An effort to grow the role of union-trained steamfitters and HVAC workers in Augusta came to life Wednesday.
The event was the grand opening of the CSRA Plumbers and Steamfitters Local 150’s new Augusta Joint Apprenticeship and Journeyman Training Center.
Local 150 was founded in 1908, and since 1949 has trained many of the construction workers who built downtown skyscrapers, hospitals and more recently, Units 3 and 4 at Plant Vogtle, officials said.
“We must continue to train for the future,” said Bill Wright, business manager for Local 150, to the crowd gathered for a Wednesday ribbon cutting. “This is something we have needed for a long time.”
Built adjacent to the union’s existing training center at the former site of Clein’s Rare Coins, work got underway on what as a $2 million project in early 2020, just before the pandemic reached Augusta.
With an 18-month timeline, the new 12,000-square-foot center was completed for $4 million two-and-a-half years later, said Moses Todd, chairman of the local’s building and grounds committee for eight years.
“I’m proud of the membership’s accomplishments in approving the building,” the former Augusta commissioner said.
The new center has mock-ups on which to train in pipefitting, HVAC work and plumbing, and even a hospital room for training in medical gas piping.
The structured apprenticeship training is free and consists of 2-3 nights a week for several years, after which the worker emerges as a journeyman, or “journey-person,” Wright said.
As work at Plant Vogtle winds down, Local 150 expects to train several hundred of the skilled workers in need at the Savannah River Site, he said.
Peter Menk III encountered an interesting sight in the new building. It was a sign from his grandfather’s plumbing and HVAC business, Menk Co. Mechanical Contractors.
His grandfather married the daughter of Augusta plumbing icon Tom Brittingham and later formed his own company, said Menk, who is now in the insurance business.
Several area mechanical contractors were founded by union-trained plumbers who went in business for themselves, according to Todd.
Local 150 has a formal role in President Biden’s Workforce Hub initiative after the president called for active involvement by unions and technical colleges. That has meant formalizing agreements with area high schools and technical colleges to train workers in welding, pipefitting, HVAC, and medical gas programs.
