Episode Transcript
[00:00:08] Speaker A: Welcome to on the Fringe, brought to you by EPR Live. I'm Ann Larson and today we're talking about something that every NECA chapter, IBEW local and electrical contractor has on their mind right now, workforce development.
My guest is Dr. Joey Shorter, executive director of Atlanta Chapter NECA, which has been running a school outreach program for 25 years.
Today, five dozen schools participate across the Atlanta area, educating young people about careers in the electrical industry.
Joey, I'm so happy to have you on the podcast. Can you start by giving us an overview of the program?
[00:00:40] Speaker B: Yes, I'm very happy to be here too, and thanks for inviting me. So this program, this outreach to the schools in Atlanta is probably one of the pieces that if you ask our contractor members and anyone on staff at aca, it's one of the things we're probably most proud of. And we've done a lot of things. We have a lot of initiatives, we have some new things that we're into. But this has been going on for a while. Couple of staff members back. Chuck Little started the program. And with his outreach to the schools, Chuck had had a background in something totally different, unrelated to education. Of course we as educators know everything's related to education, but. But he would tell you he was like with the chamber of commerce and in sales. But the electrical contractors had of Atlanta saw the need to begin to forge friendships and relationships with the high schools in the area, particularly those that had technical and components to their education program, especially industrial and technical components. For instance, when I was in school in the 70s, you know, we all had, they call them business and industrial arts. Some students would pull away from the main high school and be bused across the county or town or somewhere to this one place where they could do more hands on work and learning, whether it was auto mechanics or electricity or plumbing or carpentry or whatever. And so Atlanta electrical contractors saw the need for Chuck to begin to make relationships and friendships with these counselors and teachers in these programs so that they could begin to plant a seed that not only is this industry that we are part of viable and a consideration for you, but also we have the next step for you called an apprenticeship. And that's kind of how it began. And it has really mushroomed. Most of our contractors are involved on any given day of the week, typically two or three days a week during the school year. We are in some school somewhere or some skills competition for high schoolers, or now it even reaches down to middle school and some visits with elementary schools as well.
[00:02:54] Speaker A: So you said Two to three days a week. You guys are in the schools. It sounds like that takes a lot of staff time for your chapter, right?
[00:03:01] Speaker B: Yeah. So we have two people that are dedicated to recruiting not only in the schools, but also the technical colleges and now through the military. And there's a lot of different programs out there that are focused on recruiting the military related to our industry. A couple that I will mention is the Veep program that's all caps, V, E E, P, also helmets to hard hats. And then there's another one that's just started, it's called vets to Volts, I think something like that. So we've got two or three that we're involved with. When I say involved, we are actively recruiting people coming out of the military. We are putting them in connection with potential employers, electrical contractors as employers.
And oftentimes their experience in the military will allow them to begin to go to work before they even transition completely, where they can decide if this is really going to be what they want to do or not. So we're finding that very helpful. Many want to go back and start the apprenticeship from scratch. Some already have electrical background and maintenance background that can be applied toward the apprenticeship program. So they kind of get a leg up on the trail training part of the program, if you will. So it's been really, really good. So we've got two full time staff dedicated to those relationships in the schools and those relationships with non traditional age adults who have especially had careers, maybe in education, maybe in the military, as I mentioned, or wherever else that they might be coming from.
[00:04:42] Speaker A: When you talk about staff, I mean for my business anyway, that's our biggest expense.
How does the program pay for itself?
[00:04:52] Speaker B: That's a good question. So I learned a long time ago that contractors, more than anybody else, want to know what the ROI is. What is the return of investment?
Well, Atlanta Electrical Contractors association decided probably 30 years ago, before they ever hired our predecessor, that they wanted to launch and make this because they saw that there was going to be a need for to somehow connect, make a connection between these folks that are out there and our industry. Because traditionally and historically speaking, the only way anyone came into this field, the electrical construction field, was word of mouth. The uncle so and so, or my dad or my grandfather or my brother or my cousin or whoever told me that I can learn about electricity and learn about the work of electrical contractor and do the work of a journeyman, wireman or whatever, make a good pay, have good pension and benefits or whatever. And that's how people Got into it as schools, historically as secondary and high schools, began dropping these vocational programs back in the probably 80s in earnest. And some never had them, I understand that. But the ones that did have them, through the 70s, 60s and 70s, they began to drop some of these programs along with the fine arts and things like that.
And by the way, I'm a product of public school and I all my education is from public school, so I know a little about the history of modern education.
Then I think organizations like the Atlanta Electrical Contractors association saw the need to, hey, we've got to start building some bridges. Because they aren't being told about this. Naturally, there's no place for them to learn about this. And so how do you do that? You begin to go into career fairs and create skills competitions and job fairs and go into the classrooms and tell about the career and what you can learn in the apprenticeship and how you can apply it and how you might even own your own business one day or whatever. So I think that's the impetus that kind of got the ball rolling. And so they just made the decision along the way for the longest time to have one person dedicated to kind of focus on that and education. And now we've got two full time people dedicated to recruiting and education and business development. So it's been a very exciting development for our office to continue to not only pursue this position as full time, but now to add to it and to be able to approach other avenues or other sources of recruiting people to our industry.
[00:07:25] Speaker A: So, I mean, it sounds like recruitment is just part of your mission as an electrical contractors association. Is that fair?
