Our Sites

Congress gets to reforming apprenticeship programs

Bipartisan support would push through changes to benefit skilled labor force

Welding apprenticeship

In an age of hyper-partisan politics, Democrats, Republicans, and The White House all seem interested in making it easier for people to become apprentices and fill the many open skilled labor positions in manufacturing and fabricating sectors. Getty Images

Democrats and Republicans on the House Education and Labor Committee have proclaimed their desire to work together to revise the National Apprenticeship Act. The goal would be to increase federal funding and to add flexibility to the rules associated with the creation of apprenticeships, all with the intent of filling the 7 million open jobs that employers are having trouble filling.

Rep. Susan Davis, D-Calif., chairwoman of the House Higher Education and Workforce Investment Subcommittee, held hearings on March 4 to get input on her draft legislation called the National Apprenticeship Act of 2020. In what has been a very partisan House for the past year, Rep. Lloyd Smucker, R-Pa., struck a different tone. The top GOPer on the Davis subcommittee, said, with regard to the draft legislation, “There is a lot we agree on, and I hope we can work through any remaining differences.”

One of the big issues going forward will be the legislation’s funding of a new apprenticeship pathway proposed by the Trump administration in 2019. The program would recognize Standards Recognition Entities of industry-recognized apprenticeship programs. This would be a nonfederal pathway for employer-developed apprenticeship programs to be registered by the Department of Labor, opening the door to federal funding.

Montez King, executive director of the National Institute of Metalworking Skills (NIMS), who was a member of a Trump administration advisory committee that wrote a report on which the new pathway is based, told a Senate committee in 2018 that the current federal registration program is “burdened by rules and restrictions and counterproductive to our nation’s economic imperative to innovate and evolve. The system pushes businesses into a ‘one size fits all’ box.”

King did not respond to an email and phone call asking for the NIMS position on the Davis draft legislation.

The Davis bill would authorize $400 million in federal grants for fiscal year 2021, which begins this Oct. 1, and increase that amount by $100 million every year until 2025 when the amount would be $800 million. The Trump administration made available about $300 million in the current fiscal year for a couple of different apprenticeship programs, both of which covered manufacturing careers generally and a variety of machining occupations.

Steel Importers Hope for Supreme Court Help

Steel importers suffered another political blow when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia said President Trump was acting within his authority when he imposed 25% tariffs on imported steel in 2018. The Court ratified an earlier pro-Trump decision by the U.S. Court of International Trade brought by the American Institute for International Steel (AIIS), which wants the Supreme Court to review the earlier decisions.

Alan Morrison, AIIS lead counsel and associate dean and professor of law at the George Washington University School of Law, told The FABRICATOR: “We are hopeful that they will take the case, but the odds are always long. We expect to file our petition this month [March] and think that will be time enough for the court to decide before it goes on vacation whether to hear the case.”

The AIIS had argued that Trump’s national security steel tariffs are unconstitutional because the authority section 232 of the 1962 Trade Expansion Act grants to a president is so unconstrained as to constitute legislative power that is Congress’s alone under Article I of the Constitution and so cannot be delegated.

About the Author

Stephen Barlas

Contributing Writer

Stephen Barlas is a freelance writer that has more than 30 years of experience covering Congress, the White House, and the many regulatory agencies found in Washington, D.C. He has covered issues affecting the metal fabricating industry for The FABRICATOR for more than a decade.