How Memphis's Paid Pre-Apprenticeship Program Is Putting People to Work in the Trades

Matt Brown spent more than two decades as a union representative with the Teamsters before taking the helm as Program Director at Mid-South Construction Careers. That background shapes everything about how the program runs: from the hourly wage model to the attendance standards to the direct pipeline into union apprenticeship programs.

When someone walks into Mid-South Construction Careers (MSCC) not knowing which trade they want to pursue, Matt Brown has a simple way of explaining what happens next.

"Think of it like a buffet," he says. "You see the corn, you see the sweet potato, you see the greens. You get a little bite of each. At the end, you say this is what I want to do."

That buffet is a four-week paid program built around the Multi-Craft Core Curriculum, a standardized construction training program developed by the North American Building Trades Unions in partnership with the Department of Labor and national contractors. MSCC is the Memphis version. Graduates leave with an OSHA 10 certification, a drug screening on record, and a guaranteed interview at the union apprenticeship program of their choice.

The program pays participants $15 an hour during training. That detail matters more than it might seem.

Why They Pay $15 an Hour

Some pre-apprenticeship programs offer stipends, a flat weekly amount regardless of hours worked, but MSCC pays hourly. Brown traces that decision directly to the program's union roots.

"We come from the union. We know that people can't just drop out of life and go to school."

The math is straightforward. At $15 an hour for a full training week, participants earn roughly $600 before taxes, made possible through MSCC's partnership with the Memphis Urban League, which helps fund participant wages alongside its broader role providing wraparound support and community outreach for the program. It's not a replacement for a full paycheck, but it creates what Brown calls a floor, something that makes the decision easier and helps offset any lost wages.

"It's easier to justify giving that up if you've got a little something to fall back on," he says.

Brown encourages participants with flexible job schedules, to go on leave or shift to nights rather than quit entirely. The program is designed to work with the financial reality of the people it serves, not around it.

Why Memphis Needed This

When Ford's Blue Oval City manufacturing complex came to Stanton, Tennessee, Memphis didn't have enough skilled electricians, ironworkers or carpenters to staff it. The unions had to recruit travelers from St. Louis and beyond to do the work.

"We want Memphians doing the work that's here," Brown says. "We want to keep that money in the city."

MSCC exists in part to ensure that doesn't happen again. The goal is a local pipeline so when the next major project breaks ground, Memphians get those jobs.

St. Jude Children's Research Hospital is expanding its campus with a $12.9 billion project in the Pinch District. This includes an $810 million, 17-story research tower now under construction and set to be finished in 2029. Google broke ground in October 2025 on a $4 billion data center campus in West Memphis, Arkansas, which is the largest private capital investment in the state’s history. xAI's is also building out its Colossus supercomputer facility in Southwest Memphis and expanding into Southaven, Mississippi, with a $20 billion project. Together these projects represent billions of dollars in investment and thousands of construction jobs. The skilled labor needed to staff them has to come from somewhere.

What the Program Actually Is

MSCC is affiliated with eleven trades: electricians, plumbers, carpenters, iron workers, sheet metal workers, sprinkler fitters, insulators, millwrights, laborers, operating engineers, and painters. Students rotate through exposure to each, getting hands-on time with equipment, instructors, and the culture of different crafts before committing to a trade.

The program was built by the Joint Apprenticeship Training Committees (JATC), not independently of them. MSCC was designed to be a pipeline into union apprenticeships, rather than a standalone workforce development program. The JATCs are not external partners brought in after the fact, they are the originators of the program.

"We are a creation of the JATCs," Brown says. "This program was built to funnel people in."

That relationship is why the guaranteed interview carries real weight. It is not a handshake agreement or a marketing claim. It is contractual. Every MSCC graduate is guaranteed an interview at any affiliated JATC program they apply to.

But Brown is direct about what the guarantee actually means in practice.

"You could come and not take it seriously and still be guaranteed an interview with the plumbers," he says. "But I'm not going to write a letter of recommendation highlighting your good attendance."

The letter of recommendation is the real prize. Training directors at affiliated JATCs know what an MSCC graduate brings: OSHA 10 certification, a clean drug test, a verified attendance record, and four weeks of documented willingness to show up. Those credentials travel with the graduate into the interview room.

Who Walks Through the Door

There’s no single type of person who applies to MSCC. The program actively recruits those that have historically been excluded from the building trades: women, people of color, veterans and justice-impacted individuals. But Brown is clear that those are priorities, not limits.

"We have former HR managers at FedEx who just got hired on as electricians," he says. "But our main target is someone working in a warehouse who’s thinking, this is limiting. You want something more, but you don't know how to get there."

What matters most isn’t someone’s background or education, it’s their mindset. "People who want to better themselves," Brown says. "People who know that having a skill, not necessarily a degree, but a skill you can take to a job site, is a great way to do it."

More and more, that includes people who never thought they’d go into a trade. Brown has seen a shift in the applicant pool.

We see a lot of computer programmers," he says. "We see internet security folks. People whose jobs are being evaporated by artificial intelligence. These are people with degrees or close to degrees, and for whatever reason, we know the reason, they have to go somewhere else. The trades are a very lucrative alternative.”

Brown came to MSCC from the Teamsters, not the building trades. That outside perspective may help him see things differently. The trades aren’t a fallback, they’re a smart choice for people who want stable, skilled work that pays well.