[00:07:33] Speaker B: Yes, and it has to be. We know a couple things about where we are right now in the United States. Our birth rate is on the decline, and so every few years we look at the next generation, see how many of them are there. There are fewer coming out of high schools. Well, who's going to get those for their industries or their marketplace or their jobs or their careers? Where are the next nurses coming from? Where are the next accountants coming from? Where are the lawyers and doctors coming from? Teachers, coaches, whatever. And then all of a sudden we as electricians say, well, where are our workers coming from? We're all recruiting for the same thing. But there is an interesting dynamic going on at this point, and that is that for the first time, probably in 40 years or more, maybe closer to 50 years, these students coming out of high schools or high school age graduating students are saying, traditional college might not be for me. And they're saying things like, I want to explore apprenticeship. I want to explore what does it mean to be a journeyman, what does it mean to be an indentured apprentice? What does it mean to learn a skill and trade from someone who is a master craftsman perhaps and to learn from them, to be able to go out and to do this on my own, whatever. And so I think there is now more than ever perhaps a renewed interest in that kind of hands on education.
And the big difference in selling point for us is, is that the curriculum is laid out clearly. But you're going to get paid while you, we say earn while you learn. You're going to get paid while you're learning the skilled trade. And so for every nine days that they're in class, the 10th day they are either online or actually in a laboratory with their hands with an instructor learning something new, some skill that perhaps they haven't acquired yet. So it's a refreshing thing. But it's also a very daunting task to look at how many we're going to need, where are they all going to come from and how are we going to prepare them all to be the very best skilled workers that have safety and the goal of getting home at the end of the day and making sure their co workers do the same.
[00:09:44] Speaker A: Have you tracked any data on how many students actually enter the trade after exposure to the program?
[00:09:50] Speaker B: Yes, right now we have a 90%, that's 9,0% retention rate at our JTC. That's our joint Apprenticeship Training Committee is what it generally stands for. But most people call it the Joint Apprenticeship Training Center. So the AE J T C is the Atlanta Electrical J atc. They all are part of a larger, I mean ours is part of a larger association of JTCs, probably 300 plus across the Lower 48, Alaska, Hawaii and some of the other places south of the border and in the Caribbean perhaps. But those centers have people enrolled in them just like ours does. And our retention rate is up to about the 90% level now. And so they not only complete the apprenticeship program in four to five years, that's four or five years, but ideally. But they go to work in the electrical construction field.
[00:10:46] Speaker A: So that's awesome. And do you know how that compares to other areas or to Atlanta before this program?
[00:10:53] Speaker B: I've been told that before, you know, it was probably, probably in the 60, 70% range in Atlanta. I think in some places it just varies. It depends on the product that people are putting out there, depends on the instruction, quality of instruction as well as being able to meet the need with sometimes it's quantity, sometimes they don't have enough teachers, certified teachers in the jtcs to meet the need. And so those. There's limits to how many people you can have in a class. There's limits to how many people you can enroll in a program based on classroom availability as well as instructor availability. Now, having said that, online learning has helped and aided in that, but there's still so much that we need to be able to do in person and to be able to objectively adjudicate or witness or see that you really do know how to bend this conduit or whatever the learning objective is for the day. So much of it does have to be observable learning, quantitative learning, that an instructor can say not only check a box, but they do this with great proficiency as well.
[00:12:02] Speaker A: Right. And you, I assume that this helps you with your apprenticeship applications. Right. So you're saying 90% of the apprentices finish, but you're also presumably getting bigger, better pools to pick from.
[00:12:17] Speaker B: That's a great observation and a question to hear the question in there as well. So let me just tell you, our applicants, number of applicants, just sheer number of applicants, has more than, we say, more than mushroomed around here in Atlanta. It's just since right before COVID say 2019, and then we went through Covid in 2020 and we started climbing out of COVID in 2021. Well, all of a sudden about 22, 23, we started having 12, 1300, 1500 to and 24. We had 2500 and 2025. We had same around 2,500 applicants for our apprenticeship program.
And that's a huge number. But what happens with that number is to your point, I think you, you made briefly there when you were, you were posing the thought or question was it allows us to be able to observe, to be able to pick the ones that are probably going to have a higher rate of success and stick with the program and be dedicated to finishing it and just have a high propensity toward completing the apprenticeship program itself. And so, yes, the higher number of applicants have allowed us not only to increase our numbers in the field, but to also focus on obtaining or receiving or having more quality workers come through the program, if that makes sense.
[00:13:46] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, and what does that mean then? Have you found any surprising results from the contractors as time goes on? Like, what do they say about that workforce?
[00:13:59] Speaker B: That's a funny question to me because I just have to chuckle a little bit because, you know, any question, it depends on who's answering the question.
So let me say this. I think that there's been a lot of talk about generational gaps or the generation gaps, the generational learning differences and things like that. But I will tell you this, that any given day, on almost any given job site, you can walk into a prefab shop, which is sometimes more like a manufacturing center, to a very large industrial construction site, a multi story building in a downtown area, to a multi high rise, you know, apartment complex, condominium or shopping centers, whatever we're building wherever we are, commercial, industrial, residential, doesn't matter, data centers, power plants, whatever. And you can probably pick up pretty quickly at least two, maybe three and sometimes four generations of workers on the job site. I know this because my youngest son has worked a little bit in construction. Well, my son's worked in construction at some point or another, but, but he is a full time student, University of Georgia, and he also works summers and part time in the school year for an electrical contractor, construction and construction.
