Bucks or Books

As the boom-bait of high-paying grunt work siphons kids out of higher education, is Alberta sabotaging its next economy?

You have to pity Rick Miller and parents like him. Think of it as a case of pennies envy, a condition spreading throughout Alberta these past seven years. The university-educated, hang-gliding Liberal MLA for Edmonton-Rutherford, who won his legislature seat in 2004, will earn a $74,754 salary this year, not counting benefits. No complaints there. But compared to the wages of his 20-year-old son, the senior Miller may be tempted to fly his hang-glider straight into a mountainside. Just two years out of high school with no further education, young Chris Miller is making substantially more as an unskilled grunt worker than his politician father in our boom-twisted economy.

By his own calculations Chris will take home about $100,000 this year in his job with Mobile Augers and Research Inc. The company drills and tests core soil samples for construction and road-building companies, mostly in the oilpatch. “As someone who has 30 years in business, and now three years in government,” says dad, “that’s a little tough to swallow.”

“And my job is just a labour job,” marvels the younger Miller. “I just grab augers, I grab rods, I take our sampler apart and put it back together, and I shovel. Those are my duties. That’s all I do.”

When Chris graduated from Edmonton’s Strathcona Composite High School in 2005, his plan was to join the police force. But, like many Alberta teenagers, he found it hard to ignore the boom bait: high-paying, low-thinking jobs that, Chris told himself, would help buy a car, a house, some toys and provide a bouncy financial cushion for school later on.

“A lot of my friends are pursuing their master’s and doctorates, and they’re deep in debt, with fees around $30,000 per year.” That made no sense to him. And cops, with all their training and the risks they take, aren’t pulling down a hundred grand. Nevertheless, he was planning to join the force in a few years or at least return to school to complete post-secondary education. Now he’s not so sure: “I have to admit that money has changed my perspective on how soon I want to go back to school. This economy is just booming right now and there is such a cry for workers.”

His dad worries. Not just for Chris, but for all Alberta youth faced with the same sticky choice: take the cash, or carry on with my education? Rick Miller wonders if the boom, which is siphoning young Albertans out of the education stream, is dumbing down the workforce on which Alberta’s future depends.

“It is a concern that not only myself but my caucus colleagues have been expressing for some time,” he explains. “When this economy takes a downturn, as all economies do, we will have a generation of young people my son’s age who will have left high school without finishing, or who have not pursued a post-secondary education, and suddenly they’ll find themselves out of work with no real job prospects. The impact on our society if that happens would
be huge.”

Cashing in on dropping out

For the most part, as Alberta exports more black gold to the world, we are importing more gray matter. Alberta industry relies heavily on post-secondary graduates and skilled apprentices from other provinces and other nations to compensate for our drastic shortage of skilled workers. Alberta’s high-school graduation rate is the worst of any province in the country. About 25% of Alberta youth fail to get their high school diploma within five years of starting Grade 10. And only one in six Albertans aged 18 to 21 were enrolled full time in university when a study was done in the fall of 2003, well below the national average.

In particular, male students at post-secondary institutions such as the University of Alberta’s Augustana Campus in Camrose are a dwindling species. Although it’s difficult to measure, dean RogerEpp suspects the oil boom is picking off many young rural males before they even start their post-secondary education.“Allcampuses in North America have become much more female, but we are more pronouncedly so,” he says Augustana’s student body is 61% women.

Resource economies such as Alberta’s and British Columbia’s have always tended to employ a greater percentage of unskilled workers than others, and their patterns of post-secondary participation tend to be lower as well. But, laments Epp, “The current boom is only reinforcing those patterns.” And with $130 billion worth of oilsands projects planned for the next 20 years and the Alberta government forecasting a shortfall of 100,000 workers by 2015, things are unlikely to get better without drastic changes to the education system and hiring practices.

For Epp, it’s all a bit ironic. “This is a province that continues to import university graduates to do the work that needs to be done here. We can’t begrudge those equalization payments that keep universities and technical institutes going in other provinces because we use their graduates.”

According to the Alberta Federation of Labour, though, there’s not even a clear case that workers, young or old, are financially benefiting from the boom as much as the hype suggests. Six-figure grunt jobs such as Chris Miller’s are more exception than rule, says AFL executive director Gil McGowan. Last October the federation co-sponsored a conference on wages and income with The Parkland Institute, a left-leaning think tank based out of the U of A. Crunching wage trends in Alberta over the past 15 years, they found that “When you factor in inflation, the average hourly wage has remained pretty much stagnant despite the booming economy,” McGowan says. He doesn’t think Alberta’s desperate construction and oil sectors are consciously sucking kids out of school. Instead, he calls it poor planning by industry and government. “Are we in the process of creating a generation of workers who won’t be qualified to take positions in the future? The short answer is yes.”

