women in the Trades. He stated that Alaska Works
Partnership teamed up with the Denali Commission in 2000 as a
designated grantee to develop training for rural Alaskans. Some
programs included rural apprenticeship outreach and rural job
training. In 2016, due to the price of oil, construction had a
downturn and the Denali Commission no longer had funding for job
training. He described gaps in the system because of the COVID-
19 pandemic and the recession; however, many partnerships are
still in place to meet the challenges of the Infrastructure and
Jobs Act.
3:24:38 PM
GARRETT BOYLE, Federal Co-Chair, Denali Commission, explained
that one of the statutory purposes of the commission is to
provide job training and other economic development services in
rural communities. Through its partnership with Alaska Works
Partnership, the commission served 2,600 people throughout 190
communities across the state. Training was held in 45
communities. As funding declined, partly when U.S. Senator
Stevens left office, the commission had to focus its work on
programs through the Alaska Energy Authority and Alaska
Vocational Technical Center (AVTEC). He advised that the state
is about to receive billions of dollars through the recently
passed Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA). He
concluded that the state needs to empower people in rural
communities to get involved with construction, long-term
operations, and maintenance work.
MR. BOYLE encouraged the committee to explore supporting
training centers, promoting distance learning, and creating
remote positions wherever possible. Many villages now have
solar, wind, and batteries as part of the grid. He advised that
as technology advances and becomes more complex, the training
programs need to keep pace as well. The Denali Commission is
uniquely qualified to help with infrastructure advances in
Alaska. There are many opportunities for significant advances
in the next few years.
3:29:08 PM
AARON PLIKAT, Business Manager, Plumbers and Pipefitters Local
367, gave some history of workforce development within the
union. He stated that there are over 800 members today in the
union. The union members take a deduction from their wages and
put this into a training fund, and for example, hundreds of
plumbers, steam fitters, and heating, ventilation, and air
conditioning members have been trained through this program. He
pointed out that the University of Alaska apprenticeship program
is one of the longest apprenticeship programs in the trades. He
said that it has become increasingly difficult over the last
several years to recruit new apprentices due to a lack of
available work on large-scale construction projects. He stated
that requiring applicants to go all the way to Anchorage to
complete their apprenticeship is an ineffective way to fill the
workforce gap, particularly when discussing the rural workforce.
With IIJA dollars, he said, there could be more consistent work
for construction employees throughout the state, and this could
lead to more successful apprenticeship programs. He expressed
the hope that this could make it possible for workers to
complete an apprenticeship program within their own region. As
projects start to roll out across the state, an hourly
requirement allotted for apprentices to participate in the work
would help teach new professionals and benefit Alaska in the
future.
3:35:24 PM
RYAN ANDREW, Assistant Business Manager, International
Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 1547, went through a
PowerPoint presentation, titled "Alaska Workforce Development
and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act" [hard copy
included in the committee packet]. He stated that the
International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) local
1547 represents over 4,000 workers in Alaska. The three most
common disciplines in the electrical industry are journeyman
electrician, journeyman lineman, and journeyman
telecommunications. Each of these three disciplines require
8,000 hours of on-the-job training experience and 1,000 hours of
classroom instruction. Apprenticeship completion and journeyman
status is achieved on average within four to five years. New
apprentices are taken from an applicant pool eligibility list,
as needed by industry demand. He stated that the program is
scalable based on demand and is limited by the positions
available to apprentices. There is a challenge with employers
who are not willing to train the future workforce. He advised
that one solution to alleviate the bottleneck is apprenticeship-
utilization requirements. He pointed out that increasing the
funding for the State Training and Employment Program (STEP)
with grants through the Department of Labor and Workforce
Development will help bolster the local workforce as federal
projects are funded throughout the state.
Mr. Andrew said that STEP currently funds apprentice CDL
training and supports the costs for apprentices who travel from
rural Alaska. He suggested increasing funding for pre-
apprenticeship programs. He stated that the Alaska Works
Partnership provides free training for potential applicants who
can then learn about different positions before committing to a
trade or apprenticeship program. Regional opportunities also
exist for applicants in rural Alaska.
3:42:44 PM
MIKE HOFFMAN, Executive Director, Yuut Elitnaurvat, explained
that Yuut Elitnaurvat offers training programs for people near
the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta. He emphasized the difficulty for
students to thrive in training programs outside of the region.
