Union workers and officials from the Hudson Valley”™s building trades and construction industry delivered a common message to hundreds of high school juniors and seniors trying their hands at job skills and computer-simulated crane and paint-spray operations at Rockland Community College recently.
- Spring Valley High School junior Kevin Yumbla levels bricks under the watchful eye of Poughkeepsie bricklayer Charles Cooper. Photo by John Golden
“You can have a great life and make a good living in the construction trades,” said Sam Fratto, business manager of International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 363 in Harriman. “We want you and we need you guys.”
With construction projects reviving in the region and nationwide in the wake of the recession that sent unemployment rates soaring to about 40 percent among building trades union members in this region, union reps voiced optimism in their recruiting and training pitches to some 800 high school students from Westchester, Rockland, Putnam and Orange counties at the 17th annual Hudson Valley Construction Career Day on the SUNY college”™s Suffern campus. The construction industry now faces a chronic labor shortage, according to the Construction Industry Council of Westchester and Hudson Valley. Council spokespersons cited recent figures from the U.S. Department of Labor that project a current national shortfall of 250,000 skilled trade workers, a workforce shortage expected to climb to 2.4 million by 2018.
From January 2014 through the first month of this year, the construction industry in New York added 13,100 jobs statewide, a 4.3 percent increase, with 317,200 workers employed on construction projects in cold and stormy January, according to the state Department of Labor. State officials reported the seven-county Hudson Valley region had 43,300 jobs in construction, natural resources and mining in January, adding 2,700 jobs from a year ago, a 6.7 percent increase.
In this region, “We expect to be busy the next five years,” said Edward Doyle, longtime president of the Building and Construction Trades Council of Westchester and Putnam Counties. “If you”™re not planning to go to college, this is the place to come.”
“It”™s opportunity for young people,” who are often advised not to get into the construction trades, said Rockland County Executive Ed Day. And pursuing a career in a skilled trade does not rule out one”™s pursuit of a college education. “Even if you have a trade, you need to have the education that supports it” in areas such as marketing and accounting, he said.
For masons in the roughly 300-member Local 5 of the International Union of Bricklayers and Allied Craftworkers based in Newburgh, “This year is looking good,” said Peter Clifford, the local”™s vice chairman and field representative.
Local 5 members have been doing concrete work for the Tappan Zee Bridge replacement project. There is work too at “a couple colleges” in the seven-county region covered by the local, Clifford said. At the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, a building renovations project and construction of new cadet barracks have provided employment for union members who struggled through the recession.
- Sleepy Hollow High School senior Cindy Rodriguez is shown how to use a welding torch by Mike Sweeney, field trainer from Plumbers and Steamfitters Local 21 in Peekskill. Photo by John Golden
“Right now we have 43 bricklayers up there at West Point,” said Clifford. “For January or February, that”™s unheard of ”“ not unheard of, but it”™s unusual.”
Bricklayers also will be traveling to the Catskills this year for work on the $630 million Montreign Resort Casino in Sullivan County, where site work has begun. The entire $1.1 billion, mixed-use Adelaar development on the 1,700-acre site of the former Concord Resort Hotel is expected to create 3,000 construction jobs for union members working under a project labor agreement.
“I”™ve been in the business for 24 years,” said Clifford, “and I”™ve been hearing about casinos for 24 years. ”¦ It”™s finally happening.”
Local 5”™s membership ranks reflect another shortage common to the construction trades ”“ a lack of female workers. The local has none, said Erik Cantamessa, a masonry building construction teacher at the BOCES Tech Center in Yorktown Heights.
Cantamessa watched smiling as his star student, Justine Coapman, impressed veteran bricklayers with her skill and speed at wielding a cement-laden trowel and plumb level at a demonstration brick wall. Coapman will represent her BOCES school at an upcoming vocational high school competition.
Cantamessa said he does not get many girls in his masonry program. “We try recruiting them,” he said. “Masonry trades as a whole for young people, it”™s hard to recruit. There”™s not a lot.”
