Laborers’ is model training center for ’hard hats’

By Helen Prunty Krispien/ Crier Correspondent

Tucked into a serene, bucolic, one hundred fifty acre setting on East Street, is a camp that has existed since 1968 to teach young men and women the nuts and bolts of working in the burgeoning construction industry that utilizes much new technology today.
According to James Merloni, Jr., the New England Laborers’ Training Academy’s administrator, "There has been an awful lot of changes since we first came here," he said. "It was nothing but a little farmhouse."
Adding, "Now there are seventy-two training centers throughout the United States and Canada and this is a flagship center where most of the things done at other centers originated from here...We have become the pulse of the construction industry as to what we do at our training centers."

"At the time we started, laborers didn’t have an apprentice program and we needed laborers to get into our union and take care of the construction needs," he said. "And they need to have skills...a lot of safety skills and to be taught how to respect people, respect safety and this was the best way to do it off the construction sites, and individual sites to prepare our youngsters for the construction industry."
With time and hard work, the center became more proficient. Its desirability was enhanced due to its central location - close to Route 495. It then merged with the Rhode Island Fund and the Connecticut Fund and now covers the six New England states.
"We now have a center in Pomfret, Connecticut of equal size that was once occupied by the Jesuit Brothers, that serves southern New England," said Merloini. "We do an awful lot with more and more certifications that come down. We have the capability and approval to certify people with all the state regulations on safety and other items that are required and also the federal regulations."
As laborers they are part of the construction industry, Merloni said. "We tend to the carpenter; to the brick layer. We make scaffold, lay concrete, dig holes, dig trenches, pour concrete, and lay pipe."
Merloni added, "There are probably seventy-five different skills laborers are qualified to do, and that is why construction workers are one of the most sought after trades in the industry because we have so many skills."
There are many different programs with varying lengths of time to learn a skill.
"The federal government has come up with a scaffold and builder user certification program with the user taking eight hours of study and the builder taking the same amount of time," he said. "The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has a 10- hour safety program and Massachusetts passed a law that everyone working on a construction site must have a 10 hour OSHA safety program."
Adding, "We teach them how to remove asbestos, hazardous waste material, and mold, and how to drill with jack hammers, and use pavement breakers. We keep them here for two days to learn these skills."
But as Merloni pointed out, "We do more with the individual and his personality...We teach him (or her) to have respect for each other, respect for the equipment we buy them, respect for the facility, and respect for the instructors."