In good hands

• By ED CULLEN
• Advocate staff writer
• Published: Mar 11, 2008 - Page: 1E - UPDATED: 12:25 a.m.

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The training that 14 native Alaskans — “You can call us Eskimos” — are getting in welding at a school on Highland Road, near Airline Highway, means more money — a lot more money — in their pay envelopes.

But it’s what the new skills mean to the people at home that the welders talk about during a break room chat.

Lunch time temperature was around 60 degrees at the Associated Builders and Contractors, Pelican Chapter, School. The welders come from 11 villages around Kotzebue in Northwest Alaska, experiencing a warm snap that morning at minus 10 inside the Arctic Circle.

“We bumped into them (native Alaskan workers) when they were in Gulfport and New Orleans after Katrina,” said Stephen M. Toups, Turner Industries’ vice president for business development. Turner is among the more than 40 industrial contractors that contribute to the ABC School’s operating expenses.

The school trains workers for industry to meet a worldwide shortage of craftsmen, said Robert Clouatre, ABC’s director of education and training.

There could be a shortage of more than 200,000 skilled welders by 2010, according to the American Welding Society.

Over the same period, millions of skilled workers in all of the building crafts will be retiring or slowing down, Clouatre said.

The welders and the people back home are shareholders in the Northwest Alaska Native Association (NANA). The Red Dog Mine, the largest zinc mine in the world, operates under an agreement with NANA and a private mine operator.

Profits from the mine, along with profits from NANA’s worldwide operations in such things as oilfield support, hotel management and contracting, are paid out to the shareholders.

The welders aren’t sure if Louisianians they’ve met really think they live in igloos, but the Eskimos treat the question as a joke.

“So, we come back, ‘Yeah, in condos. We had a melt down last week and had to rebuild,” said Mark Cruthers, 47, who married into NANA. “Our houses are better built than the ones down here. Stronger. Foam core houses with six inches in the walls and eight inches in the ceiling.

“The wind is the worst part,” he said. “There’s no wind chill consideration. We just cover up and go.”

“Oh, it gets hot in the summer – 70s, 80s, sometimes in the 90s,” said 32-year-old Evelyn Monroe. “In the winter, minus 45 isn’t uncommon on the coast. Inland, it can get down to 50 to 60 below.”