Welders cut metal while students in helmets watched the sparks. Others painted, wired circuits and built structures from toothpicks and marshmallows. An estimated 800 Lee County high school students spent the day recently at JetBlue Park trying the trades at the sixth annual Build My Future Lee County.
The Lee Building Industry Association hosts the event with the Lee County School District and the American Subcontractors Association of Southwest Florida in honor of Careers in Construction Month, which county commissioners recognized earlier this month with a proclamation citing the event's role in building the region's future workforce. Mike Antonucci, a service manager at United Mechanical, said the hard part isn't recruiting.
"Bringing them into the trades is actually easy. It's retaining them," he said. "That's the hard part. So, you got to make it fun."
He’s already hired two people from last year’s event. Antonucci has spent 42 years in the industry and also teaches HVAC and electrical at Tri-County Apprenticeship Academy and a state licensing course at Cam Tech School of Construction.
"I think they're all looking to get a lot of money to start," he said. "And when they realize it's a lot of hard work and you got to earn your way through it, it kind of deters them a little bit."
His counter pitch is that workers get paid while they train. New hires are teamed up with someone more experienced and attend Tri-County's four-year program, studying materials in class while doing the same work in the field.
"You're earning money while you're learning the trade versus not earning money and getting an education and then having to pay for that education," he said.
William Horn, 15, a sophomore at South Fort Myers High School, attended to check out different opportunities. He started welding at 14.
"Being hands-on, putting metal to metal together, mainly," he said of what draws him to it.
Horn has cerebral palsy. He said it doesn't affect his welding, because he can use one hand or rest it on the other. His family was excited he'd found something he loves, he said, but they worried about safety, including flash burns to the eyes.
At the event, he tried a nail gun and learned something new. "If you put a nail in a drywall too far, it will mess up the wall and the drywall together."
Ariana Pfeiffer, 18, graduated from high school and is now in HVAC. She was welding in high school when she met Antonucci, who steered her toward HVAC.
"I'm really loving the HVAC department because I'm learning a lot and I like to learn and it's hands on," she said.
Her parents helped shape her choice.
“My dad, he does construction and my mom, she works at a bank. Neither of them went to college, and I saw, like, they're successful. So I was like, I'm gonna go for the trades.”
A good day, she said, means finishing at least three jobs correctly and leaving customers with their air conditioners running. Asked how she’ll know four years from now that she made the right call by choosing the trades over college, she answered without hesitation.
“I feel like I'll know that I made the right decision If I'm actually still happy and comfortable with what I'm doing.”
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