Jim Kollaer's blog

The construction industry training issues in the United States are considerable, but nothing when compared to the plans in India.  The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) projections of need for the construction industry in the US from 2008 through 2018 suggest that there is a need to add 180,000 new workers a year or 1.8 million new workers by 2018.  If we straight line that number through 2022 we get 2.16 million new workers.

According to a post yesterday on the Poten & Patners website, the National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) of India has set a projection of training 150 million workers in 20 sectors by 2022.  They are projecting a need for training 33 million new construction workers over that period of time.  That equates to 6.5 times the number of construction workers needed in the US over the same period of time.

The very scale of that opportunity is amazing and the implications to construction world-wide are considerable. [node:read-more:link]

Randy Braun, New York attorney and blogger at Juz the Fax posted a blog last week about the pending implementation of the Construction Industry Fair Play Act (CIFPA) in New York.  The bill puts specific restrictions on the classification of construction workers and Randy thinks that it might spell the end of the use of Independent Contractor status in the construction industry in New York.  About the consequences dishonest employers will face, he writes: 

“CIFPA carries civil and criminal penalties both for the employer and for individual officers and shareholders who knowingly permit a willful violation of the statute. For those contractors performing public work, debarment and ineligibility to bid on public works contracts will be imposed upon a criminal conviction.”

This new law, which we first wrote about a few weeks ago, goes into effect on October 26. [node:read-more:link]

Twenty-three states - make that thirty - have signed Wage Theft and/or Worker Misclassification bills into law as the focus in a number of legislatures has swung to the issue that is costing workers and taxing agencies billions of dollars in lost revenue.

Two bills, The Fair Playing Field Act, SB 3786, introduced by Senator Kerry and a number of cosponsors last week, together with The Employee Misclassification Prevention Act, HR 5107 will, when passed, crack down on those employers who do not pay overtime or who pay subminimum wages or misclassify workers as independent contractors when they are not.

Last year, the Workers Defense Project in collaboration with the Division of Diversity and Community Engagement at the University of Texas at Austin and with a grant from the Sociological Initiatives Foundation undertook a study of the state of the construction industry in Austin, Texas.  In a combination of research and controlled interviews, they compiled the report entitled Building Austin, Building Injustice: Construction Working Conditions in Austin, Texas.

Austin is the state capitol of Texas.  The findings of the report were revealing if not downright shocking.  Those findings were most likely indicative of the current state of the construction industry in the rest of Texas as well as the United States.

The sign hanging in the Clinton election headquarters in 1992 read, “It’s the Economy, Stupid!”  Created by political strategist, James Carville, it referred to the thought that the Bush administration had not focused on the economy and that Clinton would be a better choice to get the economy rolling again after the ‘90-‘91 recession.

Today, after the Great Reset of 2008, we should hold up signs in front of every elected official and candidate campaigning in the midterm elections reading, “It’s the Construction Jobs, Stupid!”  Those signs would remind our elected officials that their way out of the current economic dilemma is the creation of new construction jobs.

Construction jobs usually lag the rest of the economy since we need owners to plan and architects and engineers to design before contractors and subs may begin to build again in earnest.   [node:read-more:link]

Last month, while the controversy about the potential location of the mosque near Ground Zero raged on, a number of union construction workers in the City stated that they would not work on the site or the building should it move forward.  According to the NY Daily News, the Construction Workers stated that the proposed mosque site was too close to Ground Zero and that their brothers who cleared the site after 9/11 thought that site was indeed sacred to them as well.

We thought that now the new school year has started and a number of teachers and counselors are meeting to give students of all levels an overview of the various careers they might pursue, we would show you some possibilities in the industry – a roadmap from elementary school into an exciting career. [node:read-more:link]

The National Center for Construction Education and Research (NCCER) has some very interesting videos on YouTube about what it is like to be in the construction industry.  They visit the Dallas Cowboys’ new stadium while it is under construction and they talk to one of the construction supervisors about his role in the construction process.  They also visit the Navy Seabees training Center and a power plant in Florida.  [node:read-more:link]

We found more information on the manpower shortages from around the world, not only in the construction trades, but in other jobs as well.  This time Silicon India reported on a recently released Manpower, Inc. survey.  About the survey, entitled Strategic Migration - a Short-Term Solution to the Skilled Trades Shortage, Silicon India wrote,

“Unless businesses, governments and trade associations work together to develop long-term strategies to alleviate talent shortages among skilled trades, future economic growth will suffer. Worldwide, skilled trades positions are the hardest to fill, reveals Manpower's recent global Talent Shortage Survey of 35,000 employers across 36 countries and territories.”

As we have been discussing in some of our posts, the report restates that the need for mid-level craftspeople in the construction industry will reach a critical stage   [node:read-more:link]

This economy has not recovered by any stretch of the imagination, but that doesn’t mean that you, as the owner of your construction business, should sit on the side of the road and whine about how bad it is and how you are going to “hunker down” until the market returns.

Do that, and when you stand up again, you will likely find that the business has changed and you are out of business.  Now is the time to move forward and to improve in those areas where you might not have focused your attention over the last few years when business was booming.