Donald Trump

In his trip to Waukesha early this week, Donald Trump said he wants every high school in America to offer apprenticeship opportunities and hands-on-learning.

But Wisconsin’s Democratic leaders blasted Trump’s apprenticeship programs as nothing more than a hypocritical photo opportunity given that his budget proposal would cut funding for worker training.

Joined in Wisconsin by daughter Ivanka Trump and Labor Secretary Alex Acosta, Trump described his push to get private companies and universities to pair up and pay the cost of such arrangements.

“It’s called earn while you learn,” Trump said at Waukesha County Technical College.

Trump had come to the state to headline a fundraiser for Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, who first introduced many of the controversial policies the president is now seeking to implement nationally. Walker accompanied Trump during his Waukesha visit, standing behind Trump’s shoulder during Trump’s appearance there.

Wisconsin, led by Walker’s support, was a key part of Trump’s 2016 election triumph in the state. Trump became the first Republican to carry the state in a presidential election since 1984.

Democratic lawmakers and a union leader said Trump’s visit to Wisconsin to tout apprenticeship programs was nothing more than a hypocritical photo opportunity given that his budget proposal would cut funding for worker training.

But Assembly Minority Leader Peter Barca blasted Trump for pulling a “bait and switch” by claiming he cares about workers while cutting resources to train them.

Trump’s budget would cut federal money for job training by 40 percent next year.

The White House said Trump’s push is aimed at training workers with specific skills for particular jobs that employers say they can’t fill at a time of historically low unemployment. However, the most recent budget for the federal government passed with about $90 million for apprenticeships, and Trump so far isn’t proposing to add more.

The Trump administration has said there’s a need that can be met with a change in the American attitude toward vocational education and apprenticeships. A November 2016 report by former President Barack Obama’s Commerce Department found that “apprenticeships are not fully understood in the United States, especially” by employers, who tend to use apprentices for a few, hard-to-fill positions” but not as widely as they could.

The shortages for specifically trained workers cut across multiple job sectors beyond Trump’s beloved construction trades. There are shortages in agriculture, manufacturing, information technology and health care.

Participants in some apprentice programs get on-the-job training while going to school, sometimes with companies footing the bill.

IBM, for example, participates in a six-year program called P-TECH. Students in 60 schools across six states begin in high school, when they get a paid internship, earn an associate’s degree and get first-in-line consideration for jobs from 250 participating employers.

It relies on funds outside the apprenticeship program — a challenge in that the Trump budget plan would cut spending overall on job training. The program uses $1.2 billion in federal funding provided under the Perkins Career and Technical Education Act passed in 2006, said P-TECH co-founder Stan Litow.

Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., said Trump’s “rhetoric doesn’t match the reality” of budget cuts he’s proposing that would reduce federal job training funding by 40 percent from $2.7 billion to $1.6 billion.

“If you’re really interested in promoting apprenticeship, you have to invest in that skills training,” said Mike Rosen, president of the Milwaukee chapter of the American Federation of Teachers union.

Apprenticeships are few and far between. Of the 146 million jobs in the United States, about 0.35 percent — or slightly more than a half-million — were filled by active apprentices in 2016. Filling millions more jobs through apprenticeships would require the government to massively ramp up its efforts. “Scaling is the big issue,” said Robert Lerman, a fellow at the Urban Institute.

Another complication: Only about half of apprentices finish their multi-year programs, Lerman said. Fewer than 50,000 people — including 11,104 in the military — completed their apprenticeships in 2016, according to Labor Department.

Thomas reported from Washington. Associated Press writer Scott Bauer in Madison, Wis., and Laurie Kellman in Washington contributed to this report.

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