If you've been to a Reds game driven across the Brant Spence Bridge or even just seen the Cincinnati skyline, you've experienced the handiwork of the ironworkers of Local 44 in Hebron.

Ironworkers are essential to our economy economy.

But as our infrastructure needs grow, so does the need for more skilled journeymen.

The Local 44 apprenticeship program helps to fill the gap, as well as provide hands on training for young people.

Looking to learn a trade.

The need for new, new ironworkers is, you know, huge right now, especially with the influx of work that's coming to our area through the infrastructure bill and through the CHIPS Act and some other legislation.

We're getting ready to build the Brant Spence Bridge.

We need them.

So right now we currently have about 100 apprentices.

We like to keep our apprentice numbers at about 100.

We just signed up 21 new ones.

Most of those 21 are fresh out of high school, so they start out as a first year apprentice, not knowing anything.

And as they go through their four years of apprenticeship program, they turn out to be journeymen ironworkers.

They can do anything.

They can install glass.

They can install and tie rebar on a bridge deck or the foundations for the skyscrapers.

They can erect the structural steel for the skyscrapers or any of the other buildings.

So there's a wealth of knowledge of these kids learn.

I think the biggest skill that I've that I've acquired since I've joined the local is my ability to just like to just about to adapt to different situations.

I was in the health care sector and I left that because that wasn't a good fit for me.

It was one of the better opportunities for me to just learn, not only learn but, you know, get our hands on experience.

You know, coming to class and then, you know, using that that what we've learned in class to go back out on the jobsite and then, you know, to practice using those things.

Men and women come into this program and a lot of times they're like they're they're they're kids.

Some of them are right out of high school and they come into this program and they don't they don't have a sense of responsibility.

They don't even have a sense of future.

And as they come in here and they start to learn and grow, they start to realize that that this is our future.

When I was in high school, everybody was pushing, pushing.

You got to go to college.

You got to go to college and make a decent living.

I never did.

I didn't go to college.

School wasn't for me.

And school is not for a lot of the young people.

These kids are coming out of high school and they're going straight into the workforce, into a trade, whether it be any of the building trades.

And they're making 20 plus dollars an hour to start out.

Our apprentices start out at 21, 52 an hour.

So we have 18 year old kids, just graduated last month that are making 2152 an hour opposed to getting 60, $70,000 in college debt.

And then not even going to the trade that they went to school for.

You know, all of these building that you see in and around the city, you know, it's it's a union ironworker has their hands on it.

And, you know, as I said, the flexibility is good.

You know, the benefits are also good.

And then that ability to raise your family.

You can look around the city and the stadiums world built by us.

The bridges are all built by us.

When you could drive down 75, the cut in the hill and the skyline, when it just pops out at you to know that you had a part in changing that skyline is very prideful for us.

Good work indeed.

Each apprentice must complete over 800 hours of training before becoming a journeyman ironworker worker.

Over 20 apprentices graduated from the program last month.