By Paul Harvey, Paul Harvey News

You and I were visiting the other day on the subject of poor workmanship.

After a new water heater had been installed in our basement, the basement was flooded overnight because a workman had failed properly to solder some copper tubing.

It made me wonder how much shoddy workmanship is performed on airplanes. Let me add that our pilots worry about that - constantly.

For example, our nation needs electricians competent to comprehend the complexity of fiber optics and to "wire together" our space program.

If our high schools are graduating 20 percent functional illiterates, how can we hope to keep up with the demands of today's and tomorrow's technology?

The National Electrical Contractors Association (thousands of employers) and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (the largest union of electrical workers) have closed ranks, combined forces, to recruit and train competent workers for the electrical trade.

If you have the aptitude, character and motivation, you can be trained to perform, safely and properly, residential wiring with 220 hours in the classroom plus 4,000 hours on-the-job.

Inside wiremen who perform work on commercial and industrial buildings must accumulate 800 hours of classroom study plus 8,000 hours of on-the-job training.

Should you want to qualify for "outside" work - as a lineman or work in huge power-generating plants - you'll need 432 classroom hours plus 7,000 hours of on-the-job training before becoming certified.

What both government programs and public education appear unable to accomplish, this National Joint Apprenticeship and Training Committee is accomplishing. More than 180,000 electricians have this been trained since 1941. Another 46,000 are presently enrolled in training.

If the effort is not altogether altruistic, it is nonetheless the best insurance I've seen that our country will be able to compete with the world in an age that "runs on electricity."

The IBEW union has a right to expect graduates will join and support their union.

NECA is thus assured the future pool of capable, conscientious craftsmen necessary to keep their industry thriving.

The electrical construction industry currently employs more than half-a-million highly trained professionals and needs more.

The "smart house" - already in demand - replaces a multiplicity of wires and power sources with one plug for every outlet. A computer identifies the appliance - the iron, the phone, the air conditioner - and then sends the correct current automatically.

No home handyman can possibly fathom, much less maintain, such sophisticated technology.

But men and women who can are in training right now.

©1989 Los Angeles Times Syndicate