Reasons To Become A Plumbing Apprentice

To become an apprentice you can become an apprentice in the elevators Union; you can become an apprentice in the plumbers, pipe fitters and steamfitters Union, you can become an apprentice in the steelworkers union, structural iron steelworkers, you can become an apprentice in the electrician's union.  And all these unions are excellent.  When I say become an apprentice, I mean an official training program approved by the Department of Education or Department of Labor.  And the reason I like that is a lot of times there are benefits added to it. 

So I'm going to talk to you about the plumber's pipe fitters and steamfitters union because that's the one that I'm a part of. I'm familiar with the system, I'm familiar with the training program, and I'm familiar with a lot of the plumbers that have gone through it and come up, and I say, plumbers, plumbers pipe fitters and welders.  But a lot of these things that I'm going to mention today, it's the same through all of the different apprenticeship training programs. 

So the good thing about it is that there's a lot there to think about.  Reason number two, it's an excellent start to your professional career.  And the reason I say that is you're going to get in, you're going to get paid while you work.  In the pipe fitters union, here in Dallas, you get paid while you work, and then you go to school two nights a week.  It's a training program to where they've got a syllabus set, and you go through, and you learn certain things each year, and it gets you closer to graduating and becoming a journeyman and getting out. 

The good thing is right now depending on where you work, you know, Union wages are different, and union wages are normally different than open shop service company wages, may be different than construction wages. There's a lot of different things to look at, a lot of different things to think about to see what you want to do.  But I will tell you, you know, look at the benefits package and make sure you look at the retirement package, you know what's going to be there for you when you decide that it's time for you to quit working.  And that is my biggest benefit about joining the union, compared to open shop.  Is that at least in the union you've got a retirement plan, you've got a pension plan, and that's something to look forward to and something to think about? 

Reason number three apprenticeship is a great option over college.  Again you get paid while you work, and like I said a while ago, you know, you work at least 40 hours a week, most companies, but you work about 40 hours a week, and you get paid while you work, you get paid overtime.  You don't get paid while you go to school, but you're getting paid in knowledge because you know a lot of these professionals and tradesmen, journeyman, masters whoever are down here as the instructors and they teach you the things that you need to know to get out to excel.  And to do your job properly.  And it's perfect for you. The good thing about it is when you get out, there there's no college tuition.  You don't have that student loan that you've got to go back and pay for.  Because the kids that went to college have, most of them, amass debt every year and by the time they graduate they turn out and get an entry-level job at, you know, twenty, thirty thousand dollars a year and they've got to start looking at how to pay that student loan back.  As an apprentice, you don't have that student loan, you've been getting paid for the four or five years you work; however long the apprentice program is.  One thing that I tell people is to start studying in the beginning, and I know it sounds crazy, and I'll make sure we put a link in here, but I've got a study guide for plumbers.  It's the UPC study guide, and I'll tell you what, it's a fantastic book and it's one that I recommend every journeyman read and learn to study in this guide. 

Because you're going to learn things that are going to make you a better plumber as you go along.  And the good thing is this is a guide that I give to journeyman and masters to study before they take their exam.  If you want to be an outstanding apprentice and this is something not everybody's going to tell you, get that study guide early, start studying, learn how to use that study guide and as you're going through your career, you know, things that are going to be on the test that you're going to take later,but you're already thinking about it all along, and you're thinking about it why you're doing it.  Because you've read these questions and you're familiar with them.  And I think that's a great thing.  Number four, receive practical education. Practical experience.  And you get relevant information for your trade because you're doing it during the day.  This is something that, to me, is huge. 

As an apprentice, training is your work in the field during the day.  Whether it's construction or for a service company, but you work, and you learn these things, you study out of the books at night, and at night your classes some of it may be lab, some of it may be shop, some of it may be books, but you're; actually, you get to learn why.  Why do things happen the way they do and what is it about? But the good thing is, you're always learning, and if you're one of these people you love learning new things, this is something that you want to think about because an apprentice training program is a terrific deal.  You can learn things during the day, and then you go to school at night, and you learn a completely different way.  And to me, that is just so beneficial.  Another good thing about it is if you're a high school dropout. 

