The issue of workplace sexual harassment galvanized ENR's "Groundbreaking Women in Construction" gathering on May 6 as attendees at all industry levels shared incidents and impacts. In an electronic poll, 68% of attendees said they had been sexually harassed at work or thought they had been. More than 65% of attendees work for construction or CM firms.
Related Links: Bureau of Labor statistics release with data tables ABC Chief Economist Anirban Basu's statement and analysis AGC Chief Economist Ken Simonson's statement and analysis Construction’s April unemployment rate plunged to 7.5% from its year-earlier level of 9.5% as the industry added a solid 45,000 jobs, the Labor Dept. has reported.The federal Bureau of Labor Statistics’ report on the nation’s employment picture, released on May 8, also showed that construction’s jobless rate was well below March’s 9.4% figure.The 7.5% rate last month was the industry's best April number since 2006, when the level was 6.9%.The BLS rates aren’t seasonally
Photo by Greg Aragon for ENR Union-sponsored gathering of women in the building trades focused on how industry can increase pre-apprentices and boost long-term careers for women. The Los Angeles event, held on May 1-3, attracted a record turnout. Pushing to become a more visible, vocal and valued segment of the construction workforce, more than 1,000 women craftworkers—a record number—convened in Los Angeles this month for a union- sponsored conference to share best practices in everything from pre-apprenticeships to coping with a hostile workplace to long-term career creation."The goal of this conference is to increase the numbers of women coming
Related Links: Future Depends Upon a Safe Workforce Contractor Groups Praise New Job Training Law Her freshman year at Mississippi State had not gone as planned, and Holley Thomas needed something to do. Back home in Double Springs, Ala., she decided to try an automotive manufacturing and robotics curriculum at a local community college. The last of the required courses was welding, and she dreaded it. Still, it was a requirement, so she plunged in.She loved it. While making a weld, she experienced the feeling of peace and concentration described by skiers, golfers and fly-casters, an opportunity to block out
Photo by Bruce Buckley / ENR Unions' President Sean McGarvey (above) pushed broad outreach, while conferees responded well to Missouri Republican Sen. Roy Blunt (below). Photo by Bruce Buckley / ENR Faced with a bitterly divided political environment in Washington, D.C., and elsewhere in the U.S., construction unions are making a key strategic shift to stay out of the fray and build bipartisan support as the 2016 campaigns heat up. Sean McGarvey, president of North America's Building Trades Unions, told the group's legislative conference that the labor movement and the Democratic Party should not be considered "philosophical soul mates."At the
Courtesy of AIM Electrical specialist Brad Diehl (seated) is joined by COO Donn Rosen (right) and President Troy Perez on project task. With a close-knit workforce and low-key workplace, Houston-based AIM Electrical Consultants seems to have a formula that has kept sparks flying at the firm for 18 years, even through down times.The consultant’s 13 employees are treated like family with a relaxed dress code and flexible schedules but also profit sharing and 401Ks and robust health insurance at the financially-savvy firm. “Three percent of profits were rolled into employee 401Ks last year,” says Donn Rosen, a disabled Vietnam veteran
Photos courtesy of Hueneme High School Academy of Engineering and Design Students at California engineering high school came up with unique designs and names for their carefully researched roller coaster models. Seniors at the Hueneme High School Academy of Engineering and Design in Oxnard, Calif., got a chance to test their real-world engineering smarts in a project recently finished to research and build scale models of roller coasters. The project was a contest conceived by a collaboration of the school’s English, Physics and Design departments. The 35 students, who were separated into ten teams, researched the specifications, designed sketches of the
Related Links: Bureau of Labor statistics release with data tables ABC Chief Economist Anirban Basu's analysis AGC Chief Economist Ken Simonson's analysis Construction’s March unemployment figures showed a mixed picture as the industry’s jobless rate fell from the year-earlier and February levels, but it also lost 1,000 jobs in the month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics says.The latest BLS look at U.S. employment, released on April 3, reports that construction’s unemployment rate declined to 9.5% in March from 11.3%, year over year, and also was down from February’s 10.6%. The BLS rates are not adjusted for seasonal variations and one
The new president of the Associated General Contractors, Chuck Greco, was talking about safety with a reporter at the Puerto Rico Convention Center in San Juan, where AGC held its annual convention on March 17-20. There, Greco described what has happened when he had to dismiss a worker for repeated unsafe actions."Their wives would call me and say, 'Please give him another chance.' And I'd say, 'If I do that, I'm hurting you, because I've done everything I can to impress him that, if he gets hurt out here, you're the person who is going to suffer.' "GRECOGreco, 59, is
Spending on outsourced worker services makes up the largest dollar chunk of U.S. government contracting, according to a March 11 Congressional Budget Office analysis for the House Budget Committee, but the agency can't determine how many jobs it funds.Spending for professional, administrative and management services from the private sector grew the most in real dollas between 2000 and 2012, says CBO in a letter to Maryland Rep. Chris Van Hollen, ranking committee Democrat, who had requested information on the "size and cost of the federal government's contracted workforce."Of the $500 billion that federal agencies spent for contracted products and services
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