My name is Adam Osielski. I'm currently a fourth-year apprentice with Local 26's JATC (Joint Apprenticeship Training Committee) . Our apprenticeship is a 5-year program which smartly combines on-the-job training and experience with thorough instruction in the classroom. As a fourth-year, I've completed the initial 3 years of day-school and have just finished my first two semesters of night classes.
I decided to join the union and apply for the apprenticeship back in 2005 in order to learn an interesting trade and work in a job that would not imprison me in an office cubicle. At the time of my decision, I was working for a moving company. I made good money, but I wasn't developing my knowledge or skill-sets or adding to my employ-ability in any way. I also didn't have health-care, which was something that increasingly became important to me. The decision to join Local 26 was easy: this is a group of men and women who obviously take pride in their work, and it's an organization which cares for each individual as a whole person.
My time in day-school was great. It was difficult, to be sure, but provided a unique environment where teachers and various students working for various companies could come together to learn, study, share work-experiences and resolve the many misconceptions about electricity and electrical work that pop up as you encounter new and different aspects of the trade. Plenty of eureka-moments in those classrooms and labs...
Of course, a huge portion of my education has come on the job. As an apprentice, you transfer to a new company once every 14 months. You do this in order to get a feel of the different companies out there and you do it to ensure that you get a good look at the wide variety of work in our trade. As a consequence, you never get stuck doing the same thing for long and you meet an enormous amount of people.
So far I've done both new construction and renovation, as well as service-work. What's funny is how your tool-box expands. Maybe for a few months you're splicing wires and tying in panels, using just wire-strippers and a small screwdriver, and suddenly you switch to a job requiring you to run big pipe. Now you've got big channellocks and wrenches. That's just the tip of the iceberg. It's all a part of the trade and, every-so-often, when you clean out and organize your tools and come across something you haven't used in awhile, you think, "Oh, yeah. I can do that, too!"