And he says, dad, it is sometimes comical on the job site because you got me here, I'm a college guy. There's, there's a couple guys younger than me still in high school, coming out of high school. Then you got guys that are in their late 20s and early 30s, and you got guys in their 40s, some of them even beyond their 50s. And there'll be one or two that are, they're really the goats, dad. They're maybe in their 60s. I said, thanks, son. I guess I'm a goat. And I didn't know it. But he'll say it's very interesting because sometimes the vocabulary is different or the, the terminology is applied differently in a situation or a tool or we know certain terms and technologies using software that somebody else has no clue what's being said on the job site. And so we're able to lend and help out. And so I think the cool thing about all of it is that and you asked for some numbers, so I'm fixing to give those to you. But as we see our numbers in the field grow, and we were just at a trustee meeting yesterday where I think we're up to about 63,6400 workers in the field in the Atlanta Electrical Contractors Association.
So that's up probably 2000 in the field in the last two and a half years.
That's quite a big increase in the field of field workers, total field workers. But the age numbers over the last five years have come down from the average field worker being like 42, 43 to it's between 31 and 32 now. So we're getting a younger overall workforce, if that makes sense. And I think that's a good thing. That also points back to that recruiting program we mentioned. And how do you know what kind of return on investment? Well, the workforce is getting younger, so we must be doing something right with our recruitment.
[00:17:17] Speaker A: When you talk to students, and presumably parents too, how do they perceive the electrical trade today? And how. Have you seen, have you seen changes over time?
[00:17:27] Speaker B: Yes, it's different. And you know, this is going to be more of a indictment on myself as an educator than anything. I was not one of those students in high school that went to the business and industrial complex to learn an automotive trade or plumbing or electrical or carpentry or something. I probably should have because I've had to learn all that over the last 40 years anyway, sometimes to get things done that I want to get done around the house or with my vehicles or my tractor or whatever. By the way, YouTube and DIY is a wonderful thing, but still, sometimes some of this knowledge would have been really nice if I had obtained it a long time ago, ago. So anyway, I agree.
But back to your question. Parents and students particularly, especially counselors, teachers and coaches, they'll come to a career fair or a trade show, if you will, or skills competition or wherever we are. And sometimes, I think about twice a year, we do it in the fall, we do one in the spring. We just have a teams call our zoom call, and we invite parents, teacher, students to get on the call and just listen to our recruiters basically present this kind of the same thing I'm doing here with you. And they talk about the careers and they talk about how to obtain the careers and what's involved in the apprenticeship and how do you get paid and all the stuff.
Invariably the students are already engaged because they've kind of heard it or they've seen it, or it's an alternative to the astronomical cost of going to college these days or whatever. And so they're trying to see what's the best way for me to obtain a skill, make some money and maybe own my own business. And so that that kind of gets plugged in. And then invariably there'll be parents, coaches, teachers and other adults on the call or in the room and say, man, why didn't we know about this before now? Well, you did 40 years ago. We cut it out of school systems and we quit telling people about about it. And by the way, philosophically, that's something. That's because our educational system was set up on the, basically to follow the English educational system. And that is, as we all know early on, boys go to school and you learn from men teachers and you study books and you get knowledge that is written down in books from men's experiences. Well, then we started women and then it wasn't soon until it was education for all, you know, compensatory education.
The Lampard Supreme Court decision to peak a board of education, I think it was 1854. And so everyone is compulsory. I say compensatory, it's compulsory school education. Everyone's going to go to school. Well, these young adults today and teenagers becoming young adults are saying, this is not only viable, this is something that I want to do. About 20 years ago, as I was still in the school systems and I was the superintendent and I was telling parents, send your kids to me my school because we're going to prepare them for college, because everyone is going to college.
And we, we didn't do such a good job of keeping the cost for college down. The other thing we didn't do was such a good job of telling the truth that not every child graduating from our institutions, secondary learning high schools particularly, were ready for college. And so truthfully, at my last school In Louisiana, about 70% of my student body was probably prepared for college when they graduated.
So that's 30% that can't even get in. And then of that 70% that applied, usually most of those were accepted. There were somewhere where they were going to go. But only about 35% of those stayed after their first year.
And then we found out that only about 50% of those were actually graduating from the colleges and universities on time. Now, they may have gone back and finished or something, but that's not a real good look for an institution that is saying, come, let me prepare you. You'll be able to go and do this. And then to have only what is it that's left, 20, 25, maybe 40% on a good year of your kiddos that you say were 100% prepared for college to actually go and finish the program. And then even those who didn't still have this tremendous bill to pay whenever they get done.
[00:21:55] Speaker A: Well, so you have a background in education. Has that helped you specifically? Are there specific things about this program that you've changed since you've been with Atlanta Chapternika?
[00:22:03] Speaker B: Yes, for me personally, I have seen the error of my ways, I guess is the best way to say it as an educator, and that is that education's purpose isn't to Perpetuate education.
It is to grow a love for learning.
