Running the Business · Part 6
Apprentices and the Division of Apprenticeship Standards: how a small shop trains its next plumber lawfully
The plumber a small shop needs in three years is the helper it trains today, and California has a formal way to do that: a registered apprenticeship through the Division of Apprenticeship Standards, where the apprentice is your employee on payroll at a rising percentage of the journeyman wage, attends related instruction through a program sponsor, and logs the hours that become their own license application. This lesson is how the system works, the two kinds of sponsors, what it costs and pays back, why it is the only way to put a trainee on a public works job, and the mistake of calling an untrained helper an "apprentice" without a registered agreement.
What the full lesson covers
- A registered apprentice is an employee of your shop under an apprentice agreement registered with DAS through a program sponsor (a union joint apprenticeship committee or a non-union association program), with a wage schedule that rises by period toward the journeyman rate and required related classroom instruction.
- Apprenticeship hours, documented by the program, are the experience that qualifies the apprentice for their own C-36 application under B&P 7068; a helper without a registered agreement has to prove four years of experience some other way.
- On public works over $30,000 you must employ apprentices from an approved program at a one-to-five ratio and pay training fund contributions (Labor Code 1777.5); a shop with no program relationship cannot lawfully take that work.
- Every wage and hour rule applies to an apprentice: payroll, workers' compensation, overtime, meal periods, the wage statement. "Apprentice" is not a category outside employment law.
- Calling a helper an apprentice without the registered agreement is a wage problem (the helper may be owed the journeyman rate) and a prevailing-wage violation on any public job.
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More lessons in Growing the Business
- 1Hiring under AB 5: the ABC test, why a 1099 helper is a lawsuit unless they hold their own license, and the construction subcontract exemption
- 2Employees: wage and hour, overtime, meal and rest periods, final-pay rules, and the workers' compensation class code
- 3Apprentices and the Division of Apprenticeship Standards: how a small shop trains its next plumber lawfullyYou are here
- 4Adding classifications: when to add the B, the C-20, or a second specialty, and how the exam waiver works
- 5Systems: field-service software, the price book, and dispatch. What to buy, when, and what it must produce
- 6KPIs: average ticket, close rate, gross margin, and the three numbers that predict failure
- 7Supply-house credit at scale, the fleet, and inventory: the second truck's paperwork and the parts on it
- 8Becoming an RMO for someone else's company: the liability you are taking on, and the only version that is lawful
- 9Selling or stepping back: what a plumbing business is worth, what a buyer is actually buying, and what the license will and will not let you transfer
- 10Template: the hiring checklist (AB 5-safe), from the decision to the first day
- 11Template: the new-hire packet index
- 12Template: the monthly KPI sheet