This past April, the Carpenters Training Center hosted its 51st Annual Open House and Exhibit. The Open House with over 25 city and state elected officials in attendance including Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, Senate Labor Chair Jessica Ramos.
The event serves as a way for graduating apprentices to show off the skills learned over the course of their four years of training. Many different competitions were held, but the most exciting was surely the Golden Hammer competition. This is a skills-based contest that consists of graduates executing a project in an eighthour time crunch using only raw materials, tools, and a blueprint. Contestants in this competition were from general carpentry, interior systems, floor coverers, millwrights, and dockbuilding/ timberman. A separate contest was held for graduates in high rise concrete and cabinet making.
Over 33 graduating apprentices competed with the prize being tools to the first-place winners. Every contestant performed exceptionally with first place prizes given to the following graduates:
• General Carpentry: Kodi Foust, Local 157
• Interior systems: Eric Reynolds, Local 157
• Floor Covering: Jordan Peguero, Local 2287
• Dock Builder and Timberman: Christopher Pistone, Local 1556
• Millwrights: Anthony Charles, Local 740
The competition helped all guests see just how well-trained apprentices are coming out of our Training Center. Each year, the Training Center educates over 1,000 apprentices and over 12,000 12,000 journey-level carpenters. The training our members receive helps them achieve a better quality of life than they would be able to obtain outside of a union career.
“In the NYC Carpenters Union, we believe every New Yorker should have access to the American Dream and good-paying union jobs that have quality benefits and hard-earned pensions. It’s our job to help create those pathways for the apprentices in our accredited apprenticeship program,” said EST Joseph Geiger.
New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli praised the skills shown by the recent graduates “It was such a pleasure to attend this event and witness the impressive skills of the union carpenter apprenticeship graduates. It’s great to see that the next generation of union carpenters will be so well trained and have such a great understanding of the importance of safety on the worksite.”
Jessica Ramos, a State Senator who currently chairs the Senate Labor Committee, showed her widespread support for our apprenticeship program by saying “As a labor ally, I understand that apprenticeships and training programs are the bedrock of unionized construction. These programs are New Yorker’s gateway to stable, lifelong careers and they help safeguard their rights both on and off the job.”
The Carpenters Training Center is by far one of the greatest tools the union sector has over the nonunion sector. Our apprentices leave the school highly trained in all areas of their craft and experience significantly reduced incidents on jobsites. The school wishes their graduating apprentices well and eagerly awaits the next generation of union carpenters that will walk through their doors.