"If low pay was a felony, I think most of us would be on death row today."

Over the course of the last few years or so, we've noted the hypocrisy of big-wigs in the nonunion construction industry, who continue to bemoan their inability to attract and retain skilled workers.

Well, the hypocrisy police are on patrol again.

In the Aug. 20 issue of the Engineering News Record was an article that appeared under the headline, "Labor Shortage Provokes More Studies Of Pay and Safety."

"In an industry where 'dead man walking' might refer to any of the four workers that, on average, end up dying each weekday in a construction accident in the U.S.," the article began, "industry leaders see signs of improved safety. But they deplore a (low) wage structure that deters too many laborers from acquiring more skills that result in higher productivity with fewer accidents."

The article cited an Aug. 8-9 Construction Industry Institute conference in San Francisco, that included some of the industry's largest constructors and owners of industrial facilities.

Enter the hypocrisy. "If low pay was a felony, I think most of us would be on death row today," said Franklin J. Yancey, a former senior vice president and now a consultant at Kellogg Brown & Root, Houston, one of the nation's largest nonunion construction employers.

He said that a journeyman trying to support a spouse and two children on $17 per hour ends up with just $29 per week in disposal income, after expenses. "Today, we do not have craftsmen, we do not have apprentices, we have poor people," Yancey said, as quoted in the ENR.

The ENR went on to say that many construction workers leave the industry within two years. The wages aren't going up, the article said, because many facility owners insist on seeing productivity increases before agreeing to higher wages. Many contractors who refuse to offer adequate training put the blame on owners.

"It's like a game of chicken, folks. Somebody had better make the first move," said Daniel J. Bennet, president of the National Center for Construction Education and Research in Gainesville, Fla. Bennet was executive vice president of the anti-union Associated Builders and Contractors from 1983 to 1997.

Maybe their first move should be a call to their local building trades unions, but we suspect that anti-union sentiment is so entrenched in the ABC and among large nonunion contractors that they can't believe unions can be good for business.

It's not easy to sugarcoat the construction industry as a way to make a living - the jobs are dangerous and difficult. While unions aren't a cure-all for everything that's wrong with construction industry, they're a good place to start.

A collective bargaining agreement instantly offers both labor and management a pay and benefit package that's equitable to both sides. Unions provide workers a voice in negotiating their working conditions, and allow them to think of their job as a long-term career, with a pension and health care benefits.

In other words, a collective bargaining agreement offers these nonunion contractors what they're looking for - but it's going to cost them.

And there's the rub. Talk is cheap, but higher pay, safety training, maintaining apprenticeship schools and going to the trouble of empowering workers are damned expensive - and the entrenched nonunion tradition of putting profits over people is a hard one to resist.

So don't look for much to come of this wailing and hand-wringing over the situation of nonunion construction workforce. It will likely all dry up once the economy starts to sputter. The tables will turn, and nonunion workers will pound on employers' doors looking for work, grateful to accept that $17 per hour package. And the nonunion employers will do what comes naturally, and forget that they're making their workforce "poor people."