So I think somewhere along the way, as educators, we learn, okay, well, they're going to come into preschool, we're going to prepare them for elementary. Elementary, they're going to get the foundation to go on to middle school where they learn to ask the questions. And this is all based on classical education. And then from there they go into secondary and college where they now explore the questions that they've gotten answers to, but broaden their knowledge base even more and to obtain skills and aptitudes that allow them to be successful in the world of business, commerce, continuing education or whatever, professional lawyers, doctors, whatever the case might, architects, engineers. So we were perpetuating education rather than teaching a student, a learner, if you will, a love for learning.
I'll never forget I had a second grade teacher who worked for me and she just never wanted to let me see her lesson plans. And I thought it was because she wasn't doing it wasn't that she didn't want me to see that sometimes she didn't follow those lesson plans. And what I mean by that? She said, well, I'm a bird walking teacher. And I said, a what? And she said, yeah, I like to take my class outside and we just go on bird walks. I said, what do you mean? She said, just, you know, have you ever watched a bird walk around at the beach? It just kind of walks from here and looks at that and it'll pick it up, sometimes it'll eat it, sometimes it'll put it back down, it'll move to the next object. She said, or just walking through the marsh and you watch the cranes or the egrets and they just slowly move through the marsh and they, they observe and they watch and they're ever alert, but they're also eating as they go and learning and teaching whatever. She said, so I believe in bird walking as learning. She said, so as long, as long as you will accept that, then I'll start giving you my lesson plans. You can see what I'm, what I'm trying to teach, but don't grade me if we're not in our desk learning it. There are other ways to learn than just sitting at the desk and, and between eight and three every day and break in between. So I said, deal. And she's one of the best teachers we ever had. We knew there were different learning styles because we separate them, which is the worst thing we could have ever done in education. And as a early classroom teacher, I learned really quickly that sometimes the best education is peer to peer education. Not always. There's times when peers don't need to be teaching one another because someone who maybe knows more has more experiences than needs me offering that lesson up. However, I will tell you right now that when I was certified to teach algebra and geometry, well, I was certified to teach all the way through calculus, but I was certified to teach algebra geometry. My first job was to teach that.
I found it really quick that there's some students that I could not connect with them. Let me say it that way. What I was trying to present was not getting to them. However, I could put them with say, a Drew Jackson. And I love the story of Drew Jackson. If we have time, bring me back to that.
I didn't ask you if I could borrow his name, but I will, I'll change it to Andrew Jackson. I will say so anyway, I would say I need you to come and sit over here. Now. What did that do? Two things.
Drew probably could have taught the lesson better than I did. To begin with, he probably should have been the next level course, but we didn't offer it or whatever for his age group. So it gave him an opportunity to share his knowledge and skill and also influence someone in a positive way. It also allowed me to concentrate on the needs of the other students who were able, that I was able to connect with and get them on down the road. Always coming back and checking on Drew and John, you know, to make sure John was getting, not only getting it, but it did two things. John and Drew developed a relationship beyond the locker room or the football field or wherever. And there was a mutual respect there that, hey, we have a lot more in common here. I just happen to be able to get this sooner, but I'm able to share with you and you're able to get it now and move on down the road to your next goal or objective. So especially in classes where the teacher has a very daunting task to meet every learning need. And sometimes the teacher doesn't even understand all the different learning needs, much less the different learning styles, because unfortunately, that's not always taught to teachers. Some of the best teachers are the ones who are not educators. And they're hired in secondary college, particularly because of their subject knowledge. But they may not have a wit's grasp about how to express that to everyone in the classroom. And all they know is that grades should be distributed on a bell curve. And as long as they got so many people failing and so many people passing, they don't really care.
[00:27:15] Speaker A: Yeah, I Could tell you many stories about my son's experience in school, very much in keeping with that. So did you bring some of that peer teaching to your program?
[00:27:25] Speaker B: Yes, I think we see that. And that's the beauty of the apprenticeship. It lends itself naturally to it because so most of our instructors have come through the. Well, I'll say most all of our instructors in Atlanta in our apprenticeship program have come through the apprenticeship program.
They then also have to go through the National Training Institute, nti. We have a lot of Alphabet soup programs in NECA and aca, but they have to go to NTI National Training Institute, and they have to be certified to become teachers in the classroom at the apprenticeships. And so we have a director and assistant director over there and a staff of probably 12 full time faculty. Then there's a number of part time, but they're not teaching unless they have qualification certification to do that. And so. But they are also working in the field, oftentimes side by side with these apprentices that are on their path to become journeymen. And so you do in a sense have peer to peer learning going on, not just in the field where apprentices are placed with CEs or JWs, but they're also Journeyman, Wireman or Construction Electricians. CEs, JWs. But they are also then in a classroom with these same people sometimes teaching them the rudiments, if you will, of the electrical construction industry.
[00:28:47] Speaker A: So you mentioned that you have these big zoom calls and you also have people actually in the classroom. This is like pre apprenticeship. This is the stuff in the schools. Back to that, two to three days a week. How do you. So that's your office, that's contractors, that's vendors. Like, how do you, what does that look like? What are they doing in the classroom?
