Career Ladder Training Partnerships: Growing Your Own Skilled Maintenance Workforce

This paper describes how transit agencies are facing a triple threat in staffing their agencies with skilled maintenance technicians. The large baby boom generation is on the verge of retirement; the introduction of new technologies changes the skills content of the jobs constantly; and increasing demand for transit translates into a demand for more and more skilled technicians. The Transit Technology Career Ladder Partnership (TTCLP) was created in order to address the challenge of limited training capacity in the face of growing skills shortages. In this program, the Community Transportation Center works to bring together labor and management to create transit training partnerships. TTCLP is led by the major transit unions at the national and local level and by the American Public Transportation Association (APTA) and transit systems across the United States, and by local, state, and federal governments. The transit training partnerships have focused on an approach for hiring skilled technicians that several partnership leaders have dubbed a “grow your own” strategy. The Center works with these local and statewide partnerships to: (1) identify areas of transit skill shortage; (2) analyze skills required for key transit jobs; (3) assess employees' current skills; and (4) develop new curriculum and training delivery systems. The TTCLP is the only program of its type in the country - addressed specifically to the transit industry’s hourly workforce, and working through labor management cooperation - and has had notable success. Enhanced maintenance training provided by Career Ladder Partnerships is highly effective at raising skills and reliability while reducing costs in transit systems.