You know, in Texas you've got to be, right now you have to have a high school diploma to get your plumbing license.  So if you're a dropout and you can get your GED and enrol in an apprentice training program, it can be perfect for you.  Whenever, whenever you graduate, and you get out, and you're a journeyman, and you're making journeyman scale, and you've got good benefits, and you're supporting yourself and your family.  Well, that's an amazing feeling.  And it really, I don't know that there's anything more rewarding than the fact of knowing that you've worked for it. You've worked during the day, you've gone to school at night, you've done a lot of things to do well, and you've really, you've mastered it.  You have become that journeyman, and if you've studied and you've done some of these things I'm talking about, you're going to be good. 

One thing I'll tell you is when you go to school at night, don't look at school as a burden looks at it as an opportunity.  Because when you walk in there, that instructor there's teaching you.  There are things that you can learn that maybe the journeyman you're working with aren't teaching you.  Maybe they're not teaching the right way.  So, you know, take that opportunity and learn and understand that they're trying to teach you something that maybe you're not using right now.  Maybe even when they teach you, you don't see the benefit of it, but it's something that you need to learn.  So number six, success and satisfaction. 

When you get this, and I tell people this, when you're a plumber, when you're a pipe fitter, when you're a welder or whatever it is.  When you get it, it just it clicks all of a sudden, it's just like one day, boom, you know what? I've got this.  I understand this.  It makes sense.  I know I can do it.  And that feeling, it's amazing. The standards of excellence, standards for excellence, if you'll look at that and read it.  If you're in the United Association and look at those things and see what's expected from you, and you say: you know what? I'm going to strive to be one of the best people.  The standards for excellence teach you what to do.  What's expected of you, and master those.  Get good at.  And when you do graduate, when school's over, when you graduate, when you are that journeyman, it is it's such a rewarding feeling.  Number seven the opportunities.  And I used to ask whenever I was an instructor I would ask my entire class, and I started with it with first years, had them for a while, it was terrific.

But I've always asked them how many of you all want to be a journeyman plumber or a journeyman pipe fitter or a journeyman welder? And you know, everybody raises their hand, and then you ask them: okay you know as a plumber you can go from a journeyman to a master, who wants to be a master plumber? And not quite as many would raise their hand.  And it's funny because when I would ask those questions the further, I would go, you know, after a journeyman who wants to be a foreman? And not as many people raise their hands, and who wants to be superintendent? And not even not as many people would raise their hands.  And then you start getting into management, who wants to be the vice president of a company or something? And not many people would raise their hands.  But then when you got around to the point who wants to own their own company one day? A lot more hands would go up.  That's another thing to think about.  If you get into the elevator Union or you get into the iron workers or something like that, chances are you are not going to have your own company.

Normally the tradespeople that you get up to having their own company is either you know carpenters, home builders, electricians, plumbers, HVAC people, things like that.  So I know that getting into an apprenticeship trade there's a lot to think about when you get in.  But it's so rewarding that when you get out you realize, look you can do what you want to do and don't ever let anybody tell you can't.  Because if you decide bad enough you want to do it, and you set your mind to it you can do it.  So now let me tell you my trick on the UPC study guide.  Take the UPC study guide.  It has the answers in the back, go to the back end and find the section that your on and go to each one of those questions and with a highlighter, mark the correct answer only.  And I don't just mark there; I highlight the entire answer.  Once you do that and you mark the entire book, what you're going to want to do is go through that book as often as you can and read the question and read the answer, and you only read the correct answer, don't ever read anything else.  Just read the question and read the answer and you'll get where you go through that book, and you know the answer. 

It's funny I remember one of the times I went to take, I believe it was my master exam, my master plumbing exam.  I had studied so hard that whenever I'd read the question I'd read the first four or five, six words and I already knew the answer.  Because the plumbing exams are taken from the UPC and the IPC study guide.  Now the IPC has a study guide too, it's good I love this UPC study guide and like I said I'll put a link to it down there, so if you want it you know to click on it get it.  I'll put a link in the description, click on it, and get it.  So again, back to how I study.  Mark all the answers, read through it very often, and all your reading is the question and the correct answer.  When it comes time for you to study it, cover up the answers, read the question, know the answer and look down.  If you don't know the answer, highlight the question out to a side in a different colour.  So I may have all my correct answers in green and then anything I got wrong in yellow and only highlighted the ones that you know you missed.  Meaning if you guessed at something, I would highlight that because if you guessed at it and you weren't a hundred per cent sure, you don't know it a hundred per cent.  Because now what you want to do is you want to go through and readjust those other ones that you've highlighted the question because you didn't have it right.  You want to go back and read those and study those.  And if you do this when you go down to take your test, you're going to do very well.