[00:29:08] Speaker B: Okay. Last week I had a young man who rang the doorbell at our office. He saw the sign Atlanta Electrical Contractors association down on the the corner and he came up the hill. He said, I want to know more about the electrical training program. And I said, oh, you want to know about the jtc? He said, yes, but I want to know about you. You know, he so long and short of it is he had a little bit of a European accent. I couldn't quite pick it out. So finally I asked him, I said, now how long have you been in Atlanta?
So he said, a year ago I was a junior in high school and my family moved here from Ukraine.
And immediately all sorts of flags went up in my mind. And so I said, oh, are you liking being at Lynn he said, yes, my father owns a business and I'm learning a lot about electricity and connecting things and making things work. His father installs signs, like electrified signs on businesses or whatever. He said, so I work with my father and I've learned a lot. But when I graduate from high school I want to go to the apprenticeship. Now his is interesting because he also wants to go to technical college. He's not the first to do that. We've had people that have been in our JTC learning the electrical trade and working full time who have also obtained their electrical engineering degree at KSU or Georgia Tech or wherever around town and then they have gotten their baccalaureate degree, their apprenticeship degree and they've worked full time the whole time while they're going through doing this. So to answer your question, my next thing was he said, what does school look like? I said, school looks like this. 90% of your school is going to be on the job training. You're going to be in the field, working in the electrical construction trade, doing electrical instruction work.
10% of your time is going to be in the classroom. Perhaps it's on a computer, perhaps it's hands on bending conduit or whatever the skill will be that day, whatever lab you're in. And so you can look at it this way, in a two week period you're going to work nine days on the job and the 10th day you're going to be in the classroom or the lab or on the computer. He said, oh, okay, that sounds manageable. I said, well, it is. And that's the way we've been doing it for a long time here. You know, that's why it's called an apprenticeship, because you're an apprentice to someone who knows more about the trade you're trying to learn, you're learning from them primarily, but you're coming into the laboratory or classroom or computer keyboard or whatever to expand and grow that wealth of knowledge and learn the next applications that you need to get in the field. So that's how we look at it.
[00:31:52] Speaker A: But what are they doing before the apprenticeship? Like when they go into the class, when they go into like a middle school or even an elementary school, what are the, what's your staff or a contractor or a vendor doing?
[00:32:06] Speaker B: So when we go to visit them in the schools like that, we'll go any school, I mean it could be any classroom and it could just be an assembly that's being called to learn more about the electrical construction trade. There's a lot of different avenues from the formal classroom to the larger auditorium to, I've mentioned a couple of times now the skills trade competition where literally they are hands on doing carpentry, stripping wire, trying to learn about circuitry or whatever the case might be, pulling cable, whatever the case might be. Any examples? And that does involve not just our guys on our staff, coupled with their teachers and administrators and counselors in the local schools, whether it's again, primarily high school or sometimes middle school and elementary. But we also invite our contractors to go with us to teach a skill or teach a how to, whatever the topic is. And then we also have vendors like Milwaukee Tool or any of the other tool makers I can name Klein or DeWalt or South Fire, which is a big one for us in Georgia, is their international offices in Carrollton, Georgia. Georgia right there with Georgia. And they are a big company with a lot of great products and do a lot more than just make copper wire. So it's very interesting to get some of these manufacturers into the classroom with us. And it also, by doing that, it opens the mind of the student or learner who's exploring our industry. It opens their mind to all the other adjacent possibilities that are connected to what we're doing. In other words, we're not just generating and bringing the power to you. Okay. Or showing you how to store it or creating or whatever, but we're also now looking at everything that's related to that, from the construction to the making to the production, to the storage, to the distribution, to getting the power back on after hurricane hits Jamaica. I mean, who's the first people to go in after the hurricanes come through? It's outside line crews. They're the ones working hard to get power back home so that everybody else can do everything that they need to do. From the medical industry to the food industry to the Walmart to the whatever, whatever, whatever. It's such a intricate and detailed relationship, but it is made real by seeing the relationships and the impacts that these people bring to the industry when they come into the classroom and visit with us.
[00:34:43] Speaker A: Yeah, I imagine it could be pretty cool. Is there any particular demo or activity that like gets the kids really excited?
[00:34:51] Speaker B: Yeah, I think there's a lot of, especially the skills competitions.
Think of it as a lot of people are familiar with boys state or girls state or they're familiar with Youth Congress in high school, you know, as a junior, I was from a high school speech class. I was selected to go to Legislative Youth Congress at the state capitol. Now, mind you, I had never been to the state capitol before. I was 16 years old and I'd never been down to the state capitol, so it was a big stinking deal. But get down there and you learn to do this kind of mock congress.
And you, you know, you're encouraged to come up with a bill and write a bill and get it passed through the committees and out onto the floor and voted by the majority and see if you can get your bill passed.
Well, I had a really good bill. I thought it had to do with Georgia recently. So 47 years ago, I introduced a bill in Mississippi youth legislature that had to sue with tort reform. I didn't even know it was called tort reform.
