Heavy and highway work.

Union construction contractors were awarded 55 percent in terms of dollar volume of all heavy and highway work in the U.S. over the past five years, the National Heavy and Highway Alliance said. That amounts to $47.9 billion in heavy and highway contracts between 1997-2001.

States in which unions contractors have grabbed the largest percentage of heavy and highway work include Rhode Island (100 percent), Ohio (99 percent), Michigan (95 percent), Massachusetts and Illinois (both 44 percent), New York (92 percent) and California (90 percent).

The Alliance said union market share in heavy and highway work in recent years has been in the 53-57 percent range.

Poor people.

Some nonunion construction leaders have expressed regret because they are creating a class of "poor people" because of the substandard wages and benefits paid by nonunion

contractors. However, that sympathy has not led to a greater percentage increase in wages.

According to an August article in the Construction Labor Report from information provided by construction industry consulting firm PAC Inc., hourly rates for the nation's open shop craft workers will drop to an average increase of 3.93 percent in 2002, compared to 4.62 percent in 2001.

PAS said open shop contractors may have been paying incentives, such as sign-on pay, per diems and referral bonuses, rather than providing straight pay increases.

"But the fact is that hourly rates have not gone up as dramatically as one might expect given a much-touted labor shortage," PAS said, adding that labor costs are being driven up by the cost of employee benefits.

In 1985, less than half of the surveyed open shop contractors offered health insurance to employees. Today, 92 percent offer health insurance, 59 percent offer dental insurance, 65 percent offer a pension and about half provide profit sharing.

The average benchmark rate for a nonunion construction worker in Michigan is $18.09, with 22.1 percent of that amount going to employee benefit fund contributions.

Only in recent years, when construction workers were scarce on many major projects across the country, did the ABC start giving lip-service to the needs of its under-paid workforce.

"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. "Today, we do not have craftsmen, we do not have apprentices, we have poor people," Yancey said 18 months ago, as quoted in the Engineering News Record.

Work zone deaths.

Highway work zone deaths increased to 1,079 in 2001, 53 more than the 2000 total, according to data released by the National Highway Safety Administration.

Over the past five years, construction work zone-related fatalities have increased 65 percent.

The majority of deaths are motorists. According to the Federal Highway Administration, motorists make up 80 percent of all fatalities that occur in work zones each year. Canadian unionization, eh.

Overall construction industry unionization rates dropped in Canada during the first six months of 2002 - but they still put U.S. numbers to shame

According to Statistics Canada, unionization rates in Canada declined by 0.3 percent, but still nearly a third of their nation's construction workers - 31.4 percent - are union. In the U.S. 18.4 percent of the nation's construction workers have union cards, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.