For people interested in the pipe trades, the Web site includes the following questions and answers:

What Do Piping Tradespeople Do Anyway?
Piping tradespeople - plumbers, steamfitters, and pipefitters - install building systems that carry water, steam, gases, and various chemicals to provide power, heating, cooling, refrigeration, and sanitation. These are comforts we take for granted.

Piping tradespeople work from drawings and blueprints. They cut, bend, weld, and join piping systems that go into everything from homes to hospitals, skyscrapers and tunnels, and much more. You can find them doing their work for new construction as well as in maintaining existing constructions.

Who Do Piping Tradespeople Work For?
Union pipe tradespeople are independent "journeymen." That means they're members of the union and work for mechanical contractors - firms that provide the working, moving systems in a given building. This includes heating and cooling, as well as process-driven systems such as refrigeration or the flow of liquids on a production line.

As a member of Local 85, apprentices will be trained by professionals and when their application is accepted for the Local 85 Contractor Training Program, they will begin their plumbing apprenticeship at Local 85 in Saginaw.

During your 5-year apprenticeship program, people will learn plumbing, pipefitting, welding, isometric drawing, template layout, blueprint reading, and mathematics. They will also study computer assisted drawing, plus all the latest in safety techniques. From pumps to pneumatic controls from soldering to steam boilers and more, apprentices will earn the licenses to make them solid professionals.

For more information on the organization, visit www.bayareaassn.com.

Publication date: 11/21/2005