Reporting from WorkingNation and Military.com, with program information from the Utility Workers Union of America.

Today is Veterans Day. A good share of the people who keep gas flowing and lights on across the country learned to work as a team in uniform. One of the most direct routes from the service to a utility crew runs through a technical school on State Street on Chicago's South Side.

The Utility Workers Military Assistance Program, known as UMAP, is run by the Utility Workers Union of America. In six months it trains service members and veterans for field jobs at gas, electric and water utilities. The union says more than 700 veterans have moved into utility careers through the program, with job placement near 100 percent.

Yesterday on Positive Current, Matt Neal of Siemens Energy wrote about the 1,500 skilled manufacturing jobs his company is filling and why veterans are a big part of the answer. UMAP is the same idea built by a union and a utility, and it has been running for more than a decade.

A Pipe Job That Needed Crews

In 2011, Peoples Gas started a 30-year program to replace 2,000 miles of aging iron gas main under Chicago, WorkingNation reported. The work needed crews. UWUA Local 18007 needed members. Rick Passarelli, then the local's business manager and a Navy veteran, brought the two together and pitched the company on hiring veterans coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan.

The first class started in 2012. Peoples Gas, the union local and City Colleges of Chicago built it as a public-private partnership, and classes meet at Dawson Technical Institute, part of Kennedy-King College. Passarelli now runs the program as the union's director of veterans affairs and workforce development.

What Six Months Looks Like

Students earn 52 college credit hours toward an associate degree, plus the certifications they need for field work, according to the union and Military.com. WorkingNation laid out the sequence: two months of foundation coursework, including math for technicians, then four months of gas training, then a paid internship. The full-time offer usually comes during the internship.

There is no tuition. Service members in their final six months can attend through the Pentagon's SkillBridge program, which keeps their military pay coming while they train. The union adds support around the classroom, including childcare, gas cards, food vouchers, books and mentors. Nobody needs a related military specialty to apply. Military.com reports a 96 percent graduation rate and 93 percent retention.

The program is still enrolling. The 2026 Chicago class held its hiring event on August 24 at Dawson, according to the Illinois Department of Employment Security. Active duty members, reservists, National Guard members and honorably discharged veterans were eligible. Applicants needed a valid driver's license and had to pass a drug screen and a background check.

A welder in a gray T-shirt and welding helmet works on a long metal piece in a fabrication shop
Photo by Syd Mills on Unsplash

From $20 an Hour to $40

Joe Tischina served four years in the Marine Corps, including time in Okinawa. When the first UMAP class formed he was raising a daughter and could not afford six months without a paycheck, so he waited and joined the sixth class. He made journeyman in five years. His pay went from $20 an hour to $40, WorkingNation reported in 2021. He now mentors new classes and is his shop's union representative.

Tischina credits Passarelli with the line that sums up the program: "Veterans aren't looking for a handout. We're looking for a hand up."

The Employers on the Other End

Peoples Gas, a subsidiary of WEC Energy Group, is the program's largest employer partner. When UMAP graduated its 700th veteran in Chicago in March 2022, the union reported 95 percent job placement with Peoples Gas. Charles Matthews, then the utility's president and CEO, said the veterans' contributions "have met and exceeded all expectations."

The model has traveled. WorkingNation reported in 2021 that 200 graduates had been placed in Michigan with Consumers Energy, with programs planned with SoCalGas in Southern California and American Water in Camden, New Jersey. The certificate is good anywhere in the country, so a graduate who moves takes the credential along.

"The UWUA's UMAP program is the longest-running, most successful veterans training to employment program out there," Sean Gaurige, business manager of Local 18007, told the union's magazine in 2024.

More Doors Into the Trades

UMAP is one route. Helmets to Hardhats, backed by the 15 unions of North America's Building Trades Unions, matches transitioning service members, veterans, Guard members and reservists with apprenticeships across the construction trades. No previous experience is required. NABTU's unions count more than 3 million skilled construction workers in the U.S. and Canada.

Electric co-ops are opening doors too. EnergyUnited in North Carolina takes part in the GI Bill apprenticeship program, which lets eligible veterans draw a monthly housing benefit while they train on the job. Jorge Lopez, who served seven years on active duty in the Marine Corps, is one of its apprentices. "This opportunity has given me a clear path to a strong career," he told North Carolina's Electric Cooperatives in March.

The demand is there. The IBEW says the industry needs nearly 100,000 new electrical workers a year. Veterans come home trained to work safely and look out for the person next to them. Utilities and the unions that staff them have shown they can turn that into a career in six months.

How to Apply

Service members and veterans interested in UMAP can apply through Power for America at power4america.org. Helmets to Hardhats profiles start at helmetstohardhats.org.

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