He stated that Yuut Elitnaurvat offers the only federal
apprenticeship program exclusively operated in rural Alaska;
however, there are struggles with the lack of flexibility in the
federal model. He stated that workforce development and
apprenticeships are valuable but have lower success rates for
rural Alaskans. He advised that success comes from training
rural Alaskans, as opposed to bringing in workers from the Lower
48. He argued that the current apprenticeship programs are too
regimented and need to be more flexible to increase success for
rural Alaskans.
3:49:01 PM
KARLA HEAD, Director, Alaska Technical Center, spoke about
expanding apprenticeship programs in Alaska. She paraphrased
from a prepared statement [copy included in the committee
packet], which read as follows [original punctuation provided]:
Thank you for this opportunity to speak to you today
about the importance of establishing and expanding
apprenticeship and pre-apprenticeship training
opportunities throughout Alaska. In our region alone,
the lack of sufficient, available trained,
experienced, skilled electricians, mechanics,
plumbers, water and sewer experts, and HVAC
technicians continues to perpetuate an ever-expanding
problem for businesses, schools, homeowners, and
communities.
Please indulge me for a moment while I tell you about
a situation that the community of Selawik experienced
a little over one year ago. Selawik is home to
approximately 900 residents who all receive
electricity supplied by 3 generators. Around 5 pm on
February 14, 2021, with temperatures colder than -35
degrees, the generators stopped working. While this
may seem like a minor inconvenience, it quickly became
a disaster with consequences that residents endured
for almost a year. The power outage lasted for over
18 hours. Unfortunately, many homes in Selawik do not
have a secondary heat source. I was the principal at
Davis-Ramoth Memorial School last year in Selawik when
this happened. Fortunately, our school has a backup
generator so we opened the doors for residents to stay
in the gym during the power outage so they could be
warm. In my apartment, the temperature dropped to 42
degrees during the power outage, so I had to send my
7-year- old to a teacher's apartment that had heat
since it was connected to the school's back-up
generator. The aftermath of the power outage is where
things became dire. Due to the extended power outage,
the village's pumps that provide water to the
treatment plant froze and broke. The treatment plant
itself froze and was inoperable for a time and, when
it was repaired and was back online, the water was not
suitable to drink without boiling it for 5 minutes
prior to ingesting it. The complex aboveground sewer
system froze throughout 2/3 of the village. There
were homes that were without running drinking water
for several months, but most homes were without
functioning sinks and toilets for up to 9 months after
the power outage.
I tell you all of this to emphasize the profound need
to develop and maintain pre-apprenticeship and
apprenticeship opportunities in rural communities, to
train residents to be able to not only mitigate
catastrophes such as the one I shared, but to be able
to preemptively work to prevent such situations from
happening in the first place. In hindsight, had there
been trained heavy diesel mechanics within the
community that could conduct routine, preventative
maintenance on the generators on a consistent basis,
would the village have been without power at all?
Probably not. If the power did go out, had they had
trained professionals readily available to dispatch
within the village or even within the region much
sooner to address the problem, would the outage cause
such long-lasting problems? Again, probably not. Had
there been enough trained plumbers, mechanics, and
electricians within the village or region that were
available to assist immediately, the consequences from
the outage would not have stretched out for months and
months. Many families had to leave the village as
maintaining a household for an indefinite amount of
time without running water and sewer was prohibitive.
3:52:54 PM
Within our region and across Alaska, there are
countless people that are ready and willing to be
trained. However, for a multitude of valid reasons,
these individuals want to live, learn, and train in
their home communities, to help elders and families in
their villages to have the same quality of life that
urban areas experience. These potential trainees want
to engage in valuable opportunities through
apprenticeships to develop the skills and technical
knowledge they need to address the needs of their
villages. There are many regional training centers
like Alaska Technical Center in Kotzebue that could
work and want to work in partnership with other
entities, to build successful pre-apprenticeship and
apprenticeship opportunities, but we need your support
to fund these potential programs. At Alaska Technical
Center, we can offer training that is facilitated in-
person, virtually, and via a hybrid model. We welcome
the prospect of developing these opportunities, to
benefit Alaskans!
In our region and surrounding area, we have a
multitude of large infrastructure projects coming up
like the Noorvik Airport Rehabilitation (DOT), Deering
Airport Rehabilitation (DOT), Selawik 3 Homes Project
(NIHA) • Shungnak Bulk Fuel Upgrade Project (AVEC),
Selawik Barge Landing / Boardwalk Upgrade (DOT,
Shishmaref Seawall Project (DOT), Kotzebue Cape
Blossom Road Project (DOT)
These projects could employ more Alaskans, especially
local and regional residents. Not only are these
ventures prime opportunities for apprenticeships, but
they are also a chance for apprentices to become an
integral part of Alaska's workforce. These newly
trained individuals would also be a part of the long-
term solution towards not having the need to outsource
jobs to non-Alaskans. The impact that a fully
operational apprenticeship program could have in
developing skilled plumbers, electricians, mechanics,
water and sewer plant techs, construction workers, and
other essential employees is far reaching and long-
lasting. Thank you for listening today as I advocate
for expanding pre-apprenticeship and apprenticeship
programs across the state in regional training
centers. If you have any questions for me, I invite
you to ask or to contact me at your earliest
convenience. Thank you.
