By Arthur Kimball-Stanley
Providence Journal Staff Writer

 
After five years working for Verizon, Guy Clermont decided to get back into plumbing, the family business.   The Pawtucket native’s father had been a master plumber and Clermont had worked with him for years before he decided to get into the telephone business. After seeing an ad for Gem plumbing’s apprentice program, he decided it was time to go back.  “These were the only two things I knew how to do that could make me money,” Clermont said. “I chose to go back to plumbing because I was doing a little too much traveling with the phone company. I’ve been working for Gem ever since, and hopefully I’m not going anywhere.”  It’s three years later, and the 37-year-old Clermont is almost done with his apprenticeship, well on his way to becoming a licensed plumber. But, during the time Clermont has been an apprentice with Gem, a great deal has changed for the company and, over the next few months, a great deal will change for the apprenticeship program.

This fall, Gem began running its training program through the Community College of Rhode Island’s division of lifelong learning, allowing employees to put their time learning a trade toward degree credit. It’s the first time a private employer has contracted with CCRI’s lifelong learning division to create a regular, ongoing training program and an example of the opportunities an employer can offer if it’s willing to invest the resources.

While CCRI has worked with employers such as Electric Boat and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, according to CCRI’s director of project development Bob Delaney, never before has a company decided to run the classroom portion of its apprenticeship out of the college. This approach, Delaney explained, sets employees on a direct career path, showing them how easy it is to take courses at CCRI because they are already doing it.
The program is one of a group that CCRI has organized to make it easier for those learning a trade to get a college degree. Last week, CCRI announced that it will now grant up to 20 credits for work completed in an apprenticeship program offered after graduation from the Construction Career Academy in Cranston, a charter school created by the Cranston School Department and the New England Laborers’ union. The 20 credits can be applied to the Associate in Applied Science in Technical Studies degree offered by the college. The remaining 40 to 46 credits required for a degree can be earned by taking courses in technical and related studies as well as courses in general education subjects.  “I think it’s about time someone did it,” Clermont said. Most plumbing programs are a “four-year apprenticeship, and you go to school for four years and all we end up with is the chance to take a test to get a license. Now we all have the ability to work for a few more credits and get an associate’s degree. It’s important because if you want to go into some type of project management a degree of some kind is a requirement.”

To understand why Gem plumbing has decided to build a degree program into its apprenticeship program, according to Anthony P. Gemma and Larry T. Gemma, two of the four brothers who own the company, one must understand the changes the business has gone through during the last few years.
A little less than 10 years ago, the general handyman services company had 40 employees and about $6.3 million in sales per year. Today the company has 325 employees and more than $330 million in sales. Whereas in the late ’90s it was operating only in the Rhode Island area, today it sends plumbers and handymen to Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Connecticut and New Hampshire, and is interested in pushing into Maine.

The rapid growth, the Gemma brothers said, has pressured the company to bring more and more people in and to make sure those employees are qualified to move up the ranks.  Right now there are about 30 apprentices training with Gem. They range in age from 18 to their mid-50s. The group includes four women. Future class sizes will depend on Gem’s need.
“We realized that if we wanted to continue to grow, to have the ability move into places like say California, we would have to have a very strong training program,” Larry Gemma said. “We feel that as the construction trades continue to become more technical this should become a standard in the industry. You need to create a situation where people are as capable on the business side as they are in the field. It’s career development for them.”
Hopefully, the brothers say, offering employees a chance to improve their skills from their first day on the job will make them more loyal to the company and improve morale.

“When people ask what happens when you train people and they leave,” Anthony Gemma said, “I ask them a question right back. What if you don’t train people and they stay?”  Clermont said he will begin his general education classes soon. Just the fact that the opportunity is there for him, he said, means a great deal in terms of the company’s commitment to him.

“There is a mixture of the type of people that go into the apprenticeship program,” he said. “Some people just want to be plumbers and others want to use it to go into something else. I love it because it gives you that choice.”