Masonry Magazine December 1973 Page. 12
Apprenticeship Through the Ages
(Continued from page 11)
the apprentice completed his hitch, he received a bonus of $124.
But even with this "innovative" move, things were still sorely lacking for the apprentice, even a generation later. John P. Frey, former president of the AFL metal trades union and a former labor member of the Federal Commission on Apprenticeship, began his career as a molder apprentice in 1887. In his first year of training he received 75 cents for a 10- to 12-hour day, six days a week. His daily wages were then upped 25 cents in each of the two succeeding years of his apprenticeship.
Harley F. Nickerson, who went on to become general vice president of the International Brotherhood of Machinists, worked for nothing during a probationary three-month apprenticeship in 1895. In the next nine months he was paid all of $3 a week. What's more, his employer's only obligation was to pay the agreed-upon rates for time actually worked plus $100 when and if the training was completed. How he was to actually provide the necessary training wasn't even specified.
In the 1920's, however, the ball started to roll. A concerted drive launched by national employer and labor organizations, educators and government officials began snowballing into an actual movement for a national, uniform apprenticeship system. As the U.S. Labor Department noted: "In the forefront of this movement were representative groups of the construction industry."
The combined effort of these various bodies led in 1924 to the participation of the federal government in a national campaign promoting apprenticeship. Three years later, Congress passed the National Apprenticeship Law, popularly known as the Fitzgerald Act.
As a result, the Federal Committee on Apprenticeship was reorganized and enlarged to include equal representation of employers and labor as well as a representative of the U.S. Office of Education. The Bureau of Apprenticeship and Training (formerly the Apprenticeship Training Service) was established as the national administrative agency in the Labor Department to carry out the objectives of the law guided by recommendations of the Federal Committee on Apprenticeship.
Today, thanks to the foresightedness and continually improving working relationships between labor and management such as exemplified by the Joint Apprenticeship Committees apprentice training has been vastly upgraded and dramatically improved. The trainee in many U.S. industries from construction to printing to automotive repair-now is a welcome and needed member of the total production force. Realistic wages, a regular workweek and justifiable pride in his craftsmanship make the apprentice's job even more meaningful.
How skillfully the artisan in the masonry industry plies his trade can perhaps be summed up in this published account in 1954 by Rudolph Elie of the Boston Herald:
"For the last half hour I have been standing, mouth ajar, down on Arch Street watching them lay brick in the St. Anthony Shrine now 'abuilding,' and I have come to the conclusion that laying brick is a fine and noble and fasei-nating art. It must be a very ancient art.. and those fellows down on Arch Street are the inheritors of an old tradition. And, curiously enough, to watch them work you get the notion that they are somehow aware of it...
"The bricklayer has a sort of rhythm and grace and fluency in his work Apparently they they can execute the most intricate designs in brick, though there certainly seemed to be no blueprints in evidence."
Bricklaying Apprenticeship Booklet Available
Robert Ebeling and Herschel Hunt, representatives of the National Joint Bricklaying Apprenticeship & Training Committee, present the 54-page booklet, "National Apprenticeship & Training Standards for Bricklaying," just off the press and in its fifth printing. The National Standards was prepared jointly by a committee representing the MCAA (Robert Ebeling, Herschel Hunt and George Miller); the Bricklayers, Masons & Plasterers International Union of America (Thomas F. Murphy, John T. Joyce, Edward M. Bellucci, Merlin L. Taylor and James F. Richardson with Richard H. Gould and L. Gerald Carlisle as alternates), and the Associated General Contractors of America (Charles P. McGough, Simon Korshoj and Anthony Grignano). Some of the important additions to the new Standards are the guidelines for local joint apprenticeship committees along with a model affirmative action program and equal opportunity pledge. Local joint apprenticeship committees should take a moment to read through this new booklet so that they would be fully informed on the contents of this new and important document. It is urged that this be given your fullest attention.