What the Program Screens For

MSCC does not just train graduates, it filters them. Attendance is tracked and students who are chronically late get flagged. Students who are disrespectful to staff or fellow participants get removed from the program. Brown has ended enrollment for both.

That screening is intentional and it serves the JATCs directly.

"If you can't show up every day for four weeks, you can't make it as a union plumber," he says. "Because that is certainly much harder."

When a training director receives an MSCC graduate for an interview, they are not evaluating a cold applicant. They are evaluating someone who has already been pre-screened against the same criteria the apprenticeship program cares about.

MSCC has strengthened interview prep by bringing in JATC training directors and electrical contractors to conduct mock interviews. The person sitting across the table from a student in a mock interview is the same person who may eventually be making the actual hiring decision.

"If you really impress a director in the mock interview, he or she is going to remember you when you apply," Brown says. "That's real."

Early cohorts had an application rate of around 22 percent, meaning some graduates completed the program but did not apply to apprenticeships afterward. Brown attributes that to people who were not serious about the trades from the start. The program has since tightened its admissions process. In the most recent January cohort, all but one graduate was accepted into an apprenticeship program and is now working.

What JATC Programs Actually Look For

Brown has placed graduates in a majority of the trades involved. He has watched training directors evaluate hundreds of applicants. His summary of what they are actually looking for is consistent across every trade.

"Willingness to learn, be teachable. Show up on time. Be someone people want to have around on a job site."

He adds what training directors themselves have told him repeatedly, "They don't care if you're black or white, gay or straight, male or female. They can teach everything else. Those are the three things that matter."

MSCC coaches graduates on how to present those qualities in the specific context of the trade they are pursuing. Different crafts have different cultures and different interview norms. The program prepares graduates for both the universal standards and the trade specific ones.

The unwritten rules matter too. First impressions on a job site carry disproportionate weight in a culture where reputation travels.

"If you show up to the sheet metal workers in slippers, they are never going to forget that," Brown says.

The math gap is another area where MSCC prepares graduates for something most applicants don't anticipate.

"Math is not like riding a bicycle," Brown says. "It is like learning a foreign language. If you don't use it, you don't retain it."

Some students arrive convinced they are bad at math and discover they have been using fractions on a tape measure for years. Others who aced high school algebra struggle because they haven't used it since. After training directors in early cohorts reported that graduates couldn't read a tape measure, MSCC built a dedicated class on fractions and using tape measures to get area perimeter and volume of a cylinder. The curriculum adapts in real time to what the JATCs need.

The OSHA Card

Every MSCC graduate leaves with an OSHA 10 Construction certification. Brown calls it the single most valuable credential the program provides.

"There are construction sites you cannot get on without that card," he says.

The practical consequence is direct. A second-year carpenter who has not yet completed OSHA training will lose a job opening to an MSCC graduate who has it on day one. The card is not a credential in the traditional sense, it is a gate. MSCC graduates arrive with it already in hand.

Moving OSHA training to the first week of the program has produced an additional benefit. Safety awareness carries through the entire month. Students begin flagging potential violations in other classes. The mindset shift is observable.

"The OSHA rules are written in blood." Brown says.

The Honest Part

Brown does not oversell the program or the trades. He is direct about the limits of what MSCC can guarantee.

Construction is cyclical. The market determines how many apprenticeship slots are open in any given season. A graduate can be an excellent candidate and still face a wait.

"Construction is a boom and bust," he says. "You sit on the board and you wait for the wave. If the wave isn't there, you aren't going to surf."

MSCC graduates also compete against experienced non-union workers for apprenticeship slots. A contractor choosing between a six-year non-union electrician and an MCSS graduate with no field experience faces an obvious choice.

Brown is clear-eyed about where his graduates fit in that competition.

"We are the best candidates with no experience," he says. "How do we compete with people who have experience? We can't. But we fill that void when experienced people aren't available."

That honesty is part of what makes the program credible. Brown is not running a diploma factory. He is explicit about that.

"It doesn't do me any good to enroll 300 people if I can only get 30 employed," he says. "I feel like I've failed the other 270. Growing the program only makes sense if the market can absorb the graduates."

The Union Card vs. the Degree

Brown holds two college degrees. Neither one, he says, is what puts food on his table.

"What puts food on my table is my union card."

He is not dismissive of higher education. He credits his time at university with teaching him how to think. But he is honest about the value proposition in 2026.

"With AI and what's happening in the university system, I think people really need to take a second look and see if it's worth it for them," he says. "The trades are a very lucrative alternative."

For the people walking into MSCC, warehouse workers, veterans, justice impacted individuals, former tech workers whose careers have been automated away, the union card is not a consolation prize. It is a gateway to healthcare, a pension and job security that most careers can no longer promise.

The Zero-Risk Proposition

"If you like your brain to be engaged with a project, if you like to work with your hands, if you want camaraderie with your coworkers, come to us and we will help you find the right place."

And for the person who comes through and decides the trades are not for them?

"You've gotten $600 a week for four weeks," Brown says. "And you know you want to do something else."

That is the worst case scenario. You got paid to figure out what you don't want to do.

Mid-South Construction Careers is an MC3-aligned pre-apprenticeship program based in Memphis, Tennessee. Applications are open on a rolling basis. Visit midsouthconstructioncareers.org to apply or learn more.

TradePathHub founder Brian Peterson taught construction mathematics for MSCC's inaugural cohort. This interview was conducted in June 2026.