The path from "I'd like to learn this" to owning a share of the shop.

The opening: apprentice electrician

One position, starting June 2026, four-year apprenticeship registered with the Vermont Apprenticeship Council. You'd ride with a master 8 to 10 hours a day, four days a week; the fifth day is school at Community College of Vermont in St. Johnsbury or self-paced through the apprentice curriculum. Wage starts at $58/hr (per the rates page) and steps up at year-end reviews; benefits start at month three.

What we look for in an apprentice:

• Has a high-school diploma or GED. We do not care about a four-year degree.
• Can climb a ladder, carry 60 pounds for a quarter mile, and work outside in February.
• Has a valid driver's license and can drive a 22-foot service van on Vermont class-3 town highways.
• Is willing to do farm work — milking parlors, sugarhouses, hayloft attics. The job is not "house electrician with extra steps."
• Can be in Hardwick by 06:30 weekday mornings.
• Wants to live in the Northeast Kingdom for at least the four years of the apprenticeship. Commuting from Burlington or Montpelier doesn't pencil out for either of us.

What we will teach you, in roughly the order it happens:

1. Year 1: safe practice, lockout/tagout, hand tools, conduit bending, NM-B pulling, panel terminations, basic job-safety reading.
2. Year 2: service-drop coordination, meter-base setting, ground-rod systems, GFCI/AFCI selection, residential rough-in.
3. Year 3: three-phase 240V, motor circuits, soft-starts, agricultural-buildings code (NEC 547), heritage rewire fishing methods.
4. Year 4: microhydro and off-grid systems, NFPA 780 lightning protection, journeyman-licensure prep with the VT Office of Professional Regulation.

The path from journeyman to worker-owner

Once you've passed the journeyman exam (typically year 4), you're a hired journeyman at the journeyman rate, with a vote on the work calendar but not on shop ownership. After three more years on the crew (typically year 7), the existing owners hold a vote on whether to invite you into the cooperative. The vote is unanimous-or-no, and the invitation is yours to accept or decline.

If you accept, you buy in. The buy-in is currently $24,000 for an equal sixth share — the figure is the cooperative's per-share book value, recalculated every November. We finance the buy-in interest-free over 36 months with payroll deductions, so the cash-out-of-pocket on day one is whatever you and the shop's accountant agree to as a down payment. After buy-in you have a vote on every operating question and an equal share of any year-end patronage.

What you get from buy-in: voice and skin in the game. What you take on: the shop's debt is also your debt. We have, at any moment, a credit line at Union Bank Vermont for inventory float; we are deliberate about how full that line gets, and you'd join the conversation about that.

The "always-open" file

If you're already a Vermont-licensed master EM or journeyman and you're curious about the co-op model, send us a résumé and a paragraph. We won't pretend there's a job when there isn't. But the next time someone retires we will already have read your letter. The hiring window from "Marya retires" to "we have a master under contract" is currently 11 weeks and we'd rather it be three.

Equal opportunity

Lamoille River Wireworks does not discriminate on race, color, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, religion, national origin, marital status, family status, source of income, military or veteran status, or disability, in any term or condition of employment, in compliance with 21 V.S.A. § 495. The trades have a long history of not living up to that; we know that and we are working on it. Two of our five owners are women; one is a French-Canadian immigrant; we are doing the work to make this an apprenticeship that anyone capable of the work would want.

How to apply

Mail or hand-deliver to the shop:

1. A résumé or its functional equivalent (a one-page list of jobs and dates is fine; we don't need a designed PDF).
2. A paragraph of why you want to apprentice as an electrician. Plain prose, no AI ghostwriting; we can tell.
3. Two references with phone numbers — current or former employer, instructor, or someone you've worked alongside. Family doesn't count.
4. If you're applying to the always-open file: include your VT license number(s) and a one-line summary of the kind of work you'd most want to do here.

Address: 89 South Main Street, Suite 2B, Hardwick, VT 05843. Or email hire@lrwireworks.example. We read everything and respond within two weeks. The first conversation is a phone call; the second is a half-day on a job; the third is sitting at the shop's table with all five owners.