United Steelworkers Charitable & Educational Organization Class of 2027
- United Steelworkers Local 550
- May 15
- 2 min read
On March 10th, 2025, the United Steelworkers Local 550 in Paducah, Kentucky announced we were awarded the Community Capacity Building Grant Program (CCBGP) from the Department of Energy, a competitive funding opportunity restricted to disadvantaged communities impacted by hosting environmental cleanup sites. According to the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management, EM is delivering results that are protecting the environment, supporting communities, and enabling a concerted focus on safely completing the mission sooner and more efficiently.
With this financial award, the USW Local 550 partnered with Western Kentucky Community and Technical College (WKCTC) in early spring of 2025 and collaborated to identify two skill-dense career diplomas that would be fully covered by the lifetime of the award, including books, tools and course hours. The programs in their finality were Industrial Maintenance and HVAC technology, both of which include tangible skills and certifications that expand beyond the specified coursework. Applications for these programs began March 10th and concluded April 4th, receiving 39 in total.
Following the announcement of the grant award in early April, WKCTC was integral in partnering with the Local 550, as well as a board of members represented by the Paducah Chamber of Commerce in identifying eligible applicants and sending approximately 20 disadvantaged, unemployed or underemployed community members to their next steps into higher education.
On May 14th, 2025, all eligible applicants met at WKCTC with both college staff and staff from the Local for their first meeting and the beginning steps of enrollment.
“This is a very diverse group,” Said Jim Rodgers, the Local 550’s Financial Secretary after having met with the first class of the United Steelworkers Charitable & Educational Organization, “They were all unified in knowing that this was going to be a life changing possibility.”
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Industrial Maintenance 2024 median pay was roughly $63,000/year while HVAC technicians median pay was roughly $60,000/year, both hovering the median household income in Kentucky which, in 2023, was reported to be $62,000/year.
