Reshaping the Construction Industry

Daniel W. Rasmus, blogger for the online magazine Fast Company, is focused on the uncertainties that companies will face.  Our companies.  Our industry.  Our uncertainties.Issues like wellness, generational change and conflict, technology, leadership, skills gaps and worker shortages will plague those companies who do not take the initiative today to create action and contingency plans to address each of the issues before they demand an immediate solution.About the possibility of a skilled worker / talent shortage, Rasmus writes:“If nationalistic tendencies prevail, then the outcomes of individual education systems, public and private, and training programs provided by firms and immigration policy will combine to determine the available talent pools. 

On May 27th, Governor Rick Perry signed into law a groundbreaking measure that will expand the ability of local law enforcement agencies to arrest employers who cheat their workers out of their pay.  Texas SB 1024, the “Wage Theft Bill”, which was sponsored by Senator José Rodriguez (D-El Paso) and Representative Eddie Rodriguez (D- Austin), creates a powerful mechanism for workers to recover their unpaid wages.Wage theft is a widespread problem that occurs when employers fail to pay their employees for their work.  In certain industries like construction, wage theft occurs in epidemic proportions.  According to the University of Texas study Building Austin, Building Injustice: Working Conditions in the Texas Construction Industry, one in every five Austin construction workers

Kim Bobo, founder and executive director of Interfaith Worker Justice, talked with Construction Citizen blogger Jim Kollaer during her recent visit to Houston.  Kollaer asked her about the upcoming second edition of her book Wage Theft in America: Why Millions of Working Americans are Not Getting Paid – and What We Can Do About It.  The new addition will include a chapter about ethical businesses to demonstrate that even in industries like construction where everyone is struggling to survive the current economic downturn, there are still ethical employers who are doing the right thing.  There is a new chapter about payroll fraud (also called worker misclassification and workplace fraud) which is the illegal practice where employers pay their workers as independent contractors instead of as employees.  Two new chapters focus on state and local efforts to enforce wage theft laws and penalize violators.  

On May 5, 1868, JOHN A. LOGAN, Commander-in-Chief of the Army in his General Orders no.11, Washington, D.C., called for the first Memorial Day to recall and remember all those soldiers who had died and were buried in “almost every city and state” during the Civil War.The tradition that started in May of 1868 continues today. I wanted to pay homage to all of the builders, private contractors, SEABEES (Construction Batallions), and members of the US Army Corps of Engineers who fought for and built the roads, ports,