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Word association
By Candace Doyle
Editor
Candace Doyle
EditorThere's no point in mincing words: There's a skilled-labor shortage and it's only going to get worse.
The state Department of Workforce Development predicts that by 2008, not only will the construction industry need about 12,000 new workers, it will lose another 26,000 workers who will leave the field for one reason or another.
Combine that with a state population that can't keep pace with the rest of the country, and the industry has on its hands a situation that, in a word, is grim.
In this special section of The Daily Reporter, writer Jeremy Harrell talks to industry experts and gives a detailed accounting on the depth of the skilled-labor shortage and any legislative fixes - such as an apprenticeship tax credit -- that may be on the horizon.
But with this even legislators agree: Laws alone are not the shortage's cure. Their words to the wise? "Industry, heal thyself."
It's medicine the industry is taking, as writer Ellen Hickok-Wall reports. Construction trade associations and unions alike are trying to attract new workers to the industry with extensive educational campaigns - some of which begin their efforts at the kindergarten level -- and apprenticeship opportunities.
Career: n. 1. A chosen profession or occupation. 2. The general progression of one's life, esp. in one's profession. It's an equal opportunity campaign, too: Women and minorities need apply, as stories by writers Chris Thompson, Anne Herbst and Hickok-Wall show. Thompson talks to women in the trades and relates their trials and tribulations; Herbst takes a look at the TrANS program and its success in recruiting women and minorities to road building careers; and Hickok-Wall writes about a unique job-specific program to recruit Oneida Indians to work on the Lambeau Field renovation project.
Last but not least, this section looks at a groundbreaking school that many in academia and the industry are attaching much hope to help replenish a dwindling construction work force: The Lynde and Harry Bradley School of Technology and Trade.
The $50 million, 280,000-square-foot school promises to graduate students who will be ready to pursue an apprenticeship or go on to a two- or four-year college.
Job: n. 1. A piece of work: task. 2. Regular work done for payment. 3. A specific piece of work to be done for a fee <a remodeling job> 4. The position in which one is employed. 5. A responsibility. Apprenticeship tax credits, educational campaigns, recruitment efforts - they're all good ideas. Some might even work.
But what was hard to pin down - and for people to talk about -- was how to change a centuries-old perception of construction workers and the work they do.
As Ed Hayden, executive vice president of the Allied Construction Employers Association told us, "The old saying is that if you couldn't do anything else, you were doomed to a life in construction."
That's clearly not the case today, as you'll read in the pages that follow, and the industry must tout construction careers - not jobs - if it wants to attract and retain workers of all ranks. In short, the industry must redefine itself.
And those are not empty words.
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