Michelle Rychener: Hello and welcome. My name is Michelle Rychener from JobForward and I’m here with my colleague Steve Lutton and we’re pleased to be joined by Nancy Arroyoavila from PG&E. Nancy brings firsthand experience with PG&E’s apprenticeship pathway as she has worked with her team to build their apprenticeship program in California.
In today’s conversation, we’ll talk openly about what apprenticeship looks like at PG&E, the opportunities it creates, and what that journey has been like from a personal perspective. Nancy, thank you for taking the time to join us. We’re really looking forward to learning from your experience.
Nancy Arroyoavila: Thank you both. I look forward to it. Great.
Michelle: I want to just first ask, tell us about your organization and your apprenticeship journey to date.
Nancy: We have one of the largest utilities in the country, approximately 27 to 28,000 employees, and our apprenticeship program is incredibly large. We have a total of 35 unique apprenticeships and we have currently 930 active apprentices in our programs.
And I will tell you that our apprenticeships are actually the key building block to our success that we have in the field. None of our field-facing workers do their job in the field without going to an apprenticeship first. And the journey has been interesting.
We started with kind of the business lines, building their own programs and trying to figure it out. And then over the years, we have matured to the point where my department, Apprenticeship Program Management, kind of is a key player in all of the apprenticeships that get set up. And we now have very structured apprenticeships.
We became state certified a number of years ago, which drove some of that structure. Then we continued to build more structure into those apprenticeships with regard to time and step and requirements for each step. And now we’re finally at the point where we’ve requested to be certified by Department of Labor, which is much more stringent than the state.
And we’re really excited about this. So we’ve really grown enormously over a number of years.
Michelle: And that number of apprentices is incredible. That’s a huge number, you know, to have, specifically in California. You know, it’s everybody, when I tell them the number of apprentices, they kind of go, wow.
Nancy: And for us, it’s well, can’t we get more? So when I sit and think about it, I recognize that a smaller organization would not have as many apprentices. But for us, we’ll probably top out in 2027. We’ll probably go over a thousand apprentices.
Michelle: Just really shows your commitment to your employees.
Steve Lutton: And tell us a little bit about how your department manages that. What’s your structure of your department and how are you, how are you coordinating to manage 900 plus apprentices?
Nancy: Absolutely. And this is the part that’s a little mind boggling, Steve.
I’ve got five people that work for me and five people take care of all of those. Our largest program is line worker apprenticeship, which has about 430 apprentices. And I have one person who oversees that.
So what I’ve done is I’ve taken all of our apprenticeships and I have kind of spread those apprenticeships based on population. So I don’t have one person overloaded with too many people. So on average with my people, they have anywhere from 200 to my person with the 400 plus.
And we really take care of them from the very beginning. So when they’re in the process of accepting a bid or for our general contract, our other contract workers, a TP sheet, when they decide to open that, they have an opening for an apprenticeship. They will come to my department and they validate start dates of the next training course.
They validate salary. They validate openings. My team will okay that.
And then we take them from there on. When they show up from day one, my team goes out. If it’s their apprenticeship, they’ll go out and they brief those apprentices on what to expect.
They talk to about their administrative manual, which is the manual at the business line level that governs that apprenticeship. It’s the rules that we have built with the business line and their expectations. My team goes out and briefs that.
And then my team deals with pay issues, holding in step because they missed a training or they failed. I’m also the co-chairperson of the Joint Apprenticeship Training Committee. So I have a direct impact on the overall management of all those programs.
But also we’re the deciding body when there is an issue with one of our apprentices. We determine if they get an action plan or if they are allowed to continue in the program. My team also deals with pay to ensure that their pay is correct.
My team is the point of contact administratively for every apprentice. And then eventually my team will journey people out. And then they take all of those records that they’ve maintained over anywhere from 18 months to four years, depending on the apprenticeship.
They take all that paperwork and they upload it into our system of record in SAP. And then it’s maintained there. Additionally, if somebody loses their certificate or somebody has to, if somebody leaves this company and they have to prove hours in an apprenticeship, they come back to my team and we provide that verification for them.
We provide the certificate. So really it’s from A to Z, my team takes care of those apprentices until they become journey workers. Then they belong completely to the business line.
Steve: Fantastic. Five people, that’s a lot for five people. I’m quite impressed.
Can you tell us a little bit about your experience moving from the Division of Apprenticeship Standards in California, which is a state-level program, to applying for OA standards and getting registered through the Department of Labor Office of Apprenticeship?
Nancy: Absolutely. And it’s kind of night and day. Division of Apprenticeship Standards here in California, we have DAS 35.
I know they’re changing the number, but it’s the paperwork that’s on file with the state, the standards of the program. Really kind of straightforward. It’s a matter of, you know, we need to show their salary. We need to show how long the program is. We provide them with a curriculum map. They review it and they post it for 30 days. And then unless there’s a question or an argument from another craft, we were good to go. And I just recently did that with an apprenticeship, LNG, CNG. And that took almost two years to do.
So it’s a long process, but it’s an easy process. I’ll be very honest. I don’t think I could have done DOL without JobForward.
