Welder recertification burden in oil and construction (early 1990s)

Used to motivate the early-1990s push for portable, employer-independent AWS welder certification — oil field welders changing companies every six months and paying $500 each time.

What happened was, in the early 90s, people said, it's good to have some pre-qualified procedures, but we need more. We need to simplify this certification. We want to provide a certification so an individual who wants to qualify doesn't have to re-qualify when he changes companies. It used to be, if you were working for Caterpillar in Peoria, and you had to move to Iowa and you got a job with John Deere, you had to be retested at a cost of about five hundred dollars, because you had to be qualified by your employer.