Blue Collar 101: Water, Sewer, and the Hidden Infrastructure of a City

A discussion with a representative of the Mass. Executive Office of Labor and Workforce Development’s Division of Apprentice Standards

FREE to the Public
REGISTRATION REQUIRED

What actually happens when you turn on a tap or flush a drain in any given city? Who maintains the pipes, fixes the breaks, and keeps one of America's oldest urban areas supplied with clean water around the clock?

For the second session of Blue Collar 101, we're bringing together workers from the Boston Water and Sewer Commission, the public agency responsible for delivering clean water to the city of Boston and removing wastewater from it. BWSC skilled tradespeople will walk us through what the job actually looks like: the tools, the problem-solving, the physical demands, and the career pathways into this essential public work.

We will also once again host a representative of the Massachusetts Executive Office of Labor and Workforce Development's Division of Apprentice Standards into career development options available through the Commonwealth, whether you are a new graduate or mid-career changer interested in the trades and industrial work.

This is a panel conversation for the general public and those curious about the skilled workforce that keeps our cities functioning. Expect honest, ground-level discussion about what it means to maintain infrastructure that cannot fail, how the work is learned, and what most Bostonians never see because it happens underground. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts, alongside public agencies, unions, and educational institutions, is prioritizing the importance and future of our industrial labor force.

Blue Collar 101 is a public education series based at the Charles River Museum of Industry & Innovation. At a moment when conversations about workforce development and the future of work often happen without workers in the room, this program starts from a different premise: the people who build, maintain, and repair the physical world are experts, and their knowledge deserves a public platform.

This will be the first of a recurring series of events, each spotlighting a different trade or type of industrial work, including those that keep our electrical grid powered, water flowing, transit systems running on time, and our modern world functioning around us.