Question:
What is the most common way for UAW members to enter the union’s skilled trades program?

1. Have a father, two brothers, an uncle and a long-lost cousin in the trades already.
2. Be someone who as a kid dismantled every toy he got to see what makes it work.
3. Be an African-American woman in her thirties who managed a small antique reproductions store for eight years.

Arleen Henry is proud to be a UAW electrician apprentice.

If you answered "all of the above," you’re right. There’s no single or preferable route for UAW members to become skilled trades workers. For Arleen Henry, though, option C was her personal path to an electrician apprenticeship at the DaimlerChrysler South Plant in St. Louis, Mo.

"I never worked in a factory before in my life until I hired in at the North Plant as a temporary part-timer in 1995," says Henry, now a member of UAW Local 110.

"My background was strictly retail. When the antique reproductions store I managed closed, my brother suggested I get temporary work at the plant until I find something else."

But plans changed once Henry became a permanent employee and applied for a skilled trades apprenticeship.

"I heard there was going to be a big turnover in the trades over the next few years, and I like working with my hands so I figured why not," Henry says.

From April to November 1996, Henry attended an International UAW Skilled Trades Dept. union-sponsored pre-apprentice class designed to upgrade the skill levels of potential skilled trades candidates and get them ready to take the apprenticeship test. Henry took a semester of basic math and then a course in algebra. Both prepared her well, and she passed with flying colors.

Still she was on a waiting list for two years before an opening came up. "I almost lost hope of ever hearing from them again. I was considering going back to college when the phone call came asking if I was still interested," Henry recalled.

She was, and in July 1999 Henry spent five intensive weeks at a UAW/DaimlerChrysler training center in Detroit receiving safety training, learning proper use of power and hand tools, and getting her first exposure to electrical wiring and reading schematics (electrical diagrams). Upon returning to St. Louis, Henry was assigned to the third shift at the south plant doing maintenance on robots and ovens in the paint department.

Continued