It had to do with people who were trespassing on land, and they may trespass on your land. For instance, you, you may have a pool in your backyard and a fence around it, but someone will break into your backyard, fall into your pool and drown. And you're liable for that, okay? Because there was nothing protecting the homeowner in those days. And so that just was the most fun. First of all, I didn't have a pool back now. I went swimming in the pond or in the river or the creek. And I thought, man, it's terrible to have all this and you can't even enjoy it after you get it because some fool might get in there and drown. And then you're responsible for that. And you didn't even invite them, you know. So I wrote this big lovely bill and I'll never forget it. Jim Arnold from Tupelo, Mississippi, which was the big school east of us, 50 miles east, and of course Elvis Presley's birthplace and everything else. Jim Arnold was a year older than me and he'd been to youth congress before. His bill, let me just tell you, was because Elvis had died on August 16, I believe it was the year before. His bill was that every flag in the state of Mississippi should fly half mass of on Elvis's death day. Now, I love that was as much as anybody, but I just thought that was the most ridiculous. Who cares? You know what Honor Elvis by playing his songs or whatever else. But we need to do something about protecting the property owners of Mississippi from personal injury. That is not their fault. And I argued it that way. Well, guess who's Bill 1 not mine. It was only March of 2025 that the state of Georgia now switched states on you. State of Georgia got tort reform in the state of Georgia for the first time this year. So the trial lawyers are all going to, I'm sure, be trying to amend things this year when we go back to state legislature. But that helps us in our industry tort reform because it protects our business owners from ridiculous and outlandish lawsuits. So anyway, that's a silly example, but it's an important one. It is related to what we're talking about. We want people to not only learn about AC and dc, the currents, and we don't want them just to learn how to apply algebra and trigonometry to running of the cables and wires. They don't have to be computer programmers necessarily, but they need to understand softwares and maneuvers. Especially with the impact of technology on the industrial and construction workplace. Today we are seeing technology just change everything. And you've got to keep your mind's open and your classroom's geared up and your applications real. And as we go into these high schools and do these things and show demonstrations, whether it's the ar, the AI or the VR, you know, the augmented reality, that's the ar, the VR, the virtual reality or the artificial intelligence in any way that we would apply it. And to say nothing of all of softwares now that help you solve real day to day problems on the job site and in the classroom. I think where we're headed is, and what's prompting so many more young people is that the technology is cool and it's hands on and they can see the difference that it's making and that excites them about our industry. And so we need to be doing more of that. And that's what all this going into the classroom and skills competitions, everything is all about.
[00:39:15] Speaker A: So you've maintained this program or the chapter has for 25 years when, you know, staff or leadership changes. Have there ever been times when you worried about this program just falling through the cracks or kind of, you know, a champion leaves or something happens or new people come in. Have you ever had trouble keeping it going?
[00:39:37] Speaker B: Not trouble, I think in our office, for instance, the man who put it together to begin with when he got ready to retire in 2021, I thought, well, where are we going to go now? Well, I asked him, I said, listen, what do you think? And he directed me to a young lady who was easy, half his age, but she had been working for agc, Associated Tyrell Contractors of Georgia, AGC of Georgia. And I called her up and I said, hey, would you be willing to interview with me? Let me talk to you about what we're looking for. So along the sort of it as we hired her, she came to work with us for three and a half years. I Think. And she had an opportunity to go to work for a large general contractor paying her more money than we were paying her. And my first thought was, oh man, you know, we're going to lose her. What are we going to do? And again, I said, hey, do you know anybody that I should talk to? I've got this ad going on LinkedIn and all over social media, but before I get 125 resumes I have to sort through, is anybody you think I should talk to? And we went ahead and placed the ad too. And I had several good candidates. But the person she recommended to me was the person that we put together a search committee and they selected him to be her successor. He was a chairman of the construction Education department at a very large high school in Gwinnett county that is 72% Spanish speaking.
That's very exciting for us because that's a piece of our mission is to offer ESL classes to people who are joining our construction teams and working in our labor forces in the field. So he's helping us also with that as well in the school systems. And so we're excited about that. Now, when it came time to hire the fourth staff member total, but another person help us concentrate on military again, we ran an ad and before I could even really start getting them in, one just kind of came to the top. And he's somebody who'd not only been through our apprenticeship and was working as a journeyman wireman, you know, in the field of electrical construction, but he is a United States Marine Corps Reserve. He's gunnery sergeant on the Osprey, which is a very cool machine if you haven't seen the Osprey work. But here's a man who has an understanding, not only the apprenticeship hands on that, that neither Scott nor Liz had, or Nick particularly, but now he's also got this experience ongoing with the military and military men and women coming out of the military looking for careers. I tell people I had to replace an older guy that had created the program. And we got this young, vivacious female who just really connected with the kids and parents and was great. And then doggone, she left us some contractor with a lot of money, offered her more than I could pay her, and I had to go and hire two men to replace her. But yes, anytime someone good leaves for whatever reason because they've got a great opportunity or they want to go and explore something else, your first thought is always, man, where am I going to replace that person? Where am I going to get that person? But I've been doing that for 40 years in schools. Every year, you know, you lose a coach or a teacher. That was just such a vital part of the community.
And everybody cries and everybody's sad, but then there's this hope and this desire and this thing happens and someone else comes along, and oftentimes they step in and do more than you ever imagined. I was told early on in my career, Ann, I was leaving a position, and I had been there for about three years, but I was going back to work on my PhD.
And I went in and told my supervisor. I said, man, I just hate to leave. I just don't know what the students are going to do. I don't know how they're going to survive without me and the parent. They just depend on me so much. I do so much to help them. With students, I just have to laugh. I was so young. But the supervisor said, sit down a minute. And I said, yes. And he said, you know where Lake Pat Cleburne is? I said, yeah, out there on the west side. He said, go on out there this afternoon, stick your elbow in the lake. I said, what?
