Tradesman Viewpoint

There's yet another call to improve the construction industry's "image" - and to do that, improving worker pay is moving ever-so-slowly onto the radar screen.

Robert Desjardins, incoming president of the Associated General Contractors, said in a March 22 interview with the Construction Labor Report that he will urge AGC members and chapters to make investments in education and safety to enhance the industry's image.

"For far too many people, construction has become a career of last resort," Desjardins said. "Construction workers and the construction industry have terrible, undeserved public images. Some think it's where people work when they can't find a better job. Many believe that construction work is unsafe, dirty, unsuitable for women, and not rewarding."

Earlier this year, Henry G. Kelly, the new national president of the anti-union Associated Builders and Contractors, said 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."

For his part, Desjardins said wages are an issue "only to some extent."

Desjardins should ask construction workers to what "extent" pay is an issue, because we suspect he'd get an earful. Wages have barely kept up with inflation during the 1990s. If construction workers are sick and don't show up for work, they don't get paid. If it rains, construction workers don't get paid. If there's no work, construction workers don't get paid.

The AGC and the ABC are focusing their construction industry image-building efforts on improving training and safety - which are laudable goals. Worker safety issues should be at the top of any industry group's priority, be they union or nonunion.

While improving safety, training and possibly even wages are suddenly on the agenda for the AGC and ABC, permit us to point out that construction unions have been pressing for all those things for more than a century.

No, that doesn't mean that unions have the inside track on attracting or retaining workers today - we were alarmed to see a report in Cockshaw's Newsletter that the nation's unionized general contractors declined from 32 percent in 1996 to 28 percent today. And the number of unionized construction workers has been flat or has declined slightly over the last few years.

But it seems to us that if a nonunion contractor is looking to attract and retain workers, isn't it about time that they got off their high horse and start collectively bargaining with union members about what they want?

Over the last century, construction trade unions have led the way in training, safety and wages. The infrastructure is in place, and currently serves more than three million unionized workers in the U.S. If any worker is aware of his or her needs or priorities needs on the job, it's the union worker.

But do you suppose the business community will ever consult workers about what they want? Don't count on it. Any real changes would require collectively bargaining with unions - and for the nation's nonunion contractors, it's easier to give lip service to changing the industry's image than it would be to give a voice to workers, who would probably tell them a lot of things they don't want to hear, anyway.