Free training and increase the minimum wage while tying it to inflation.
Skilled trades are generally union, the training is free through a union. If you go to a trade school or college, there are scholarships and sponsorships.
In my area electricians and plumbers apprentices make around $20/hr with raises every 6 months.
only reason i haven’t applied to apprenticeships is they still drug test in my area. in a state where marijuana is recreationally legal.
You may want to check their policy. In my state weed is legal and the electricians union drug tests but they don’t care if weed is detected. I don’t know about other unions, but I imagine they are similar.
If you are high all the time, don’t waste anybody’s time applying. If you are an occasional smoker or relax after a hard day, then you will be fine. They don’t hand out jobs paying $55/hr to just anybody, you need to be on-time or early and prove you deserve a place in the union, so showing up high one time can torpedo that career real fast.
i really only use it for pain/anxiety after my shift. i currently have a union job in a school district, so i am in an okay place but i could do better in a trade. i might try to find out how strict these drug policies are (current job doesn’t bother testing). thanks for your input!
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Fund a Top Gun style movie only about carpenters, plumbers, and HVAC guys. ;)
On August 26, 1935, the United Auto Workers established an elite union for all auto mechanics. Its purpose was to teach the lost art of collective bargaining and to ensure that all the union members were the best compensated mechanics in the world.
They succeeded
Today, the UAW calls it a union. The mechanics call it:
TOP WRENCH
Actually, my office is in the maintenance building, so I see all those guys every day. It really could make for an entertaining movie. Like a handyman version of Waiting.
“Making” anyone do anything they aren’t interested in sounds like a bad idea to me.
Cut war funding
Increase education funding
Raise taxes on the billionaire class
If those jobs came with a guaranteed pension after 20 years of destroying your body, people would be lining up for them. $24/hour is okay for getting by-day-to-day as a single young person but you can’t raise kids, build wealth, buy a house, or have a future outside of getting up tomorrow morning.
Healthcare.
Fucking public works projects. Announced early. Work with schools to pipeline kids to trade schools. Work with trade schools to set people up with jobs in public works projects.
Stop letting college and college board run the fucking country. We push kids away from trade school. We shove them in college. We shove them in AP courses. We do not give a fuck what is good for the student. We only care that they do what makes the school look good and/or more money.
- Government grants/scholarships for skilled trades predicted by federal employment office to have a shortfall in either workers or colleges in the near future.
- Federal standardization of all education (if this isn’t the case already) to simplify importing workers out of state
- Increased unemployment benefits for trades to ease off-season/low demand periods and make the career more attractive
- grade-school/high-school and general media propaganda to improve public opinion of ‘grunt workers’
or do absolutely nothing and let the free market figure it out like we’re told it will
education, money, AND RETIREMENT FUNDING
mofos
Stop with the relentless “Everyone should go to college “ BS
Yes, historically college graduates make more over their lifetime; but if everyone has a college degree, and or every job requires a degree, especially when it really doesn’t need to; you devalue a degree.
I’d push for a CCC for the trades. You’re likely to have to leave home, but we’ll hire you for …2-3 years and train you. No debt, you’ll get paid the whole time, and when you’re done you’ll be good to go
We’ve spent the last few hundred years deciding which people are better than others, and then go surprised Pikachu when nobody wants to do the jobs that we’ve dubbed “inferior”.
Create a federal school grading metric that puts education in skilled trades on the same level as college readiness. I would also set up a metric that adjusts student test score on ratings to include the economic & familial conditions of the students and improvements.
That way, schools are incentivized to put students into the trades the same way as putting students in college.
I would have one of my political allies propose a bill that would fund universal secondary education, then when it is inevitably shot down, I would use my newly granted immunity to have anyone thay voted against it very publicly removed then I would have an ally propose a constitutional amendment creating public education and removing presidential immunity. Then I would resign, and my vice president would pardon me, then my vice president would push a bill, preventing the president from being pardoned for crimes commited* while in office.
Civil Construction programs.
Basically military-like program for infrastructure. Sign up for 4 years, we’ll train you in an in demand trade, put you through the apprenticeship and pay you the whole time. Then send you to build infrastructure and work in construction around the country. Any out of region jobs would include housing.
Cities, counties, states, and federal government would be required that x% of all government construction projects are to be done by this civilian construction program.
At gunpoint.