More than warm bodies

Not long ago, MLA Rick Miller recalls, he was in FortMcMurray. “We did a tour of the Albion Sands plant and they told us they will take anybody off the street. And, with two weeks’ training, you’re driving one of those 300-tonne mining trucks and making $66,000 a year. Anybody.”

The AFL’s McGowan admits the problem. Employers grabbing warm bodies off the streets – no questions asked – to fill critical job shortages risk putting a chill on their own corporate futures. Those who don’t actively participate in creating apprenticeship opportunities to train young people in various trades will find themselves saddled with an under-skilled, undereducated workforce that can’t keep pace with evolving technologies and the greater productivity future economies will demand.

“On one hand,” notes McGowan, “employers are luring young people into the workforce with high wages for unskilled work. But on the other hand they are crying in their beer about a shortage of skilled workers.” McGowan says 20,000 employers in Alberta are in a position to offer apprenticeships, but only about 11,000 actually do. In the past decade, he argues, “we in the labour movement have been saying that more spaces need to be opened in technical schools, and more worksite apprenticeship opportunities have to be offered by employers.” It’s only now, “with the crisis upon us,” says McGowan, that industry and government have ramped up apprenticeship programs.

The Stelmach government doesn’t deny the boom has put pressure on students to choose between bucks or books. And it admits the brain- and skill-power of our future home-grown workforce is a concern. Advanced Education Minister Doug Horner sees what’s happening today as echoes of his own rural youth during the 1970s boom. “When I grew up in Barrhead, Swan Hills, which was 67 miles north of us, was where kids wanted to go. They were paying $12 an hour 30 years ago.” Those were huge dollars then, recalls Horner. “And our schools did lose kids to that.”

This past summer, Horner was at a breakfast meeting with a number of business people. He asked them what some of their main issues were these days. “They said, ‘Trying to get people and train people.’” One businessman admonished Horner, saying, “You gotta do more to keep these kids in high school.”

“Well, then you’re my biggest problem,” Horner replied.

“It used to be,” he says, illuminating his point, “that when you filled out a job application, one of the first questions asked was, ‘Do you have a high-school diploma?’ Now, one of the first questions is, ‘Do you breathe?’ If you do, you’re hired.” Oilpatch companies, in addition to offering generous signing bonuses to attract workers, have even dangled the chance to participate in million-dollar lotteries if they join a company.

But industry, suggests Horner, is finally getting the picture. It’s working more intimately with government to address the shortage of made-in-Alberta skilled workers. More technical and trade spaces in post-secondary institutions are being opened. So are apprenticeship opportunities on job sites. Business and government are also educating students at a younger age about the good prospects in the trades – provided they graduate high school and further their education through apprenticeships.

Giving unskilled youth a taste of the trades is part of that. Merit Contractors Association, for instance, which represents more than 1,200 non-union contractors employing 40,000 workers throughout Alberta, offers a two-week, free “construction boot camp.” Partially funded by Alberta Employment, boot camps give inexperienced Albertans aged 18 and over a chance to learn basic construction skills. Displaying the right stuff could land an apprenticeship promising $60,000-a-year income in four years. And whereas, once upon a time, apprenticeship training began after students graduated (or quit) high school, the Registered Apprenticeship Program (RAP) now gets them into training as early as Grade 10.

RAPs, administered by Alberta Learning, have been spreading throughout Alberta high schools since 1991. Students must remain in high school until they graduate, but can apprentice part-time during the school day. That work experience is worth credits towards their high-school diploma. They also earn some money.

Meanwhile, the province’s “Learning Clicks” program is trying to reinforce among young Albertans the importance of getting a post-secondary education. Sixteen youth ambassadors speak at schools across the province and offer CD-ROMs designed to encourage kids to further their education. “What we’re saying to them is, look, you may get 20 bucks an hour right now if you take a job out of high school but, if you stick it out, you are going to make a lot more,” says Horner. “You’re going to need post-secondary education or training of some sort in Alberta’s next-generation economy workforce.”

Horner maintains the province has done an impressive job of increasing the number of apprenticeship opportunities available to Alberta’s students in 51 different trades and six occupations. “We’re signing up about 100 to 200 kids a day. We have over 66,000 apprentices in the province today, which is a lot. We’re the second highest in Canada and fast closing in on the highest.”

