No easy solutions to construction labor shortage

By KATHLEEN GARRITY
ABC

Used to be the construction industry was just looking for a few good men. Those days are gone. Now the industry needs lots of men and women. The long-predicted labor shortage is here, with a vengeance. It's not a result of the current economic boom, it's not local, and it's not going away in our lifetime.

Construction is the second largest employer in the country (after government) and it is facing an unprecedented, nationwide shortage of skilled labor. A Construction Industry Institute study shows that 75 percent of contractors are experiencing shortages, and that these shortages are costing contractors and owners time and money. The Business Roundtables Construction Committee found that 25 percent of their members projects encountered cost overruns and/or schedule delays caused by labor shortfall.

This crisis has been a long time coming. Somewhere along the way, building things with your hands came to be seen as undesirable, something you did if you couldn't do anything else. Thus many of the craftsmen that came from Europe during World War II with well-honed-Old World skills wanted something better for their children. They worked and saved and sent them to college so they wouldn't have to work with their hands. Now, another generation removed, we are suffering the consequences.

Although the industry has been paying lip service to the manpower problem for years, it is now getting serious about attaining, retaining and training a workforce. A few facts are clear:

Elizabeth Castro is a 1998 graduate of the Construction Industry Training Council (CITC) electrical program. She works for the Seattle Parks Department as a maintenance electrician. Photo by Devin Seferos

The work force of the future is largely minority and women, a challenge for an industry that is dominantly and traditionally white male. We have an entire culture to overhaul to make the construction business accepting of and acceptable to women and minorities. As a result, the industry must provide not only skills training, but training in dealing with a diverse workforce, something 38 percent of construction firms are already doing, according to an FMI, Inc. survey.

This is not a problem that can be solved quickly. High school students surveyed about attractive careers listed construction 249th out of 250 possible occupations. Young people see it as dirty, uninteresting work done in bad weather by not-very bright people. The industry has done a miserable job of communicating the career paths that are available in construction. It is not an industry where you are stuck doing the same thing for 40 years. Many of today's successful contractors started out with a hammer, screwdriver or paintbrush in their hands.

We have a massive public relations job to do in order to climb from 249 to some respectable number. Young people, and their parents, need convincing.

In order to attain and retain workers, the industry must take a serious look at how workers are paid and what benefits are offered for them and their families. Wages have not increased as much as demand would seem to dictate. Average first-year wage and benefit increases for union workers in 1998 were just 3.4 percent. Predictions are that open-shop wage and benefit packages will increase by an average of 4.9 percent.

Employers, both union and open shop, must change the way they view workers. When there were plenty of them just call the hall or put an ad in the paper workers were seen as a commodity. Now we realize that skilled workers are the most important asset a company can have.

Employers need to look at wages, benefits and working conditions and become more desirable employers who earn the respect and loyalty of their workers. Workers want good wages and benefits, scheduled overtime, safe and pleasant working conditions, per diems, travel pay and other perks. They will work for the employers who provide these things.

Another difficult issue is training. Construction skills can't be learned in a classroom alone. The industry uses the age-old system of on-the-job training, which in combination with classroom instruction, is the best way to pass along knowledge.

However, neither the union sector of the industry, which accounts for about 25 percent of Washington's construction workers, nor the open shop, the other 75 percent, train enough new workers. Unions have traditionally limited the number of new apprentices they would accept into their programs, training only enough or perhaps a few less than the anticipated needs of union employers. Because unions only represent one-quarter of the industry, they could never hope to, and wouldn't have the capacity, to train enough workers for the entire industry.

In the past, the open-shop sector used mostly workers trained in union apprenticeship systems who left the unions to work open shop. The open-shop sector of the industry has made an enormous commitment to train thousands of workers across the country. Nearly 20 years ago, ABC developed the Wheels of Learning, a standardized curriculum that could be used for task training, apprenticeship training and cross-training.

In 1994, ABC and 22 other trade associations, as well as the major open-shop industrial contractors created the National Center for Education & Research to maximize the money and resources spent on craft training. Open-shop apprenticeship programs are training thousands of apprentices in other states and turning out well rounded and highly qualified journey-workers who go on to build 70 percent of American construction projects.

Washington state has an even greater challenge in meeting the demand for a skilled workforce than other states. Washington's apprenticeship system has long been dominated and controlled by organized labor through their monopoly of the Washington State Apprenticeship & Training Council (WSATC), the body that approves apprenticeship programs in the state.

Open-shop training programs, such as the Construction Industry Training Council (CITC), and its predecessor organizations, that meet all federal apprenticeship criteria, have been trying for more than 20 years to gain state approval for their programs. The Swatch's continued rejection of open-shop programs has now become so visible and so serious that the U.S. Department of Labor has scheduled a federal compliance audit to determine if the state council is acting in concert with federal apprenticeship regulations, as required by both state and federal law.

Although there are fundamental philosophical differences between union and open shops, the need to attract and train young workers is the same. If the industry is going to have any hope of filling the need for skilled workers, the entire industry must attract and train many more than workers than they are now.

Everyone should admit that the philosophical differences aren't going to change, and may, in fact, be beneficial for everyone. The industry as a whole needs to concentrate maximum effort on improving training capacity, enhancing wages, benefits and working conditions, and bettering the image of construction.

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