Associated Builders and Contractors issued the following statement applauding the withdrawal of the U.S. Department of Labor’s rule overhauling regulations related to government-registered apprenticeship programs, or GRAPs.
“The DOL’s proposed apprenticeship overhaul was out of touch with the needs of employers and apprentices, and was a missed opportunity to modernize and expand the apprenticeship system,” says Ben Brubeck, ABC vice president of regulatory, labor and state affairs. “We are pleased that the Biden administration heeded the concerns of ABC and industry GRAP stakeholders and halted this unnecessarily costly and burdensome policy change, which would have restricted GRAP system growth and exacerbated the construction industry’s labor shortage.
“Feedback from ABC’s GRAP stakeholders on the proposed rule was overwhelmingly negative, with 94 percent of respondents stating that the proposal would increase the costs of participating in or sponsoring a GRAP and 90 percent saying they would be less likely to start their own GRAP as a result of the DOL’s proposal,” says Brubeck.
On March 18, ABC submitted more than 40 pages of comments on the DOL’s controversial proposed rule, urging the DOL to withdraw the illegal and misguided provisions of the proposal.
For more, visit www.abc.org/apprenticeship.