Still, warns the AFL’s McGowan, the current completion rate for apprenticeship programs, which typically last four years before an apprentice reaches coveted journeyman status (and the high pay that goes with it), is only about 60%. Employers are hesitant to invest time and money, only to see their apprentices poached by competitors. “What a lot of construction employers do is they wait for other employers to train the workers, and they offer a few dollars more an hour to lure a worker away. For them it still ends up being cheaper than training an apprentice”

Perception isn’t reality

One challenge industry faces is changing the perception of apprenticeships. Students, parents and educators alike often see the trades as a default route slackers take when they can’t cut it academically. Promoting “skill” is an important mission of the Alberta Home Builder’s Association, says Allan Klassen, past president of the Canadian Home Builders Association – Alberta, and CEO and Managing Partner of Albi Homes in Calgary.

“That’s why we’re replacing our industrial arts workshops with dance halls,” spouts Klassen with more than a hint of frustration, “because the societal pressure on kids has been ‘If you get a degree, you’ll be successful.’”

A few years ago, says Klassen, a study placed home building 36th out of 38 industries as a route to a satisfactory career. “That is an absolute embarrassment. Home building is perceived as a last resort. And yet, look at the 50 or 60 builders in our province that represent 80% of the building units in Alberta and $11.2 billion in revenue. There is tremendous opportunity to create a career on the trade side or the housing side that just hasn’t been exposed before.”

Exposed… funny Klassen uses that word, since he admits the image of tradespeople can be a deprecating one: “It’s not just a bunch of guys with their pants halfway down their ass and their cracks hanging out,” Klassen insists. “These people are hard workers who are entrepreneurs. You need to know geometry, you need to know physics. You’ve got to be innovative. It’s not just hard labour. These are good, smart, individuals.”

To that end, CHBA-Alberta has developed a “career laddering” and mentoring program for high-school students across the province. It’s part of an effort by the home-building industry to show upcoming grads the opportunities for advancing themselves in the sector, revealing the growing training programs available and introducing entrepreneurial ex-tradespeople.

Between the whining scream of the electric drill he’s using to drive screws into the wall of a new Calgary office building, Jeff Williamson sees the trades as his ticket to happiness. After graduating from high school four years ago, the 21-year-old slogged away as a cook at Earls and later Chili’s. It was fun, the money was OK, but he eventually got a job doing counter-top installations which paid better at $16 an hour. Still, his ambitions went further.

Then his mother told him about the Calgary Construction Association’s Youth Education Program (YEP). It offers youth aged 16 to 24 a chance to “audition” for possible apprenticeships in various construction trades over three weeks. To take part, companies must provide a minimum 30 hours a week of meaningful tasks that give a sampling of a construction career. Prospects such as Williamson, aiming to become a journeyman electrician in four years time, get a flat wage near $13 an hour during the tryout. If they’re hired on as a first-year apprentice, the young workers are paid 50% of a journeyman electrician’s current $32-per-hour wage. In their second year they get 60%, in the third, 70%, and in their fourth year, 80%.

In Williamson’s case he tried out with Allied Projects Ltd., an electrical contractor. The first three weeks was as much a test of attitude as it was an aptitude. “They keep an eye on you to make sure you’re keeping up to par, that you are showing up every day,” says Williamson, who, though he did well in school, never particularly liked it, and knew an academic path wasn’t for him.

Nevertheless, in a small sign that perhaps the trades are finally getting the respect they deserve among young people, Williamson, who hung with a “smart crowd” in high school, says many of his friends who are in university studying for degrees and doctorates, supported his decision to become an electrician. “The people I know who are going to university are basically spending all their time in school and they are coming out, basically, on par [in pay terms] with people who have been working in the trades for a few years.”

John Goucher, Allied’s human resources manager, says he hires a lot of youth through YEP, RAP and the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology’s Pre-Employment Program. In 2004 Allied won an award from the Merit Contractors Association for providing the most YEP opportunities of any company in the association. This year, Goucher hired three YEP youths, including Williamson, now a first-year apprentice electrician.

While Jeff Williamson has his path set, Chris Miller, though he says he wants to go back to school, doesn’t sound entirely convinced. “In the time I’ve worked here, a lot more opportunities are presenting themselves, to the point where I’m considering not pursing my lifelong dream of being a police officer. There are so many doors that have opened to me, just from doing this.” Like Williamson, he may take an apprenticeship in a trade, “That way I still keep doing what I do now. I get the education – though not the one I originally planned on – but it will give me a steady income and set me on a path for the rest of my life.”

One thing Chris Miller does know, despite the temptation of flooding his bank account while he can, is that getting an education, whether it be academic or in the trades, is vital for his generation and those to follow.

“We are going to run out of oil someday and we’ll have thousands and thousands of people who don’t have an education,” says the younger Miller. “And they are going to be hooped.”

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