[INSPRATIONAL MUSIC STING] - We're now joined by our good friend, Bill Sproule, who is in fact the Executive Secretary Treasurer Eastern Atlantic State's Regional Council of Carpenters.

Good to see you, Bill.

- Great to see you, Steve.

Thanks for having me on the show again.

- You got it.

Remind folks what the Eastern Atlantic States Regional Council of Carpenters is.

What's the geographic area we're talking about?

- So we're six states, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Virginia, Delaware, Maryland, and the District of Columbia.

- And the mission of the organization is?

- Well, we have 44,000 members that are members of the carpenters here in my region.

And our mission is broad based.

We represent those members.

We work to find job opportunities for them in the industry.

We also oversee the funds, including the training fund that trains the apprentices, as well as it allows journeymen to go back to our training centers for what we call journeyman upgrade classes or re-certifications or updating certifications.

So there's a lot to it, but we're basically the machine behind a large workforce.

- Lemme also say this that the carpenters have been a long time underwriters of our programming.

I just wanna fully disclose that.

So let me ask you this, you've talked a lot about mentoring young women in the field of construction, a high priority.

What is the initiative and what has been the impact of it?

- Well, one of the biggest supporters of young women coming into the industry would be the CARP Program, which is a pre-apprenticeship program, a Carpenter Apprenticeship Readiness Program.

And that's a comprehensive 10 week, but not 10 weeks as a whole, it's actually 10 Saturdays.

And where we run the CARP programs, and it's four individuals, young folks, whether they're minority, female, Caucasian, but typically it's folks also from underprivileged zip codes within the very urban areas coming in through this program.

And it's 10 Saturdays.

It gives the individuals the ability to learn about tools, learn about safety, learn some basics, as well as getting up on time and being at the training center, reporting for duty 15, 20 minutes early instead of, you know, five minutes late and things of that nature.

So it gives 'em the basic skills And that's what the contractors want.

You know, it's all about productivity and the contractors are in this business to try to make a profit and every hour counts.

you know, every move counts.

And if we teach the individuals the right way to do the work, the safe way to do the work, you know, it makes it our contractors all the more competitive as well.

- Well, you know, the other piece of this- We're obviously partnerships.

I love when people think they can do things alone, but there's a partnership.

We have a lot of partnerships with higher ed institutions and one of yours is with Rowan University.

Talk about initiative, the bachelor's degree in construction management, because that would not be able to happen if your organization did not partner with an institution of higher learning.

- Absolutely.

We have a an MOU with Rowan.

We also have- - Memorandum of Understanding.

- Yeah, a Memorandum of Understanding and basically it enables apprentices to go ahead and possibly take classes either after they graduate apprenticeship or they can actually engage while in the apprenticeship program, but what Rowan does is they give our individuals, I think it's like 54 credits towards the associate degree portion of a construction management degree.

And then obviously there's a lot of stuff that we do not teach in our training centers that has to be taught at a university or a college.

And they enable our apprentices to go ahead and advance their degrees to a full bachelor's degree in construction management.

And the course fees are pretty reasonable, Steve.

It's like a little over $400 a course.

And so you can do it at your own pace, full-time, part-time.

You can wait until you're a journey person and then maybe even get sponsored by a company that you're working for.

- Right.

- And there's so many ways to do this.

We have a similar partnership with a group called College Unbound, which is like an online type thing, and then also Thomas Edison University.

And there's also partnerships with- - In Trenton.

- Yes, sir.

With other higher ed facilities around the six states.

So there's a handful of other ones, but what we're also doing is we're getting accreditation from a group called the the COE, which is- - Stands for what?

- The Council of Occupational Education Okay?

- What the heck is that?

- Well, in order to get our apprenticeship certified by this group, and this is a national group that's actually affiliated with the Department of Education.

- Ok. - And they're in the process of evaluating all of our programs right now where we will have credits for any higher ed institution within our footprint at the end of this process, We are now like a $75 million training fund, which is a phenomenal amount of money to have, you know, and firepower to be able to train, to be able to invest some of that money and continue to have that fund grow.

And it’s been a great endeavor, and we look forward to more better things to come with that.

- L isten, let's talk about, I'm just gonna put it out there, you tell me.

AI and your organization, meaning, and your industry, I know it's early on in the process, what is your sense as to the impact of AI on the carpenters?

- Well, you know, I think this AI stuff, this phenomenon that we call AI, is gonna be something that's definitely gonna help the industry.

We've seen it here at the Regional Council where, I'll give you a perfect example.

I'm old school.

If I have to draft a letter or get some kind of a communication out, I'll bring my administrative assistant in, I'll pull it outta my head and she types it up and, you know, a few people go ahead and edit something and then we haven't finished product.

Now we're all becoming a lot more smarter because they're running it through the AI programs.

And, you know, sometimes Steve, even if it's something that has a lot of legal aspects to it- - Sure.

- I'm kind of confident where I'm not even sending this off to the attorneys for too much review because, and that's just one example, but just imagine how that can affect the construction industry and how they'll be able to troubleshoot problems that exist on projects out there with regards to things with the engineers and the architects and the actual people in the field doing the construction.

I think it's gonna be able to troubleshoot a lot of things and streamline things and help the process.

- You know, people think a union trade organization labor stays the way it is evolving, pivoting, adapting, partnering, and a whole range of other things.

Hey Bill, thank you my friend.

We appreciate you joining us.

All the best to you and the other carpenters.

- Thank you for having me, Steve.

Great to see you again.

Hope to see you soon in person, sir.

- You got it.

See you next time.

- [Narrator] State of Affairs with Steve Adubato is a production of the Caucus Educational Corporation.

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