Tree Worker Apprenticeships

SouthSoundTree-

TreeHouser
Joined
Sep 24, 2014
Messages
4,941
We know about the high costs of employee training and turn over.

People have talked about it over time, prospective employees have asked.

Stig runs apprentices who can earn a full-fledged job, or leave highly trained in a trade skill needed all over the world. Seems like a good system, that is established in other trades in the US, though that is through large trade unions.

Thoughts?

Perhaps getting recent grads of Urban Forestry could work for the summer busy season. Perhaps a summer internship for a degree. EMR/Eric has his UF bachelors' degree. Anyone else?

I could get a travel trailer or build a cabin for intern housing. Already want to build the cabin, anyway.
 
When I was in school we had to do one internship to graduate. I did mine for a local school district working with the grounds maintenance crews. Didnt learn much about trees that summer but I learned a lot about how to deal with employees. Before that internship I always worked for a utility company because they paid much more than tree workers got paid. Heck, I took a pay cut after I got my degree and was hired as a professional tree guy. Around here anyways, there is demand for tree interns/apprentices with regards to employers and students but those positions dont pay enough to draw the students away from factory jobs or construction jobs that pay much better.

I would love to hire an intern/apprentice but we wont because it will take us to a new level in terms of insurance, taxes, etc. Its not worth the headaches to us.
 
Different across the pond I guess , seems here most of the traditional apprentice then journeyman then master seem to go with trades that have licences. Plumbers and Electricians get many good miles out of trainees. Until they get their own license anyways.
 
You train them, I'll hire them!

Get them green cards, and I promise to send you as many really well trained climber/groundie/logger combinations as you want.
Most of the ones I've trained have wanted to go see the world and do the : " Has chainsaw, will travel" thing that I, myself, did for a long time.

Burnham and I talked at length about this, when I visited him.
I haven't much good to say about the Danish forestry school.
It used to be the best in the world ( as those of you, who know me well, know that I don't have an ounce of patriotism in my body, so trust me on this) ( Man, oh man, was that a convoluted sentense. Can someone rewrite that one and make it better?)
But lack of keeping with the times and a burned out staff of teachers have turned it into a joke.
So I complained about it a LOT.
When I met Burnham, he asked me if having a not too good forestry/arborist school isn't better than having a system where people only survive if they are lucky enough to hook up with a good, experienced partner, who is willing to teach them.

He was talking about logging, but the same thing goes for arbo work.

I haven't bitched so much about the Danish forestry school since then, except when one of the teachers has the bad luck to meet me.

Read the last posts in the employees and climbing gear thread.

Same thing goes for teaching people.
You have to be good at selecting the ones with promise and absolutely ruthless about kicking them out, when they don't have the ability.
The first5 thing we tell new apprentices is that if we can tell they don't have what it takes to make a good logger/arbo, they will get fired.
No reason to waste their time as well as ours.
I've trained people for the last 22 years and not a single one hasn't made it in the business.
Except of course, the last one, Martin.
The best faller I've ever trained. An Ok climber but not great and wouldn't have become great.
But in 5 years I would have pitted him against most people in the treefalling busines.
He left to become, of all things, a cop.
For what it is worth, I think he will make the kind of cop, that is the model for how cops should be.

Still, choosing police work over logging.

What is the world coming to?
 
Back
Top