The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) has rediscovered apprenticeship training during the past few years. Long ignored – and even undermined – by the anti-labor atmosphere in DC, registered apprenticeship is now being promoted and even financed (to the tune of $175 million in 2015 alone).

Obama-appointed officials, as well as leaders in state-based workforce training agencies, have praised this system of worker training as an important key to training skilled workers to meet a growing need.

And that's a good thing. Over the past 250 years, apprenticeship training in the U.S. has proved itself to be one of the most reliable ways for workers to gain job skills and for employers to stabilize otherwise chaotic industries.

But, underneath the enthusiastic words and big grants lies an important but under-appreciated fact: The best, most successful examples of apprenticeship training in the U.S. are those jointly administered by unions and employers.

A little background: Apprenticeship programs in the US currently enroll about 450,000 individuals. This is a relatively small number – 7% of UK enrollment, when adjusted for population size. Apprentices "learn while they earn," working full-time jobs with classroom and shop classes in the evenings, on weekends, or sometimes, for a full week each month.

Apprenticeship programs tend to last anywhere from 2 to 6 years, and when apprentices "turn out", they do so with a credential – a journey worker's card – that is transferrable to other states. In the US, apprenticeship programs register either with the federal government, or with a state agency. These registered programs must meet standards for training and work time, and must also comply with anti-discrimination statutes.

Traditionally in the U.S., most apprenticeship training has occurred in the building and construction trades and currently around two-thirds of these apprentices are in joint programs – that is, programs negotiated and jointly run by construction unions and construction management.

These programs are administered by Joint Apprenticeship Training Committees (JATC's) composed of employer and union representatives and funded by training trusts established through collective bargaining agreements, usually on a cents-per-work-hour basis. These programs are almost totally privately funded. (Non‐union programs, on the other hand, are managed by individual contractors or contractor associations and lack the stable funding source enjoyed by joint programs. They often rely more on public support, e.g. from community colleges.)

Historically, women and people of color have faced difficulties entering and completing construction apprenticeship programs. The legislative changes following the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s broke down some of the obstacles faced by men of color, and today their share in the trades approaches their share of the overall labor force.

Despite similar regulatory and legislative changes in the 1970s, however, women are still severely underrepresented. In the last two decades, a handful of organizations have worked with construction unions to prepare and support women with little or no construction experience to enter the industry's non-traditional jobs and apprentice programs.

I work closely in my own state with Oregon Tradeswomen, Inc., which is a very successful example of this kind of effort (7% of Oregon's apprentices are female, as compared to 3.2% nationally). Significantly, union apprenticeship programs in Oregon and nationally have a higher proportion of female apprentices as well as men and women of color than do non-union programs, on a trade-by-trade basis.

The new federal funding prioritizes apprenticeship training in advanced manufacturing, high tech and health care – all industries where registered apprenticeship has been rarely used. One factor that has slowed the use of the apprenticeship model in these industries is aggressive employer competition – employers have been more likely to "poach" skilled workers from each other than to invest in training their own workers.

When they do train, employers seem to expect government support – subsidies for hiring youth, for training, and sometimes even for wages of those being trained. In Oregon, we're working to make sure that unions are an integral part of newly funded apprenticeship training pilot programs. The union model works, assuring that workers as well as employers benefit and that the training is available on an equitable basis.