Carpenters union seeks new training center

By Dan Nakaso
Advertiser Staff Writer

The Hawaii Carpenters Union said it hopes that a new training center it plans to open at Kalaeloa will run seven days a week to train the necessary construction workers to keep up with demand.

The union is negotiating with the Department of Hawaiian Homelands to lease a 10,000-square-foot building with 30,000 square feet of outside space, said Ronald Taketa, the union's financial secretary and business representative.

The new center, which union officials plan to renovate and open by June, would augment the union's current programs that train up to 1,000 apprentice carpenters at community colleges across Hawai'i.

The Kalaeloa program is necessary to train enough carpenters to work on $2.2 billion worth of upcoming military housing construction that's expected to last 10 years, Taketa said.

The community college programs work with all of the trade unions and can only offer eight hours of carpenter instruction per week, Taketa said. The Kalaeloa Center would be devoted to carpenters and could provide instruction every day, he said.

"Instead of 40 hours of instruction over an entire semester, we can offer an entire semester's worth of instruction in just one week," Taketa said.

Union officials would give apprentice carpenters the skills necessary to get them onto job sites quickly, Taketa said, and then backfill the necessary instruction.

Instructors also plan to match apprentices' training with the work being done at any given time, Taketa said.

Reach Dan Nakaso at dnakaso@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8085.