Women In Plumbing

Women in Plumbing has been an initiative of the Queensland Plumbers Union which has seen our commercial sector grow from 0 to 14 female apprentices across the fire industry, mechanical plumbing and sanitary plumbing. This has been a very successful program and has been well received by our members and by employers within the commercial sector.


STQ

Services Trades Queensland (STQ) is a joint venture between the Union and employer associations. It is designed to give our members and EBA companies an unashameable advantage over any other contractors or employees. STQ has been responsible for the seed funding for our Fire School, our apprentice programs and a Safety Officer for our industry and will be used to develop cutting edge programs to benefit our members and unionised companies to give them a proud advantage over anyone else.


JIST

Joint Industry Services Training (JIST) was initially an initiative of the Plumbers Union and was designed to enable our members to be trained to a standard over and above what anyone else could be trained. This also filled a shortfall in the Government Training Programs. It has been extremely successful in the development of the Fire School where the Union and NFIQ formed a partnership to build a facility which is not only the best in the country, it is world class.


Union Apprentice Program

The Union Apprentice Program aims to co-ordinate our mechanical services companies to employ mechanical plumbing apprentices. This has taken over 12 months to achieve and on the 6th May 2009, 30 first year apprentices will sign their indentures into this program. The Union will then actively seek funding from State and Federal Governments and industry funds to help build infrastructure out of JIST to enable these new apprentices to be trained. There are no current facilities in Queensland to train mechanical plumbers.