And I say that very honestly. And the fact that there was a lot of work that had to be done with regard to verbiage and structure, because it’s very different. Now, we didn’t change our programs, but we had to put them forth in a manner that aligned with what DOL was looking for in their standard language.
And just the conversations that I had with JobForward told me, oh, yeah, I’m so glad we’re not doing this because I do not possess the insight to make it as smooth as it has been. I mean, we started this just a number of months ago and here we are getting things signed. I think it would have been a much longer process.
I think Department of Labor, I think one of my challenges with Department of Labor is not all apprenticeships are cookie cutters. Every organization will structure an apprenticeship differently. And ours were structured for state.
So it just looks a little different. But I think the advantage, did you want to know the advantage or am I going too far, Steve?
Steve: No, it’s great hearing this. I think what you have is you are trying to duplicate or replicate what’s been a very successful model under the Division of Apprenticeship Standards and trying to replicate that in a DOL standards of apprenticeship.
So there are challenges with that for certain. I’d love to hear what you perceive the advantages to be because it’s important that other employers understand what you’re going through and how you’re feeling about the advantages or disadvantages of one over the other.
Nancy: Absolutely. First off, I don’t think there’s any disadvantage to being certified in the state and DOL by any means. I’m excited about the signing of these standards with Department of Labor because it’s going to serve the coworkers here at PG&E far beyond what they’ve experienced so far. So right now, by being state certified, our participants, one of the benefits is our participants that are former vets are eligible for VA money that offsets the difference between step one pay and journey pay.
And they rate that differential until they journey out. Huge benefit for those people. So we really are trying to lean into more vets and really be open about that.
DOL does even more than that. So DOL not only opens us up to additional hours or additional open barriers, there’s probably more VA money available to them. I just have to find it at this point.
But really, we’re open to more funding sources for our programs. Right now, I’m only open to state funding sources, which are limited. We’re now going to be eligible for funding for our programs because we’re certified by Department of Labor.
The people that participate in our apprenticeships have an even greater benefit, and that is there’s hours that will apply to associate degrees. The average person that has been going through our apprenticeships are high school graduates or GED recipients. There’s not a lot of college graduates.
This allows our people to gain hours for an associate degree and not only have a craft that will pay them well and a craft that they can use even in retirement, but they’re going to be able to get a degree out of this, something they may never have thought of. So just the benefits that we’re going to be able to provide to these co-workers are amazing to me, because I look at an apprenticeship as their four-year degree. A lot of kids get out of high school and they go to college. Most of the people that are going to our apprenticeships, this is their version of college. So for them to actually get, be able to get a degree, an associate degree, is so exciting for me. And I’m not sure everybody has fully grasped this yet, but that’s okay, because by doing this, we’ve opened the door for that possibility.
Steve: You’re speaking our language, Nancy. It’s beautiful. It really is.
Michelle: Nancy, do you want to talk a little bit about the event you have planned for April 20th?
Nancy: Yeah, I’m very excited. So we are going to have a signing event at Winters, which is the Gas Safety Academy. And that academy was built after the tragic incident in San Bernardino, California, where we had a gas main explode and cause fatal injuries.
We built this academy in response to that understanding. We really needed some specific training and very structured. A very structured program for the people that work on pipelines. And we needed more than just the PHMSA OQs for covered tasks. So we built Winters, and I’m very excited.
We are going to have Department of Labor there. We’re going to have the state there. We will have JobForward there. And we’ll have leadership in our organization there, just to celebrate that we’re going to sign these standards that have been accepted by the federal government and our programs. I’m kind of at a loss of words when I describe what this means to me, because I think this is one of the greatest achievements that we have accomplished in our apprenticeship programs. We’re going to have a ceremony to sign at least 12 of our standards on that day.
And we will put it in our newspaper here for the company, and hopefully we’ll get it out to the public also that they know that PG&E takes the technical training of their co-workers so seriously that we have put yet one more piece of accountability into that by going with DOL. That’s awesome. I’m looking forward to being there.
I’m looking forward to having all of the representatives there to experience this and to celebrate what you’ve done. So that’s great. Well, when you first walk into the building, Michelle, you’ll probably be taken back a little because we have the actual pipe from San Bruno.
After the National Transportation Board reviewed it and did all their investigation, they released that pipe to us. And the pipe still has markings from their investigation on it. So it’s right there to remind us how important these programs are and how important this training is for our people.
Steve: Absolutely. Nancy, you’re in a very unique sector, being in the utility sector. And I’m just curious if you have a message for state or local or regional utilities that are trying to address critical workforce shortages or challenges and an honest assessment of what registered apprenticeship can do to help.
Nancy: Absolutely. I think when you say apprenticeship to people, I think their ears just kind of pick up a little bit because they know that it’s a respected path. It’s also a path that for hundreds of years people have had, but it’s only been in certain industries like in construction or steel working or those kinds of industries.
But when you talk about utilities and you talk about how dangerous the commodities are that we work with, that when there’s an incident with gas, it doesn’t affect one person. It affects a neighborhood. When there is an electrical incident, it may affect one person, but it affects a family and coworkers.
