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By Jill Nagy
Area businesses are taking different approaches to deal with a shortage of skilled workers in the building trades.
Mr. Electric of Queensbury runs ads year round on several online help wanted sites. Eastern Heating and Cooling has a well-established apprenticeship program in order to “grow our own.”
Jim Curran Electric in Saratoga Springs is a situation where the owner was rescued by a son who, seeing his father “overwhelmed,” relocated from Virginia to join the company.
Electricians are busy. “There is an avalanche of work,” according to Fred Giardinelli of Eastern Heating and Cooling. “Nine out of ten companies will give you the same answer: it’s “almost impossible” to find qualified people.
Curran reported that he is “too busy to train somebody in the proper way.” Mr. Electric also is “extremely busy.”
Curran, for his part, has soured on the idea of trying to hire and train new people.
“I used to try to hire people,” he said, “but they were not skilled enough.”
People hired as apprentices often did not show up. At the other end of the spectrum, “if they get too trained, they go out on their own.”
He has been on his own for most of his 33 years in business. Since March, his son Jeff, a licensed electrician in Virginia, has been working with him and will soon become a partner in the business. Jeff and two other sons all worked with him as kids, he recalled, but the other two are following other career paths.