Tradesman Viewpoint

The Saturday Night Live Church Lady from years past may have put it this way: "Some of us only care about workers when it's conveenient!"

The Associated Builders and Contractors - who have never found a good reason to pay workers a fair wage in their history - have apparently found religion on the matter.

Henry G. Kelly, the new national president of the anti-union ABC, told the Construction Labor Report that recognizing the value of skilled craftworkers will now be a priority of the contractors group. "We need to be paying them a competitive wage and we need to offer them a competitive benefit package," he said.

The reason: "There are just not as many people available for the industry as there once were," said Kelly. He added, "it's time for contractors to step up and change the image of this industry."

Let's try to understand the ABC's logic, first of all by pointing out some commonly accepted existing conditions in the construction industry. There's little argument that the construction industry is a dangerous, dirty and cyclical industry that doesn't pay well compared to manufacturing jobs.

There is also a skilled worker shortage in construction, in good part because of those aforementioned reasons, but also because until the last few years, pay levels haven't even kept up with inflation.

But now that there's a perceived worker shortage, the ABC has been given a swift kick in the pants and is suggesting their contractors should start treating their workers better. The organization that has historically had laughable training programs, and has been unmatched in its zeal to hold down worker wages and benefits in favor of profits, is suddenly doing an about-face so that it can help improve its member-contractors' short-term bottom line.

In the long-term, if the ABC were truly concerned about the well-being of their workforce, they would join the thousands of union contractors in the nation, who seek out union training programs and initiate collective bargaining agreements with their workers - and still make a profit.

Don't hold your breath waiting for that to happen. A leopard can't change his spots.