Sullivan talks Alaska trade jobs with ‘Dirty Jobs’ host Mike Rowe

FAIRBANKS, Alaska (KTUU/KTVF) - Sen. Dan Sullivan visited the Fairbanks Pipeline Training Center with television host Mike Rowe on Friday to discuss opportunities in Alaska for working in the trades.

Sullivan called Rowe, who has hosted the reality show “Dirty Jobs” for 10 seasons, “the best ambassador in America for focusing on the skilled trades.”

“We have a lot of things that aren’t just coming down the pipeline. They’re happening, right? We’re building the port of Nome. We’re reopening the Navy base at Adak. We have billions of dollars of defense industrial buildouts at JBER with our Coast Guard. Thousands of jobs,” the senator said.

Sullivan said the future could bring renewed oil development on the North Slope, along with a liquefied natural gas project and pipeline in the region.

With these incoming and potential projects, Sullivan emphasized the importance of the pipeline training center in preparing people for these roles.

“We need the skilled labor, and we have a shortage of that,” he said.

Rowe discussed the Mike Rowe Works Foundation and its plan to “set aside $10 million this year to help train the men and women who are entering the skilled workforce, and there’s no place I’d rather see some of that money come than here.”

Calling the work at the training center important for national security, Rowe said, “It’s a sucker’s bet to keep pitting college against trade schools. Our workforce needs all of it. We need to be balanced. We’ve been out of balance now for decades and the opportunities that exist today are primarily, in my view, the most enticing in the trades.”

Rowe claimed that trades are where the opportunity is right now, encouraging students who are interested in trade school to try things out before deciding where their career will lead and calling trade jobs “A.I. proof.”

On a national level, Sullivan noted that Federal Pell Grants can now be used to attend trade schools and technical schools in addition to the four-year colleges they traditionally funded.

In front of a crowd of community members, laborers and political officeholders, Sullivan and Rowe discussed the value of learning a trade, both for the individual gaining skills and for Alaska and the U.S., where skilled laborers are needed.

“If I’ve learned anything from talking to the hundreds of people I met on ”Dirty Jobs," they’re struggling to hire. They are struggling to hire people who show up early, stay late, and master a skill that’s truly in demand,“ Rowe said. ”That is the universal nonpartisan feedback that I was getting from the first episode of that show.”

After the roundtable discussion, Wells Fargo presented a $250,000 donation check to the pipeline training center to help with its workforce development training and equipment needs, after which Sullivan and Rowe toured the pipeline training center.

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