3:55:22 PM
JOHN NICHOLS, Manager, Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium,
expressed excitement concerning the funding from IIJA, and its
potential to provide water and sewer systems to the 32 unserved
"honeybucket" communities throughout Alaska. Functioning water
and sewer systems are a preventative health care measure, and he
emphasized the necessity to hire and train local professionals
who know the area well and are available within the region. He
gave an example that, if a pump goes down for more than two
hours, it will freeze the entire system. It is critical to
provide services which keep rural Alaskans healthy and out of
the hospital. He expressed the expectation that funding for
rural Alaska water and sewer systems would triple over the next
five years, and the workload will more than double over the next
decade. The biggest increase in production will be through
construction contracts; therefore, there will be incentives to
hire local contractors.
MR. NICHOLS expressed his approval of pre-apprenticeship and
apprenticeship programs. There are many challenges involved
with serving "honey bucket" communities. Expanded preliminary
engineering reports will involve communicating with communities
about different options with respect to cost and maintenance.
He pointed out that some systems are not feasible for isolated
communities with extremely cold conditions, and these
communities would need a Portable Alternative Sanitation System
(PASS). This is a sanitation system which does not require
traditional piping and uses a seepage system, depending on soil
conditions. He suggested that IIJA funding could be used to
implement more PASS systems.
4:10:08 PM
MR. PLIKAT, in response to a question from the committee,
expressed the need for more regional skill-building and training
facilities in places like Bethel and Unalaska, because they have
smaller villages nearby and could serve as a hub for
apprenticeship-training programs. This could help keep up with
the need for qualified pipefitters, plumbers, and more. He
stated that IIJA funding could be used to extend projects over a
long period of time and involve people in rural regions. He
expressed the opinion that training in rural Alaska would be
different than the types of training offered in Anchorage, and
training should be curbed to deal with regional needs.
MR. PLIKAT expressed the importance of understanding subsistence
lifestyles. For example, he stated that recruiting more
apprentices would allow apprentices to have a rotation, allowing
for subsistence in their off time. He stated that the goal of
the apprenticeship program is for registered apprentices to
obtain the journeyman skillset. He described that every 2,000
hours apprentices would receive a wage increase, with 240 hours
per year spent in the classroom where safety skills are
gradually built. He reiterated that water and wastewater
training with certifications is important for rural Alaska, and
it is never too early for young people, including highschoolers,
to get training and be exposed to fields within the workforce;
however, a minimum age requirement of 18 years is a factor for
apprenticeship programs. He informed the committee about the
introductory courses from the National Center for Construction
Education and Research.
4:28:37 PM
MS. HEAD, in response to a question from the committee,
expressed the opinion that it is critical for students entering
high school to finish the required core courses. She mentioned
the importance of exposing students to different career paths.
Students in her program have been exposed to culinary arts,
business programs, driving simulators, and more. To show
students all the different career options, she stressed that
funding at the secondary level. This would build pre-
apprenticeship programs which create relationships with
different organizations within the region. She stated that
because of budgetary constraints, career and technical education
(CTE) programs have been cut in all rural schools. She pointed
out that Kotzebue High School is the only rural school with a
woodshop class.
4:43:24 PM
MR. HOFFMAN, in response to a question from the committee,
stated that in the Kuskokwim region many CTE programs are still
funded; however, there is a struggle to find trained
instructors.
4:47:08 PM
MR. NICHOLS remarked that construction forecasts can be shared
to encourage community training in advance of regional
construction work.
4:49:34 PM
ADJOURNMENT
There being no further business before the committee, the House
Labor and Commerce Standing Committee meeting was adjourned at
4:49 p.m
| Document Name | Date/Time | Subjects |
|---|---|---|
| Alaska State Pipe Trades Presentation 3.7.33.pdf |
HL&C 3/7/2022 3:15:00 PM |
|
| IBEW Presentation 3.7.22.pdf |
HL&C 3/7/2022 3:15:00 PM |
|
| ATC Written Testimony 3.7.22.pdf |
HL&C 3/7/2022 3:15:00 PM |