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ANSONIA — How many teenagers would get up at 5 a.m. during their summer vacation to go to work every week for eight weeks – and maybe even have a smile on their faces?
Ansonia High School Principal Paul Giansanti knows three students who meet the criteria: Matt DeFelice, Ian Gifford and Anna Msciwujewska, who recently completed a paid summer internship at Sikorsky Aircraft, a Lockheed Martin company. “They’re still smiling,” he said the other day.
The three students are Ansonia High’s first to be accepted into the Teamsters-Sikorsky Career Pathways Union Mentoring Program. They were paired with union mentors, some who had nearly 40 years of experience. All three students, who plan to go on to college to study engineering, said they learned a great deal from their mentors, who showed them the ropes, introduced them to many other long-time employees, and gave them a head start into the world of work.
Starting June 24, Matt and Ian worked at the Stratford plant, where their shift began at 6:30 a.m., while Anna worked in Bridgeport, where her shift began at 6 a.m.. They worked eight hours a day, with a 30 minute break for lunch.
They had jobs that required attention to detail and computer skills. Anna said she worked in the riveter department, where she had to drill holes and install screws. She said she repeated the same process throughout the day, every day, and said it was “really fun.” She said she worked on the fuel cell of a helicopter and was present when the helicopters were getting ready to be moved to the Stratford plant.
Matt worked in the tool crib, where boxes of parts are kept in a specific column and row – and there are a lot of columns and rows, he said. Ian worked in the machine shop and had to keep track of how many parts they had on hand. There was a lot of computer work to do, and it took a couple of weeks to learn the computer systems, Ian added.
All three said they are saving the money they earned for college. They were paid more than $22 an hour, making close to $900 a week. “My mother told me that people with full-time jobs don’t make that much,” Matt said.
In August as their jobs concluded, they attended a closing ceremony of the program, with their parents and mentors in attendance. A total of 48 high school students were in the program. At the ceremony, a special announcement was made jointly by Teamsters Local 1150, in partnership with Sikorsky, the Connecticut State Department of Education and the Connecticut Department of Labor: the program is now registered as an Aircraft Manufacturing pre-apprenticeship. Seniors who get invited back next year will get paid and also earn 640 hours of pre-apprenticeship hours.
As to what they learned from their union mentors, they said they heard the same advice: “Attendance matters. Be on time, get good grades, do volunteer work. Work hard, take this seriously, and you will make a lot of money.” All three students said they didn’t miss a day of work and were on time every day.
Dennis “DJ” Yaremich, the Career Pathways Program Coordinator for the Teamsters Local 1150, said the three AHS students worked hand in hand with experienced union mentors, resulting in “each improving week after week earning top scores.” He added that the students “now face the challenge to head back to school and continue to do the things that got them into the program in the first place. By excelling in attendance, attitude, community service and grades, they will be back at Sikorsky after they graduate high school to finish the second year of the program.”
