When I finished my education at the wonderful North Bennet St. School in Boston, I was left to make a few choices on where to pick up my trade in locksmithing. Sixteen states, like New York and Texas, require a license to work in any shop. My home state of Vermont had none, and I moved back to start there. The problems of trying to move to a state, pass the certification, and then wait to receive the license proved too much for my wallet.

The calls for licensing were quickly heard as I entered my career. There was a perception that people were being had by fakes, they were being vastly overcharged in their worst moments. There are companies that use fake addresses and temporary numbers, hoping to make a week’s wages on an unfortunate soul. My coworkers and colleagues wanted to help, genuinely. I don’t think any of them thought their ideas could be used to hurt new entries to the field. Like all other licensing schemes though, that will be the result.

The goal may be noble; an attempt to sort the skilled workers from the non-skilled so the general public doesn’t make a bad choice. The immediate problem is that when this is done by a board of insiders, the door closes, the requirements deviate from that first goal, and no one is allowed in. New York City is probably the worst offender in this way, you need to have two friends in the club invite. Good luck, I’m sure no one would mind losing ‘territory’ to your new business venture. Looking through the requirements, I see nothing about knowing any building or fire codes, no test on practices or skills, but I do see a child support check. How that relates to a skilled technician, I am not sure. Probably for the best that person can’t start in a trade, he owes some money. There’s also a fee and expiration date, because FYTW. The idea that licensing locksmiths in New York has helped the consumer is nonsense, a quick google search says New Yorkers still have problems and accuse several businesses of scamming them.

A better solution would be registration and private certifications. Milton Friedman wrote 55 years ago:

By registration, I mean an arrangement under which individuals are required to list their names in some official register if they engage in certain kinds of activities. There is no provision for denying the right to engage in the activity to anyone who is willing to list his name. He may be charged a fee, either as a registration fee or as a scheme of taxation.

A much less intrusive way to go about the attempt to publicly identifying shady businesses without setting up serious barriers to entry. Registration and certification already exist in private associations.

The Associated Locksmiths Of America has been testing for certification. ALOA’s stated mission is to enhance the professionalism, education and ethics among locksmiths. They have levels of certification. As good as this organization is, ALOA thinks they are not enough and is actively pursuing licensing around the country. They say this is to protect consumers, but the PDF is mostly protectionist. Of course, admitting that this protects locksmiths is the giveaway. To pretend that unlicensed (by ALOA) people are automatically all part of this scamming scourge is ridiculous. To keep locksmith tools out of the hands of the public forces a cost on someone who wants to try their hand in the field. They want the power of the state to ensure that only their locksmiths are allowed to do any business. We may approve of a government register, but I will always oppose government certification and licensing.

This muddying between public certifications and government licensing of a trade is not unique to locksmithing. We all know how important it is to protect the consumer from Sweeny Todd, and dammit, the government is the only way. You can’t be trusted to do any work on your bathroom door lock, and you should be fined for letting your handyman take a crack at it. We should instead be able to find workers that have been trained and have a certification given by a reputable group if we want to.