Jim Kollaer's blog

Despite one of the toughest winters on record, Hines, the developer of the new Devon Energy Center in downtown Oklahoma City reported that the tower is on schedule and just passed 500 feet on its way to 850 feet and 50 stories making it the tallest structure in Oklahoma.

NewsOK.com reported some interesting stats about the building scheduled for first occupancy in 2012.  The main entrance to the building will be a rotunda which will be as tall as the nearby 12-story Colcord Hotel.  The tower will also feature a public Garden Wing with restaurants, shops and trees, as well as a 285 seat auditorium.  It was originally planned to rise to 54 stories, but after revisions it is now scheduled to be 50 floors.

Devon, an Oklahoma City based company, hired Holder Construction from Atlanta, GA and Flintco Construction from Tulsa, OK as the project’s joint general contractors.  They were awarded the contract because they promised the shortest interruption to downtown area parking.  In a May 2009 video report by Oklahoma City’s News 9, Flintco’s Mark Grimes talks about [node:read-more:link]

In part 2 of their investigation which we told you about last week, Randy Travis, a reporter with Fox 5 in Atlanta, follows the money on the use of undocumented workers.  In this case, 50 bricklayers from Mexico were employed to work on two school sites and the Gainesville, GA police department headquarters, but were not paid for the work by the subcontractor Surig & Sons who hired them to do the work.

According to the video, even though the masons provided false papers, they were allowed to work on the projects and then were not fully paid by the company for the work that they performed. [node:read-more:link]

An investigative news team from Fox 5 television in Atlanta recently took a hidden camera onto a public school construction site in an effort to determine the use of undocumented workers on a publically funded project, something prohibited by law in Georgia.  What they found was a “sub-sub-contractor” – a masonry company using illegal workers to do the work, to the detriment of local masonry companies who only use legal verified workers.  By state law, all construction workers on publicly funded projects in Georgia must have their identities checked with E-Verify to be sure that they have a legal right to work, but the masonry company laying bricks on a new school was “not even registered as an E-Verify company.”   [node:read-more:link]

You might know him from the Discovery channel program, Dirty Jobs or more recently as the spokesman for Ford on the Super Bowl ads, but did you know that Mike Rowe has a construction industry website meant to entertain and inform?  It is a creative way to see more of what the industry has to offer including 112 job profiles, videos of skilled tradesmen talking about their work, job listings and much more.  For example, in his introduction to the “Work Is Not The Enemy” section, he talks about the image of skilled labor and how the attitude toward those who make things in their jobs has changed. [node:read-more:link]

Democratic lawmakers in Nevada outlined a jobs bill that they will submit to the Nevada Assembly on Monday.  The bill is aimed at keeping construction projects “Nevada centric” by restricting contractors to certain sources for their labor and materials.  An article on the KTVN Channel 2 News website explains:

Lawmakers want a bidder's preference built into the bill that basically gives Nevada companies a home state discount for staying local. However, there are a few requirements.

"At least 50% of the workers employed on the Nevada public works project must be Nevada residents," said Democratic Assemblywoman Debbie Smith.   [node:read-more:link]

Construction Citizen attended a lecture this week about Ethical Dilemmas in Construction Industry Labor Practices at Texas A&M University along with over 275 students and professors from the Department of Construction Science at the university.  Guest speakers delivered the lecture, which was hosted by Professor Joe Horlen.

Lawrence Rebman, director of the Missouri Department of Labor and Industrial Relations, spelled it out very clearly in his recent Director’s Spotlight entitled Worker Misclassification is Bad for Business.  He states the case against those employers who misclassify their employees in the State of Missouri to avoid the payment of unemployment taxes, payroll taxes, unemployment taxes, sick pay, overtime, health insurance, vacation pay and several other items.  His article reports that those employers who are caught misclassifying their workers as independent contractors without passing the smell test are subject to $50 per employee per day up to the max of $50,000 and also subject to the Division of Employment Security (DES) being able to penalize the misclassifying employer up to 25% of the amount being defrauded from the state.  Rebman reports:   [node:read-more:link]

We received a link to a Yahoo Finance article from a fan of Construction Citizen.  The article is entitled: Coalition of 'Unlikely Bed Fellows' Continues Growing to Nail Dishonest Employers.

The article describes a “coalition of employers, businesses, associations and labor representatives” which have united to work with state agencies in an effort to enforce California construction laws and regulations so that unscrupulous violators in the construction industry are held accountable. 

The California Professional Association of Specialty Contractors (CALPASC ) started a program to support thousands of businesses who are fighting employers who are misclassifying employees as independent contractors and who are perpetrators of wage theft in the process.

The article quotes Brad Diede, chief executive officer of CALPASC as saying:

"The urgency of this issue cannot be overstated.  The recession has fueled more cheating than ever, and law-abiding, legitimate construction employers and employees go at risk each day these violators succeed."  

As you saw in David Dennis’ blog post earlier this week, these are the times when doing the right thing becomes more important than ever but it becomes even harder when owner’s and the competition is squeezing you, your profits and your training for the future.

Since the recession and the current unemployment in our industry of over 20%, many of us have shelved training for a workforce for the future. One thing we need to remember about the future is that it arrives whether we are ready or not. One of my friends told me the other day that the future is already here, it is just not widely distributed yet.

In the 2008 US Bureau of Labor Statistics study of the workforce needs for the next decade we learned that the industry would likely need 1,800,000 new construction workers by 2018 to offset the retirements and the demands for new construction. Surely we have had to reset those numbers and extend that period to 2020, but the demand and the need will be there.   [node:read-more:link]

This letter is from the first newsletter that we received going into the new year and it is important.  It describes one company’s workforce development program that meets the goals that Construction Citizen has embraced as those critical to the development of a sustainable workforce.  It also issues a challenge to other contractors to match or exceed these program goals in order to raise the bar and produce better work and a socially responsible industry.  Way to go Marek Brothers!

Division President's Message
Steve Shockley - Marek Atlanta Division President   [node:read-more:link]