What's Working

The Value of a Good Job - Marques and Stephone

Marques Paige and Stephone Cosby know what it’s like to struggle.

Both worked hard just to make ends meet before enrolling at WRTP/BIG STEP and the TrANS road building class. Both can tell you the difference between a job and a good job. Both can tell you how the latter can have transformative effects on a life.

The Transportation Alliance for New Solutions (TrANS) class, developed by Wisconsin Department of Transportation and industry and offered by WRTP/BIG STEP, offers community members instruction on basic construction and road building skills, safety and awareness training, commercial driver’s license permit, flagging certification, and much more. An important component of the training is apprenticeship preparation. Students are required to apply for at least one trade. This access to the possibility of apprenticeship gives graduates the opportunity to secure a family supporting job in the skilled trades.

Marques, now a laborer apprentice, and Stephone, a journeyman laborer, shared their stories with the contractors and attendees at the Wisconsin Department of Transportation’s Partnering for Employment Workshop at Waukesha County Technical College. The panel discussion was followed by a speed networking event that allowed TrANS graduates to meet with contractors.

Stephone’s and Marques’s words are more powerful than anything we can write. Please listen and share.

 

 

 

 

Destination: Employment

Sixteen individuals filed into a small classroom in the otherwise deserted WRTP/BIG STEP building on Wisconsin Avenue Thursday morning. While the building was closed to the public, these 16 dodged snow plows and snow piles on a frigid, frosty morning to make it to their first day of CNC training class.

It’s a trek worth the effort.

Like most training courses facilitated by WRTP/BIG STEP, this one touts the ever-important employer connection. Industry coordinator Joe Nicosia has been working with manufacturer Milwaukee Gear to develop and implement the training. This flexibility in the training allows employers to tailor the course work to their specific needs, which makes the graduates extremely valuable to them.

Milwaukee Gear has committed to hire at least 15 graduates of this specially designed course. This type of commitment is at the center of what makes WRTP/BIG STEP a success in getting people into family-supporting jobs.

Student Scott Reale is excited by the prospect of being hired at the end of the two- month training. Scott was laid off in 2009 from Milsco Manufacturing, where he had worked for 30 years, when they moved their manufacturing operations to Mexico and a plant in northern Wisconsin.

“Every employer does things a little differently, so this training gives us a leg up at this company,” says Scott. “It’s really exciting. I’m looking forward to getting going.”

The course includes industry essential skills training at WRTP/BIG STEP, hands-on CNC skills training at Waukesha County Technical College, and job shadowing with workers at Milwaukee Gear.

“The class is challenging, but we recruited a great class,” says Joe Nicosia. “They’re motivated. They know what’s at the end of line if they graduate.”

In other words, the trek toward graduation may be difficult, but the destination makes all the difference.

 

Tune in to “What’s Working” in the coming weeks for the employer perspective and updates on the class and its participants.