Vice President Kamala Harris brought news of more workforce apprenticeships as she visited Wisconsin Wednesday.
Her stop in Madison may also have had the purpose of energizing support for the Biden/Harris campaign ticket in Dane County, which has become hugely important to Democrats.
Harris began her visit by touring a maintenance garage under construction for the battery-electric bus system being developed for Madison. The system will be similar to the Connect One BRT already in use on Milwaukee’s west side.
After speaking with a few construction tradespeople, at least some of whom were apprentices, Harris told the news media about an executive order to create more registered apprenticeship programs in the federal workforce.
“That will direct federal agencies to explore what federal jobs we have that can be filled by the highly-skilled who have been trained in apprenticeship programs, and not just giving these jobs only to people with a four-year college degree. This is very important," Harris says.
The order also encourages federal agencies to prefer projects getting federal grants and contracts if the recipients hire workers who have been in registered apprenticeship programs.
Acting U.S. Labor Secretary Julie Su, in a brief interview with WUWM, explained that language.
“We want to use our procurement and grant authority to incentivize more apprenticeship programs. To say, the federal government, you know, we want to shape a country we’d all want to live in ourselves, " Su says.
The idea of more apprenticeships was good news to at least a couple of people working on the Madison bus garage project.
David Pecard from the Milwaukee area served a paid five-year union apprenticeship. He’s now moved up to be a journeyman plumber.
He says, “It is a more physical line of work. But I would say it’s very rewarding. And, if you do everything right, if you do everything safely, you’ll be doing it for a long time. There’s plenty of folks who make a career of 50 or 60 years out of being in the trades.”
Journeyman electrician Brandon Cook lives in Dane County. He says more apprentices, please, and soon.
“We’re in desperate need of more people, of more trained, skilled workers. The older generation is starting to retire and move on to other things. So, it leaves a huge gap in knowledge and know-how out in the field, for sure," Cook says.
Cook is also a voter, and says he votes for Democrats because he feels they speak to the working class.
Cook is part of his county’s growing clout in statewide elections. Forty years ago, Democrats won Dane County by about 30,000 votes. In the 2020 presidential contest, the margin was 180,000 votes — about the same as in much larger Milwaukee County.
John Nichols writes about politics for the Capital Times and The Nation magazine. He says the Vice President’s visit to his city on Wednesday was no coincidence.
“So even now, in March, they want to get that excitement going, get energy going. And I can promise you, this is not going to be the last visit by the Vice President or the President and members of the Cabinet. They’re going to be here a lot," Nichols predicts.
Wisconsin GOP Chairman Brian Schimming contends there is a different reason Harris was in Madison so early in the campaign season.
“Vice President Harris is here on a rescue mission. If she has to come to the base of Democratic voters, in Wisconsin, in my hometown of Madison, to try to rescue the fortunes of this ticket, they are in real trouble," Schimming says.
The finances, at least, of the Biden-Harris ticket got a boost as the Vice President held a fundraiser in downtown Madison after touring the bus garage.
