The Bricklayers and Allied Craftworkers Apprenticeship Training Center welcomes interested parties to tour our training facility, learn about our apprenticeship program and its respective career opportunities, and get hands-on. Try craft basics such as cutting, setting, and grouting tile, or spreading mortar, applying a head joint, and laying brick to a line.
On December 7, we set up a booth at the Construct Tomorrow event at the Heritage Center of Brooklyn Center. These events are the best way to spark interest in curious youth and provide a basic understanding of both apprenticeship and the type of work our crafts perform. 1700 high school students from schools around the area had the opportunity to have hands-on experiences with different union trades. A special thanks to our apprentice volunteers Alexis Kroska, Christian Schultz, and Tong Yang and to Rod Schmidt and Terry Wong for stopping by.
What is it? Construct Tomorrow was founded in 2013 to provide high school students the opportunity to experience trade-work hands on and provide them with awareness of the amazing post-secondary career opportunities that come with being an apprentice.
What will you do? You will share your experience as an apprentice, help at the hands-on demonstration stations, and answer questions that students may ask.
Annually in October, NABTU (North America’s Building Trades Unions) hosts a conference for all Union Tradeswomen and their allies. It’s been three years since this event was hosted in person, and attendance at this year’s conference in Las Vegas was record-breaking! Thirteen members of Local 1, joined 65 other members of the International Union of Bricklayers and Allied Craftworkers for a weekend of empowerment, leadership training, and comradery with 3300 union sisters from trades across the US and Canada.
In October, we had product representatives for Schluter Systems at the Training Center for two nights of hands-on demonstration featuring their uncoupling membrane and complete shower system. The uncoupling membrane is designed to reduce cracking in the subfloor and increase the longevity of the tile by adhering to the subfloor and allowing the mortar bed to float.
The International Apprentice Contest took place on September 23-24 in Boston, Mass. Seventy-five of the top apprentices in the International Union competed to earn the title of International Craft Champion in the following crafts: brick, pointing-cleaning-caulking, stone, tile, marble, terrazzo, cement, and plaster.
This year the Bricklayers and Allied Craftworkers' and International Masonry Institutes' International Apprentice Contest will take place September 23-24 in Boston, Massachusetts, at the John B. Hynes Veterans Memorial Convention Center. This contest draws the BAC's top apprentices from the U.S. and Canada to compete for the title of International Champion in each of the BAC's trades: brick, cement, tile, marble, terrazzo, plaster, pointing-cleaning-caulking/restoration, and stone.
On July 15, this year’s final pre-apprenticeship session ended. Many pre-apprentices come to this program with little or no knowledge of the trade, or construction industry, and we teach them the basics to begin to grow a career. They’ve spent the last six weeks working hard, both physically and mentally, to learn the very basics of what it takes to become a bricklayer or restoration specialist.
