By Paul Post
Nearly three dozen area contractors turn to Local 773 whenever they land a big job and need to bring on highly-qualified plumbers, steamfitters, pipefitters and HVAC technicians.
The 500-member, Queensbury-based union supplies skilled workers for a wide variety of projects from GlobalFoundries in Malta to recently-completed refrigeration upgrades at Lake Placid’s Olympic facilities.
A five-year apprenticeship includes hands-on work plus September to April classes, each year, at Local 773’s headquarters and training facility at 37 Luzerne Road.
“It’s an earn and learn program,” Business Manager Mike Jarvis said. “When an apprentice comes in they sign up with the union, work during the day for a contractor and go to school at night three times per week.”
Applications are accepted one day each month. When enough applications come in, the union sets up an aptitude test. Candidates are also interviewed by an eight-person Joint Apprenticeship Training Committee, comprised of four union members and four contractors, who review the job-seeker’s employment history, attitude and work ethic. Points are given for related college and past military experience.
“We do a pretty good job of knowing who’s going to be cut out for this and who’s not,” Jarvis said. “Past experience will tell the story a lot of times.”
When an apprentice comes in, the first two years are the same for everyone as they take the same basic course. After year two, they must decide to pursue one of two different programs, for either plumbers and pipefitters or HVAC technicians.
“All we want out of a first-year apprentice is a willingness to work,” he said. “Our contractors understand that too. We want somebody who will absorb what they’re taught, be accountable and show up every day on time. You’d be surprised, the work you can get out of somebody who has good work ethic.”
The busiest time in union history was just over a decade ago when 2,200 pipefitters were on site at GlobalFoundries through Local 773.
However, the past year has been one of its slowest times ever.
“The construction industry has its ups and downs,” Jarvis said. “Right now the country’s booming, but we are not. This is probably the slowest year we’ve had in 12 to 14 years. Demand has dropped in our area. With the economy up here and the cost of borrowing money, a lot of businesses are holding off on capital improvement projects.”
Most notably, GlobalFoundries has plans for building a second, multi-billion semiconductor plant in Malta, but hasn’t pulled the trigger on a start date.
In February, the U.S. Department of Commerce announced it was awarding $1.5 billion in direct funding to GlobalFoundries under the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022, which is designed to boost American semiconductor research, development and production.
Some money will support expansion of GlobalFoundries’ existing fab by adding technologies that allow the U.S. auto industry to transition from mechanical to electronic systems, creating large demand for semiconductor chips in cars and trucks.
Funding will also be used for the proposed new fab to meet anticipated demand for chips across a number of markets including automotive, aerospace, defense and artificial intelligence. When completed, the new plant and expansion of current facilities will triple manufacturing capacity of the Malta campus over a 10-plus year period.
But Jarvis said some contractors didn’t bid on other projects, fearing a possible worker shortage when it seemed GlobalFoundries was moving forward with its proposed expansion 18 months ago.
“They were concerned that manpower wouldn’t be available for those that didn’t work at GlobalFoundries,” he said. “So they held off on bids for work that we’d be doing or finishing up now. We missed the boat on jobs we could have had. We’re definitely staying hopeful that GlobalFoundries is going to move forward. There’s talk that they’re going to do more, but as of right now that’s all it is, is talk.”
What this means, at least temporarily, is that there’s no immediate demand for Local 773 to bring on new apprentices.
The union’s territory is Warren, Washington, Saratoga, Clinton, Essex, Hamilton and Franklin counties. So it has supplied workers for a variety of other projects throughout the region during the past few years such as two large hotels in Lake Placid.
“We recently started a residential-light commercial agreement with some of our contractors so we could be more marketable,” Jarvis said. “For the first large job, Fowler Square on Bay Road in Queensbury, one of our contractors did the plumbing in its entirety.”
While waiting for work to pick up, Local 773 continues to promote the trades as a viable career choice for students by talking to school officials throughout the area.
“In the early Nineties guidance counselors didn’t know much about trades,” Jarvis said. “There’s definitely been a change. Even in the last five years schools realize these can be good careers.”
The union membership recently approved a first-year apprentice wage rate increase to $21.64 per hour. But the total with fringe benefits comes to more than $45.25 per hour.
Local 773 recently celebrated its 105th birthday.
When Jarvis started out, the union hall was located on Bluebird Road in Moreau. Local 773 moved to a larger, gleaming new Queensbury facility in 2013.
Jarvis rose through the ranks after going through the five-year apprenticeship program like everyone else. The first contractor he worked for did a good deal of industrial pipefitting for area paper mills.
“Then they turned their attention to school work, doing boilers and HVAC systems, hot water heating and some plumbing,” he said. “I worked for them for quite a while.”
In 2010, he went to a different contractor, which did the mechanical controls systems at GlobalFoundries. “I started as a shop steward and worked my way up to superintendent,” Jarvis said.
Jarvis was Local 773 president from 2013 to 2019 when he was elected business manager — the same position his grandfather, Charles Jarvis, once held — making him a full-time union employee. He’s also its most vocal ambassador.
“A lot of times in the non-union sector when you let an employee go for lack of work there’s a good chance you’ll never see him again,” he said. “With our contractors, if they can’t retain an employee it’s not goodbye forever. We’ll (Local 773) catch you on the next one. So that employee has a chance to come back to the union hall and be dispatched to a different contractor. We’re basically a hiring hall. If someone gets laid off and comes here to the union hall we do our best to put him on with a different signatory contractor.”