Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 Page 7 Page 8 Page 9 Page 10 Page 11 Page 12 Page 13 Page 14 Page 15 Page 16to transfer to their service side where you’re guar- anteed to be working all the time, plus overtime, so I thought I would give it a try.” Today, Gavin is a journeyman HVACR techni- cian, and he is really happy with the choice he made. “I really like it. You’re somewhere different every single day, if not three or four times a week. You’re doing different things every day, and you’re fixing things, and for me, I like that end result— the finished product.” As a journeyman HVACR technician, Gavin is highly skilled, and because of that, the wages and benefits he receives are impressive. “Financially, I’m doing really well,” he said. “When I got out of the Marines in my early 20s, I was making pretty decent money. But now, as a journeyman, it’s pretty substantial, and I feel like I’m actually mak- ing a difference compared to just ‘doing a job.’ I have quite a few friends from the Marine Corps who went to college, and they are either still in college, or they’re not doing what they went to college for. I have something I can use for the rest of my life anywhere in the country. If I wanted to move somewhere else, I would just have to talk to another local union to see if I could transfer in.” e Butterfly Pavilion is one of Gavin’s favorite maintenance accounts. It is home to 5,000 animals, insects, sea creatures and 1,600 butterflies. It is a fa- vorite spot for children and adults alike in the Denver metropolitan area and is routinely overrun with children on school-sponsored trips. e but- terflies exist in a tropical rainforest, and this envi- ronment is something that Gavin controls. “is is one of my favorite accounts. I like the humidity in what I call the butterfly room,” Gavin said. “ere are eight fan-coil heating units in here, and there are two boilers. e boilers pump hot water through all eight fan coils. e biggest challenge we have is when it’s cold outside. When tempera- tures are below 20 degrees, the humidity and heat have to remain, or the butterflies will die. It gets very hard to maintain the proper temperature. We change the filters oen, about every three months. We have to come and turn up the set point on the boiler, which is set at 185 degrees. e roof opens in the summertime, which is why they have all of the netting. I come once every three months and do about two-days’ worth of maintenance. I might get one service call in between that.” Service Manager Jake Schley, Gavin’s immediate manager, is also a UA journeyman who turned out in 2005. His path guided him to a management position with Tolin, but he still maintains his UA Local 208 member card. He stated that Tolin Me- chanical in Denver has four service groups and a fih group that does facility staffing for Tolin En- ergy. Jake said, “I’m one of the five groups. We tar- get customers who want long-term relation- ships—customers who believe that by working together we can solve a lot of their problems. We get a lot of buildings that weren’t maintained or updated properly. We are tasked with bringing them up-to-date. A lot of that is driven by us, and we try to see how far we can stretch our funding. We do a lot of energy analysis, and we find a lot of low-cost and no-cost improvements that result in energy savings for our customers.” When asked how Gavin, as ex-military, com- pared to other apprentices coming into the pro- gram, Jake replied, “Gavin is a lot more grounded, family oriented and responsible. He’s very pre- dictable, very well trained. When we bring ap- prentices in, we review what we need at the time, so I am very particular when I bring someone in. We pushed Gavin into this niche that we created, and I don’t regret it one bit. I’m glad we have him. His customers love him, and here at the Butterfly Pavilion, he can do no wrong. I need people who can take care of the customer and make them feel welcome and then own it. He is doing a really good job of owning his stuff.” Gavin said the job is what he expected. He works 40 hours a week, unless he works overtime or is on call. He said, “On-call duties at Tolin run once every three months. You are assigned for a week. It’s not bad, Friday to Friday, and I would say, when I’m on call, I usually get three calls the whole week and one on Saturday or Sunday night. e perk of being on call is that just for being on call you get one hour of overtime for Saturday and one hour of double time paid for Sunday, and ob- viously any calls on top of that are overtime or double time if it’s on Sunday. So if for whatever reason you needed to make extra money, there is that option always.” Gavin was heading on to the roof to do routine maintenance to the air-handling units, and he said, “You know, a lot of transitioning military just don’t know what to do when they get out. e VIP pro- gram is really great. It helps war fighters get a steady and well-paying job right out of the military. I feel like this program did a good job with helping me make that transition from military life to civil- ian life a little easier. e five-year apprenticeship was difficult at times, but if you apply yourself to learning the trade, and hang in there throughout the apprenticeship, it will really pay off. e bene- fits and pay are great once you turn out and be- come a journeyman. I married my high school sweetheart, and now we have a baby girl and a house in the country. Yes, everything is good.” CAREERops “When I got out of the Marines in my early 20s, I was making pretty decent money. But now, as a journey- man, it’s pretty sub- stantial, and I feel like I’m actually making a difference compared to just ‘doing a job.’” – Gavin Maxwell 8