If there’s a tragic incident, you can’t allow people to work on those commodities without training. And although PHMSA has covered tasks and they have OQs, operator qualifications, it really doesn’t address the day-to-day activity that happens on pipelines. And electric doesn’t have any of that.
So you have to have some checks and balances. You have to have some education. And I think if you’re in the utility world, you are not doing your coworkers any service by not giving them the full training that they deserve in a structured, logical, stair-step approach.
So when they graduate a program that you’ve done, it’s one thing to say they’re a journey worker, but that they are competent and confident because they have had enough hours of classroom, but also hands-on. And it’s super important, I think, to make sure that you hit all the learning methods for adults, right? So you can’t just do classroom, you can’t just do hands-on. We’ve got to hit them all.
And we do that in an apprenticeship. We hit all the methods. We ensure that people understand what they were taught because we assess them.
We assess them in books, in written exams, but we also assess them in skill assessments. We do that after each class and then you do it after each step. So you know when they’ve gotten to the end that you can rest easy at night because your people have been fully trained and have proven that they not only understand it, but have retained it and can apply what they learned.
Super important. And in the utility world, you know, we hear of people, you know, of gas leaks and explosions and electrical issues, you know, people getting killed. The first place I look is training.
Steve: You’ve got to be able to train your people because if you don’t, you’re putting them in harm’s way. So true. So true.
I think, Nancy, obviously you’ve had Registered Apprenticeship for quite a while now and super successful. Without that, implemented in your organization, where obviously you’re doing a lot of training, but where would the gaps be? Where would you see that there would be issues without Registered Apprenticeship in place?
Nancy: I think we would have loss of life regularly. I think we would have very unhappy customers because they would be out of electricity or gas.
But I think the biggest thing is we would have no credibility as an organization. You can’t tell people that you are going to provide reliable services and not have a trained workforce or a workforce that is only trained via tribal knowledge because tribal knowledge is dangerous. And tribal knowledge is typically as far away from procedures as you can get because it’s how they found a shortcut.
And there are no shortcuts when you deal with these commodities. Shortcut will end in a serious incident to be quite honest with you. This is kind of off the subject, but it goes back to when I was a Marine for 20 years and everybody in the Marine Corps and everybody in the U.S. military actually goes to training before they do their job.
You just don’t show up and then go out and do your job. You get trained on how to do that. You get trained on how to shoot a weapon, the most dangerous thing you’re going to do.
So when you’re talking about dangerous things, you have to train people and have clear processes and procedures. Otherwise, you will lose employees and you will lose all your credibility to your clients. Yeah, that’s a lot.
Steve: It says a lot about your organization and what you’ve put out there, right, to the cities and communities that you work in.
Nancy: Yep, absolutely.
Michelle: Steve, anything else we want to ask Nancy?
Steve: Yeah, I guess maybe one last thing. And I am curious, and actually I don’t know the backstory on this, so this will be good for me to hear, but how did you find us and how did you leverage our services? Like, what was it about what we had that allowed you to be able to tap into the apprenticeship model and move that all forward?
Nancy: Steve, I’m going to give you a super honest answer to this, and this is not a brown-nose answer, okay? So the only reason that we did this is I knew it was possible, but I was kind of afraid to do it because I knew it was going to be an enormous amount of work. I wasn’t sure that my team had the bandwidth to do it, to be quite honest with you, because we are managing all those apprentices. So I went to the ETP hearing, which is state funding, and I had to go and defend my request.
And the person who helped me with that knew Michelle and introduced me to Michelle. And Michelle said to me, if you’re ever interested in looking at Department of Labor, let me know because we can help you do that. And so I was like, really? Okay.
So that is how I came to JobForward. And I will tell you that Rosa Hernandez, who is our person that helps us with ETP, knew Michelle, and absolutely sang the praises of JobForward. And I just knew from the moment I met Michelle that this is who I wanted to work with.
And then I met you all, because of how you approached the process, I knew that it was going to be painless. It was screamingly affordable. And I just knew that I was in good hands.
So really, Michelle is the reason I’m here because Michelle just put me at ease. And we kind of spoke the same language. And so I thought, okay, this is a woman I can trust.
And to be quite honest with you, I will work with a professional woman anytime in a program that I can. I feel like I need to support professional women. And I am glad we chose JobForward because it has been so easy. And it has been so informative at the same time.
Michelle: We appreciate that. And Nancy and I, we definitely connected. We chatted, and even when we came out of the meeting, we were chatting about life. We had an instant connection. So I appreciate the kind words. And I’m super glad that you guys were able to connect with my team. And we’ve gotten to this far. So I appreciate that.
Nancy: It’s been great. And I would say, if you want to do DOL, JobForward is the team to go with. Because literally, you guys did it all. I just had to give you data, raw data, and you guys went from there. And answer a few questions here and there. But this has been a zero lift for me.
Michelle: Glad that the team could do that for you, for sure. Because I know you guys have plenty to do with your 900 plus apprentices. We do appreciate your time today, Nancy, we really do.
Nancy: Thank you, guys.