Vets get faster path to professional licenses

SMOOTH TRANSITION: Marty Tatum, an employee at Gem Plumbing and Heating, is on a fast track for his pipefitters license thanks to Pave the Rhode Back Home. / PBN PHOTO/TRACY JENKINS
SMOOTH TRANSITION: Marty Tatum, an employee at Gem Plumbing and Heating, is on a fast track for his pipefitters license thanks to Pave the Rhode Back Home. / PBN PHOTO/TRACY JENKINS

(Updated, Sept. 9, 9:08 a.m.)

Marty Tatum’s 26 years of military service includes experience with the Seabees – the U.S. naval construction force – as well as time in Iraq, Kuwait and at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba.
Now a reservist with the Air National Guard in Rhode Island, the 50-year-old Warren resident works for Gem Plumbing and Heating in Lincoln. He’s also the first person to benefit from a key part of a package of new state laws, called Pave the Rhode Back Home, intended to ease the transition to civilian life for military veterans.
One law, called Service Member Licensure, directs examining and licensing boards for professional services to accept education, training or service toward certification for military members and their spouses. Bernard Treml, supervisor of apprenticeship for the R.I. Department of Labor and Training’s Division of Workforce Regulation and Safety, says Tatum is the first to benefit.
“Marty was already registered as an apprentice in pipefitting with Gem Plumbing, so we’ve already been working with him,” said Treml.
“In the past we’ve reviewed military experience on a case-by-case basis. We’ve given credit for related instruction or on-the-job training that translates into credit for apprenticeship or licensing programs,” Treml said.
The new law is designed to standardize and speed-up the process.
“Now we’re working on giving Marty advanced credit for his apprenticeship and he can sit for his pipefitters test in October,” Treml said. The test is for the pipefitters 2 journeyman’s license.
“He can outline his career path for the next couple of years. The more credentialed you are, the more licenses you have, the more opportunity there is,” Treml said.
“Licenses are required for different parts of the work in plumbing, heating and cooling. After this, Marty may decide to register for a refrigeration apprenticeship. With more licenses, he could do a job from A-to-Z,” Treml said.
Tatum has been pursuing his licenses for years. He completed 728 hours of military school in plumbing at an Air Force Base in Texas in 2003. He signed on as an apprentice plumber with Gem Plumbing and Heating in 2005.
“I was trying to get the state to give me credit toward my journeyman’s license for plumbing,” Tatum said. “The people at DLT were really patient and helpful, but their hands were tied by the law. I went before boards in Rhode Island and I still had to go to a trade school in Connecticut. “It took me seven years to get my master’s license as a plumber,” said Tatum. “With the new law, that should shave off more than half that time for me to get my master pipefitters license.”
The state administers licenses and certifications for a wide range of professions, from telecommunications to architects, engineers and real estate brokers.
Earning a license in the trades takes on-the-job training and other instruction – and it takes time. “The average apprenticeship is 2,000 hours of on-the-job training and 144 hours of related instruction,” said Treml. “An apprenticeship can run from one to five years. There are 2,000-hour programs up to 10,000-hour programs, depending on the licensing requirements and industry standards.”
The new law giving veterans credit for military training and experience is broad and the details are still being worked out.
“There’s been a growing realization that there’s a need for this,” said Treml. “We’re working to develop a one-stop shop, online and in our offices, to make it easier for returning veterans who are interested in all kinds of different programs to accomplish their goals.”
At the DLT during the last week of August, following a meeting with Treml and Tatum, Gem Plumbing and Heating President Larry Gemma said the new law is a welcome improvement for veterans.
“When veterans came back after World War II, America had parades and celebrations,” said Gemma, who served in the Army reserves in the 1980s. “The military people going on deployments now are putting their careers on hold and putting their lives on the line. While they’re deployed they’re looking at the economy and may have no jobs to return to.”
Gemma makes sure veterans at his company are never in that situation.
“We’ve had about 15 employees at Gem who have had military deployments and come back to work at the company,” said Gemma.
“Marty’s time has been broken up by so many deployments. But military people are doing the work, and probably doing it at a much higher level, like the Seabees, under very stressful conditions,” he said. “I hope this is the beginning making it easier for our veterans to transition back into the trades.” One military person who recently heard briefly about the new law and plans to find out more about it is 20-year-old Jonathan Quinonez of Providence.
“I’m a transmission-distribution specialist in the Army reserves,” said Quinonez. “We’re linemen. We learn everything you’d learn in a company like National Grid – climbing poles, working with electricity, working with transformers.
“I would want to get certified as a lineman. I don’t have the certification now, so I’m working in construction, doing framing and laying out foundations for buildings,” said Quinonez. “I don’t do anything in my job that has to do with the transmission work I do with the Army reserves.
“Let’s say I would leave the Army in a couple of years, the only position I would be able to get would be an apprenticeship,” he said.
Even though the law to help veterans get credit toward licensing for related military experience is new, it has been a successful practice in years past.
Fifty-year-old Philip St. Clair of Providence served in the Marine Corps from 1981 to 1985 as an avionics electrician. When he got out of the service, he enrolled in an apprenticeship program in Rhode Island and got credit for 2,000 hours of training toward the 8,000 hours required for his journeyman electrician’s license.
“It usually takes four years, but I did in three because I got the credit from my military experience,” said St. Clair, who’s been working as an electrician ever since and is currently renewing his license.
The new law, said St. Clair, “will help the guys who are coming out of the military get into a trade. It will help cut down on the number of homeless veterans and on unemployment.”
St. Clair was one of many who benefited from the state crediting military service for many years before the new law went into effect.
Tatum says the new law is helping him step up the pace of his licensing and his career to better support his wife and two teenagers, one of whom is a student at the University of Rhode Island.
“The quicker I can test and get my licenses the better,” said Tatum. “I’m 50 years old, so I’ve got about another 15 years of good work in my back.” •

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