The chief of the big-business backed Construction Users Roundtable said owners who pay for construction work want "quantifiable productivity" out of their workforce.

What does that mean? He can't exactly define the term, but it includes cost effectiveness and quality work.

And how should the industry get to the goal of quantifiable productivity? During a board meeting last month of the Associated General Contractors, Steven Satrom, president of the roundtable, an organization of major U.S. construction buyers, called for the use of union construction programs as a model for the entire industry.

The Construction Labor Report said union contractors have the advantage over the nonunion sector in being able to provide better-trained workers, and improve safety on the job, which is a plus for everyone.

Satrom urged AGC's union contractors to continue to work with labor to continue their excellent training programs, improve productivity and develop new methods to do the work. "You have world-class training programs," Satrom said. "The organized sector has a leg up on training."

He said owners will not hire contractors with poor safety records and "definitely" will not hire contractors who cannot provide qualified, skilled labor for contracts. "Union contractors have a definite edge," he said, "you need to capitalize on that." Satrom said nonunion shops "have a long way to go."

The comments by Satrom are in line with a slow but sure trend of recognition by the owners who pay for construction work that low-paid, unskilled labor is simply not cost-effective when it comes to their bottom line.

The change in thinking came into focus nearly three years ago, when the Roundtable issued a report called Confronting the Skilled Construction Work Force Shortage: Blueprint for the Future.

At the time, the Roundtable said the ultimate responsibility for training the nonunion workforce should be the responsibility of nonunion employers. Open shop builders, the report said, should model training after generations-old union programs, which pass on costs of training to the owner as part of the collective bargaining labor rate.

The Roundtable's report was a public spanking for their friends in the anti-union Associated Builders and Contractors, who talk about construction training but never come close to delivering the resources that unions commit to worker education.