By Michael Morton
When students graduate a free program to teach young minority workers skilled trades on Thursday, they will walk away with the ability to enroll in professional apprenticeships. Many will be accepted into the city District Council of Carpenters union, while others will soon be crafting heating ducts from sheet metal or running the engineering operations at large buildings, among other trades.”I wanted a career, not a job,” said Caleb Matteis, 25, of Queens Village, before graduation. He stood at a newly constructed home at 105-34 170th St., a project for Habitat for Humanity that served as a final exam of sorts. “I was impressed with what it had to offer,” Matteis said of his training. He previously worked as a customer service representative at U-Haul before enrolling in the program.The course, the Minority Worker Training Program, is run by the Carpenters Labor Management Corp. and funded through a grant from the National Institute of Environmental Health and Safety. It attracts largely black and Latino male students, although other minorities and women are welcome. Students are recruited through an affiliate in each borough, then must go through a grueling three-day tryout. This year 140 people from around the metro area applied for 35 spots.”We put them through a rigorous program,” said Richard Saturno, an instructor from Whitestone who used to maintain firehouses for the city. Not everyone sticks it out for the duration of the tryout.”They just got knocked out,” said Robert Machin, 20, of Glendale, whose cousin did not make it. Machin, known as “the sledge” because he is fond of the hammer, applied for the program because he was tired of his -security guard job.”That was boredom to the extreme,” Machin said. “I had no direction, no goal.” Once students are chosen for the 20-week course, the trainees start out learning about basic tool and hardware use, then move on to more specialized instruction. The instructors evaluate them as they go, and by the end of the program, the students complete a project. This year it was helping Habitat for Humanity build the Jamaica house.Students who complete the course are readied for the rigorous demands of a trade apprenticeship with the carpenters or one of the other unions. The unions benefit because they get skilled workers as they seek to promote the quality of their work in the face of non-unionized competition.Every student who makes it is placed in an apprenticeship, and they find out where it will be at graduation. With single parents and full-time workers among the graduates, the announcement often represents a promise of financial security.”When you see a grown man 6 feet tall built like an ox crying, he's made it,” Saturno said of the ceremony. “It's really very emotional.”Machin, for one, wants to one day renovate properties and develop real estate.”This is a great opportunity,” he said. Reach reporter Michael Morton by e-mail at news@timesledger.com or by phone at 718-229-0300, Ext. 154.
