Apprenticeship Program to Offer Training for Skilled Workers

Skilled Trades of West Alabama is offering an apprenticeship program to help workers improve their trade skills.

Premier Service Inc., the Alabama Office of Apprenticeship and the Chamber of Commerce of West Alabama partnered together to create a program to help get residents into higher-paying trade jobs.

"They just wanted to create a way to train these skilled workers in an effective way, in a good training way and a way that offered employer buy-in," Tara Bullock, Communications & Marketing Coordinator, Workforce Development for the Chamber of Commerce of West Alabama, said.

The apprenticeship program gives workers an opportunity to get hand-on experience with companies that are hiring for specific trades such as plumbing, electrical, alarm and HVAC. Bullock said invested employers put trade workers through the trade school to learn about the specific trade and then hire these candidates once they finish.

"There has been a skill worker shortfall for many years because [some] don't understand what a technical career is as much as past generations did," Bullock said. "So [the apprenticeship program] is helping build that shortfall, but it is offering a pathway to high paying, competitive career."

Training for these fields are set to begin on Sept 14. For more information about the Skilled Trades of West Alabama Apprenticeship Program, check out their website here.