He said, going out there and stick your elbow in the lake. I said, what are you talking about? He said, what do you think is going to happen when you stick your elbow in? Like I said, let's go make a ripple. He said, how long is that ripple going last? I said, well, I wish he hadn't put it that way.
He said, listen, we will miss you. We will miss you. You've done great work here, but there's someplace else you need to go and do a great work, maybe continue what you were doing here, because they need what you were doing here there. But somebody else is going to come along and they're going to continue to do what you're doing, or maybe even they're going to do it better. So it was a big old lesson in humility. I had to learn real quick that I hadn't really considered, I think. But I kind of feel that way. I think that sometimes those opportunities that come for somebody else to leave also give us opportunity to find the next best person in their place.
[00:44:39] Speaker A: So, yeah, and it sounds like those guys have great background. I mean, that. That sounds really promising for the program.
[00:44:46] Speaker B: Very excited.
[00:44:47] Speaker A: So if another Nika chapter wanted to start a similar program, what is the first thing you tell them to do?
[00:44:54] Speaker B: I tell them, call me. Let me tell you what we're doing. And then is there a way for you to get on the plane and come down here to Atlanta Just sit with ice.
Go and visit with us. Go and see the learning process. Come see what we're doing. Take them to the prefab shops, let them see what we're doing. Because I think Atlanta is doing some things in the industry that are far and away above and beyond what some other people are doing. And so the stereotype of, well, construction is a hot job in the summer, cold, wet job in the winter, and just dirty all year long is changing because of the things I've already talked about. The workforce is changing. It's getting younger, it's getting more vibrant, it's getting more exploratory. I don't want to just come and do my job. I want to learn. I want to apply what I'm learning and I want to do new things. And I think then when we see the numbers like those averages of ages coming out, also the increase of participation in the workforce by minorities. And when I say minorities, Ann, I hope you and listening audience understands that it's anyone who doesn't look like me, that's all the women and that's all the people of color. They don't look like me. Our industry is changing. The face of our industry is changing. As I said earlier, it used to be some man's nephew, my cousin, or Bob's son or Don's grandson or whatever. That's no longer the case of who's coming into the apprenticeship. It's people coming from everywhere. And that's what's exciting about it for us. And so I would say to them, come on down and take a look for yourself. And in fact, we do that, and we've done that, and we'll continue to do that.
[00:46:41] Speaker A: I do think it's important to point out it's not getting more diverse from what you've said. It's not getting more diverse because that's all you have.
It's getting more diverse because you have this nice big pool where you're actually picking the best people and the best people don't all look the same.
[00:46:59] Speaker B: Absolutely. That's absolutely it. And I think that the cool thing about that is whenever you go to a career fair or something and you have anybody, it's not like it was 40 years ago where everybody looked like the same getting out of the truck and coming into the classroom or onto the job site. It's very, very different now. But the technology, the opportunity, the potential for skills and knowledge not only to be learned and obtained and retained, but to be applied in so many different ways now in our industry, I think is a big draw. And again, those tools of the trade, it's not just the tools that we still have in our toolkits, obviously that we have taken on the job with us. There's still a list of tools you have to have to available for you to be an electrician. But now that toolkit has expanded beyond the keyboard, beyond virtual reality, beyond artificial intelligence to help us to dream and do and be smarter and do things better and at the end of the day, more than anything else, be safer and protect one another in this industry and deliver a product that is making all of us better stewards of everything. And now I'm starting to get more, perhaps global, but it's having an impact on everything from the environment to a positive impact, to diversity in the workforce, to inclusivity, to opening new horizons for learning and expansion of businesses and opportunities for growth and everything else. It's also very, very exciting.
[00:48:40] Speaker A: Yeah, I think that flows right into my next question, which is just 10 years from now, what do you think success looks like? It could be, you know, for the NECA chapter or your area or even beyond that.
[00:48:51] Speaker B: All right, so 10 to 15 years from now, I'd like to see in our industry, robots on the job in the field providing the first layer, the first wave, if you will, of protection for humans dealing with all this energy, high voltage electricity, whatever the case might be. A simple picture of that is I mentioned earlier storm disaster relief. We just saw a hurricane come through or pass over and through Jamaica and the devastation we're all reminded most of us living in the Gulf south have, have survived something like that.
But Katrina 20th anniversary was this past August. Folks that live down there along the Mississippi Gulf coast and New Orleans particularly will tell you that their calendars are basically before Katrina and after Katrina. Everything is, is measured by that monstrous storm that hit that year. I think that we see now the outside line workers, electricians, people that are restoring power to devastated areas from natural disasters. We can see that they can use drones and drones will go in and show where the down power lines are so that someone doesn't go in unknowing and is injured or God forbid, worse by that. And so the drones are pointing this out, or sometimes drones are able to go along a gas line, for instance, a natural gas line. They can show where vegetation has perished or has died because there's a leak in that gas line or whatever the case might be. And so using technology to protect our workers in the field, there's so many more examples of that wearable Technologies, wearable thing that for instance, measure heart rate or blood pressure or whatever, Maybe someone on the job, on a ladder or working above the ground or whatever, they don't realize they have hypoglycemia or diabetes or whatever the case might be. But this wearable tech is protecting them, saying there's something going on, get out of this situation, get to safety, get on the ground, whatever, get some help. And those things are happening now. We've seen that, I think when we see affordable mass produced robots, kind of like the drone armies in Star wars, but electricians that are able to pull cable or climb ladders or whatever the case might be, work on installing lights 15, 20ft off the ground, whatever the case is, that we're going to see that we're going to see our people not only being more creative, but working smarter, not harder, safer, not as strenuously perhaps, and perhaps getting more done. Productivity is probably going to increase too, just like it seems to always do. Now. I don't believe that the machines are going to take over. I'm not one of those. I think the machines are only going to do what we allow them to do.
