When someone tells you a lie are you offended? Do you wonder whether they feel wrong for telling you a lie? What makes something of importance right or wrong? Is...
Reshaping the Construction Industry



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.”
February 16, 2011


I recently attended the Construction Users Roundtable (CURT) 2011 Membership meeting in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. CURT is closely aligned with the National Center for...
February 15, 2011


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.
February 13, 2011


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...
February 11, 2011


The political protests and related violence over the past few weeks in Egypt have not surprisingly impeded progress on construction projects in that country. Many international companies have evacuated their employees to their home countries, while local firms have closed offices and asked their staff to remain at home. Prior to the unrest, those in the industry were looking forward to a successful year as the government had promised to fund several large infrastructure projects and construction projects in general were on the increase.Engineering News-Record (ENR.com) reported today on the situation after talking with representatives from several firms with ongoing projects there.
February 10, 2011


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...
February 04, 2011


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...
February 03, 2011


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...
February 03, 2011


In an article posted by The Huffington Post earlier this month, columnist Afton Branche writes about wage theft and other abuse which day laborers endure far too often at the hands of unscrupulous employers. The article was inspired by the release this month of a study prepared by the Immigrants’ Rights/International Human Rights Clinic at the Seton Hall Law School Center for Social Justice in Newark.Titled All Work and No Pay: Day Laborers, Wage Theft, and Workplace Justice in New Jersey, the study’s findings are based on interviews with day laborers found at pick-up lots across the state of New Jersey. The study points out that wage theft
January 28, 2011