Thank you for "Tipping Point,"the fine article on crane safety. I suspect your re­search material is enough for several more articles. My own experience with cranes dates back to 1944, when I served as a seaman aboard a minesweeper. It was a training exercise for all hands. We were streaming our gear when one of the winch cables snapped. The backlash caught Big Willie across the small of his back and tossed him over the side. He was lucky-it caught him where his life jacket was several inches thick. We all got a good lesson out of that experience.

Experience is what happens when your mind is on something else. Every pick is an opportunity for disaster. Hearing this, some have said it "ain’t necessarily so." All I say is if you want to live long enough to get your pension, bet that way. One source for other safety lessons is the military, in training manuals used by the Seabees and Corps of Engineers. Those manuals are written in plain English. So also are the manuals given to new employees working on the railroads.

Robert L. Nielsen
Operating Engineer (ret.)
IUOE Local 12
Los Angeles

Not the Entire Story

Upon reading the cover story titled "From Open-Shop Training to New NCCER Goal: Reaching for the ’Stars,’" I was stunned and appalled at the lack of basic journalistic skills exhibited within this piece.

Readers of your publication have come to expect ENR to connect them with "diverse sectors of the industry with coverage that everyone needs," as your editorial mission statement promises. Unfortunately, in this instance you fell well short of that mark.

Beginning with cover photography provided by the National Center for Construction Education and Research, and including text your reporters drew uncritically and unexamined from NCCER claims, you produced nothing more than a puff piece when balanced news and in-depth analysis was required. 

The article reported, "NCCER officials tout the group’s success in filling craft-labor training voids," relationships with nearly 600 accredited industry and education facilities to train workers in 45 craft areas, and more than 125,000 workers have earned one of its journey-level craft certification. Further, the group’s training network includes 40,000 craft instructors and 4,000 master trainers.

If you would have read NCCER literature, you would have found NCCER openly states they themselves accredit NCCER training. You would have also discovered that under this insular process one becomes an instructor in 24 hours of training, and a master trainer after another 24 hours. 

Joint labor-management training accounts for nearly three-quarters of all apprenticeship completions, and the owner community has repeatedly complained that outside of joint labor-management apprenticeship, construction industry training has been a grave disappointment.

ENR has always strived to produce complete and balanced reporting and analysis. This article was unbalanced, in­complete and devoid of any in-depth analysis.

Mark H. Ayers, President
Building and Construction Trades Dept., AFL-CIO
Washington, D.C.