I do believe there has to be all kinds of safety precautions and protocols for operating and what you input, because if we're using them, someone else is trying to figure out how to hack them, get into them and mess us up and hold us for ransom, you know, And I do believe that. I think that has to come off a whole set of rules and protocols and safety nets. But I look forward to the next 10 or 15 years seeing how technology is going to make us better at what we're already doing so well.
[00:52:21] Speaker A: And do you feel like Atlanta has a leg up on that because you've got this younger, excited workforce coming up?
[00:52:30] Speaker B: I do, but I think it all goes back to the contractors.
Our contractors are also getting younger. My board, for instance, at AECA, average age of my board is probably late 30s, early 40s now, whereas 10 years ago it may have been late 50s, early 60s. It was all male. It's not anymore. Once again, the diversity of our contractors, not just in how they look, how the face is changing, but the diversity of work that they do, the excitement generated by the different kinds of, of projects that they are working on. Whether that's the traditional commercial industrial, the airport, the nuclear power plants, the coming soon small modular reactors, data centers.
We're going to continue to make Coca Cola and keep Chick Fil A open six days a week and fly Delta airplanes. I mean, we're going to do all those things still, but we're going to do those better because of the other things that we're expanding to do and learning about that are making everything we're already doing better as well. And so I say it comes back to the contractors, coupled with that diverse, young excited ingenuity that we're recruiting to the workforce as well.
[00:53:53] Speaker A: Final question.
Is there any other advice that you would give another NECA chapter who wanted to start a program like yours?
Like after they come to Atlanta and see your thing, what's the next thing they should do?
[00:54:05] Speaker B: Well, after someone has come to Atlanta and seeing for themselves what we're doing and they go back home and decide they're going to start and launch into recruiting from the schools and partnering with their contractors and with the industry partners, associate members, if you will, the manufacturers and suppliers and all. I would say that they need to remember a couple things as they do this and that is that digital transformation or any kind of transformation, if we're talking about transforming our industry, we're looking at technology.
That transformation is equal to people plus process. And so you got to make sure you got the right people and the buy in and everything. But you also have to pay attention to the process. And it's going to take a little education, a little communication. You got to make sure that training is ongoing, always. We never stop training, we never stop creating, we never stop planning. Training is always ongoing and that everyone involved plays a role in making it better. And then the other thing I would say is that what we do in Atlanta may not work for you where you are. So solutions may vary.
Communication and training once again is vital. Communicate, communicate, communicate. We think we've communicated only to find out someone didn't hear or someone didn't get the email or they didn't open it, but still the communication didn't happen. Okay. And so we got to figure out how to communicate better and then always involve the end users early. Who are the end users? Well, our customers. And I'm going to go back to my education. Hat again, someone asked me one time, they said, as the superintendent, head of schools, who do you answer to? Well, what they wanted me to say was the board. And I said, well, my product is the student that's coming through my classroom, playing on my fields, picking up an instrument, singing the chorus, creating in the art room, whatever. That's my product. The people that I'm trying to please as I make that product is the parents of that student as well as the board to whom I answer. They're going to grade me. I said, but ultimately the person that I'm most concerned about is the end user. Well, who's the end user? And I said, well, it's going to be the employers and the colleges and the folks that get these students when they leave here.
And so we would have an industry advisory board and these people from the community.
Some were college educators, technical college administrators, some, most were doctors, lawyers and Indian chiefs as people used to say in the community. That helped us inform or be better informed about the curriculum and the applications and the tools that we should be using in our classrooms. Now get it. They weren't the educators, they weren't the ones doing the hands on work, but they were having an influence. And so that's a little bit different perspective than a lot of people have. A lot of people think they're there to please the politicians or always the parents or always the teachers or heaven forbid, left students around the classroom or whatever. But it's a little bit different take on it. And I think that that's just something that I personally would say consider who the end user is. Of course it's going to be that apprentice that's going through your program, but it's also going to be that customer that is employing that now journeyman wireman, or that investor who is going to say let me hire your company someday to do the electrical work for this thing that I'm building or whatever the case might be.
[00:57:57] Speaker A: Joey, thank you so much for being with us today. That was Dr. Joey Shorter from Atlanta chapter NECA. And I love how the chapter has turned workforce outreach into a long game and one that's paying off in a big way if you're part of a labor union, a NECA chapter or other contractor group. I hope Joey's story gives you a spark, maybe a new idea for connecting with the schools and communities in your area. Thanks for tuning in to on the Fringe brought to you by EPR Live.
