Construction apprentice training programs run by the non-union Associated Builders and Contractors fail to graduate almost three-fourths of their apprentice trainees, an analysis of federal construction apprenticeship data indicates.

Using federal and state records, the AFL-CIO Building and Construction Trades Department reported ABC graduation rates ranged from zero in Kansas to 75 percent in West Virginia.

Overall, the ABC apprenticeship programs graduated 29 percent of their enrollees nationwide, half the rate of union programs. The data covered apprentices enrolled in 1995-99, and who graduated by 2004.

Apprenticeship training is important in the construction trades because of looming thousands of retirements from those crafts, the report notes.

Apprenticeship training run by unions or their affiliated contractors had graduation rates of 58 percent for electrical apprentices, 52 percent for plumbers and 51 percent for operating engineers. Non-union programs in those crafts had graduation rates of one-half to one-third of the union rates.

Discussing the report at the Building Trades Department legislative conference on April 18, BCTD President Edward Sullivan demanded DOL investigate the poor performance of the non-union contractors' apprenticeship programs. DOL certifies apprentice training programs.

"It proves what we've known all along: The ABC programs do not work," he declared. "We have repeatedly urged the Labor Department to act, but we have received no response. We can only conclude that DOL has chosen to please its political friends" in the non-union contractor community, Sullivan said.

"We hope the (non-partisan) Government Accountability Office probe will force them (DOL) to do their job," he said, referring to a coming investigation. "If they don't, we'll fight them (ABC) state by state" to get investigations going.

The report showed few ABC programs graduated more than half of their apprentices who enrolled between 1995 and 1999. Besides West Virginia, the other effective statewide programs were in Illinois--a 59 percent graduation rate that included no downstate data--and Wisconsin (57 percent).

The Kansas program not only graduated none of its students, but enrollment was low: 15 apprentices in those years. West Virginia had eight. And when the West Virginia ABC proceeded to increase enrollment, its success disappeared. It enrolled 38 apprentices in 2000, and only five have graduated.

Other states' ABC affiliates also had abysmal graduation rates: Louisiana (6 percent, with a 5 percent rate in New Orleans), the Carolinas (3 percent, with 13 graduates among 515 enrollees), Alabama (14 percent) and western Oklahoma (6 percent). There were no ABC programs elsewhere in that state.

Oregon's 39 percent apprentice graduation rate was above the ABC national average. Indiana's ABC programs presented another anomaly: Listing individual apprentices as "active" long after they graduated, showing a failure of monitoring and tracking.

Indiana's graduation rate was 24 percent, but another 23 percent were "still active" five years later. The same thing happened in the Ohio Valley ABC, with a 30 percent graduation rate and 35 percent "still active" long afterwards.

Apprentice graduation rates from the non-union programs also varied widely when smaller jurisdictions are compared. New Orleans' 5 percent graduation rate (18 graduates out of 331 enrollees) was just below the D.C. metro area's 9 percent (10/109). But Detroit had a 48 percent rate (43/90).

Central Michigan was just behind (47 percent), but western Michigan's program graduated only 29 percent of its apprentices while Saginaw's graduated 27 percent. Combined, the Michigan ABC apprentice programs graduated 562/1795 students, or 31 percent.

The contrast was even greater in Ohio. Cleveland's ABC program graduated 57 percent of its apprentices, but the rest of the state was at 30 percent or below.

Some states had no data at all, such as Connecticut, Georgia and Iowa. New York had no program listed. ABC's apprentice program in Minnesota started only this year.

Mark Gruenberg writes for Press Associates, Inc., news service. Used by permission.