As Housing Pauses, Immigrant Laborers Return to School to Expand Their Tool Belt
An association for Hispanic residential construction workers offers classes for laborers who want to build their skills.
(By Melina Mara -- The Washington Post)
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With home-building jobs increasingly hard to come by, the Residential Construction Workers Association of Alexandria is trying to help Hispanic workers improve their marketability and skills with a new curriculum that teaches them construction trades as well as small-business skills.
Though not strictly limited to Hispanic workers, the group has offered an array of social-service referrals and counseling in Spanish since its founding in 2002, assisting immigrant workers in enrolling their children in school, obtaining a driver's license and finding courses to learn English.
Now the group is making training and certification its primary activity.
"Most of the people working in construction are new immigrants, and they have all the problems that new immigrants have adjusting to a new country," said Clayton Sinyai, executive director of the group.
Known as ASTRACOR, its initials in Spanish, the organization started with a grant of $200,000 from the state of Virginia. Local government officials, business leaders and members of the Construction & Master Laborers Local Union 11, which represents workers in commercial construction, founded the group.
The group's new curriculum offers free courses in home electrical wiring, plumbing, carpentry, masonry, drywall and ceramic tile installation. The group is also rolling out a curriculum in small-business skills for residential construction workers. That course will teach workers how to read plans, estimate the cost of work and obtain financing, among other things.
"There is always a demand for skilled construction workers," Sinyai said. "But it is true that there are a lot of people who are taking advantage of a slow market to upgrade their skills."
On one recent evening, Antonio Figueiras, a Cuban native and a retired engineer who is the program's teacher of home wiring and electrical installation, stood before his students in the group's Alexandria classroom, outlining on a dry-erase board how circuit boxes might be configured on a typical home. Drawing small arrows on that board, Figueiras illustrated how electrical current might flow from one circuit to the next.
"This is a circuit in a series and you use it often," Figueiras told his students, construction workers from countries such as El Salvador, Bolivia and Peru who diligently took notes. "And what happens if you lose this one?" he continued, pointing out one of the freshly drawn boxes with a pen, pausing for a moment. "All the power goes."
-- Alejandro Lazo
