Category Archives: Building Trades

By Paul Post

When a key player is sidelined by injury, the whole team suffers.

Just ask the Yankees, who have been without superstars Aaron Judge, Giancarlo Stanton and Max Fried for extended periods this year.

The same holds true in business, which explains why United Associated Local 7 recently opened a new Health and Wellness Center for its 1,400 active and retired members and their families.

“If we can get everybody in the habit of getting a yearly physical we can catch stuff early and at the end of the day, save money,” said Ed Nadeau, union president and business manager.

For example, prediabetes might be stopped from becoming full-blown diabetes, or someone at risk of a heart attack or stroke could turn things around with a healthier diet and exercise.

A survey of 180 union apprentices found that very few had a primary care doctor.

“That kind of lit the fire, that we need to have our own place,” Nadeau said. “It’s tough to get a primary care doctor in today’s world. They tell you quite often that they aren’t taking new patients.”

By Rod Bacon

Sarah Heddell has an adventurous soul.

Sixteen years ago, she embarked on a career path that was unusual at the time for a woman: She decided to become an electrician.

The owner of Glens Falls-based 2 Check Electric, Heddell started her entrepreneurial journey shortly after graduating in 2009 from Walt Whitman High School in Huntington Station on Long Island.

She attended SUNY Albany for one semester, majoring in political science, before deciding that sitting in a classroom wasn’t for her.

“I like to be busy, I like to be outside,” she said. “I’d always been handy growing up, helping my stepfather build decks and things. I also worked on a horse farm during high school.”

She said the trades didn’t “come into her reality” until after she dropped out of college. She knew a Teamster who drove for United Parcel Service, and he recommended she look into a career in the trades. She considered both plumbing and electrical work, deciding on the latter because she didn’t want to deal with sewage.

“But the joke’s on me,” she said. “Since starting my career I’ve worked in multiple wastewater treatment facilities as an electrician.”

By Susan Elise Campbell

Every building, road and bridge relies on workers with skills that artificial intelligence will not replace. As communities grow, they need more workers on job sites and behind the scenes.

High demand and relative job security make the construction trades attractive. But the workforce shortage has grown so severe it has been described as a national crisis.

In Saratoga County, a nonprofit serving the Northeast has spent the past eight years building awareness between young people and potential construction careers.

“At Saratoga Builders Association board meetings, builders would talk about how we could build more if we could hire more,” said Doug Ford, then president of and now senior adviser to Curtis Lumber Co. “I said we need to do something or take this off the agenda. I was immediately assigned to head a task force.”

Ford said that “on day two” as task force leader he brought in Pam Stott, also an executive of Curtis Lumber, and co-founded the group that received nonprofit status three years ago as the Northeast Construction Trades Workforce Coalition.

Whoever said building and construction trades is a man’s world must be light years behind the times.

A summer camp for fifth- to seventh-grade girls has been expanded to two weeks this year, giving hands-on opportunity and exposure to the industry’s many different careers.

“On day one, last year, we put a power screwdriver in their hand and they were scared to death,” program coordinator Doug Ford said. “By day five they were working with pneumatic nailers and building vertical gardens that we donated to nursing homes. They didn’t know each other to begin with so teamwork was part of it. The transformation was incredible. It was a huge hit.”

Ford, a Curtis Lumber Company vice president, is also co-founder with Pam Stott of the Northeast Construction Trades Workforce Coalition, a nonprofit organization launched eight years ago to address the construction industry’s skilled labor shortage by promoting such careers to students and young adults.

Females represent a large untapped pool of potential employees.

“We want them to understand there’s so many jobs within trades and not all of them are physical,” Ford said. “You’ve got project management, logistical, estimating. All these different jobs are part of trades that never get talked about. The only ones that get talked about are the guy on the roof, in a ditch or on a backhoe. We need to paint an accurate picture of all the things that are available to males and females.”

There’s plenty of financial incentive as careers in the trades can pay from $80,000 to well over $100,000 for jobs such as project manager.

By Susan Elise Campbell

Carpenters Local Union 291 is not rapidly growing but has the potential to, according to its president, James Margiotta. Skilled union carpenters can make a six-figure income with benefits, and no vocational school education or even a high school diploma is required, he said.  

“Membership has been at the status quo the better part of the past 20 years,” said Margiotta, who has been a member of Local 291 for 25 years and in several of its elected positions for 11 years.

There are 1,600 members currently in 14 counties encompassing the Capital Region and North Country of New York. There are surges in membership at times but Margiotta said the union is “staying afloat because of a two-fold issue.”

“One reason growth isn’t as good as it could be is the ability to find skilled people that could command the wages that we negotiate for members,” he said. 

“There has also been an issue of finding younger people interested in starting this kind of career in the carpentry trade,” said Margiotta. 

By Christine Graf

It was while attending Paul Smith’s College in the Adirondacks that Darrah Land Surveying’s Kristin Darrah developed an interest in becoming a land surveyor. After meeting some neighbors who worked in the field, she changed her major from environmental studies to surveying technology.

“I had never even heard of land surveying,” said Darrah. “I observed them working on one of their projects– hand drafting a topographic map. I thought it was really interesting.”

The field of land surveying has a rich history, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Abraham Lincoln all having worked as land surveyors. The famous duo of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark created close to 140 maps while surveying the Louisiana Purchase and the Pacific Northwest.

Land surveying draws heavily on mathematical principles, the fundamentals of geometry being of particular importance, used to calculate angles, distances, and elevations.

By Paul Post

In the 1989 baseball classic, “Field of Dreams,” a mysterious voice tells character Ray Kinsella (Kevin Costner), “If you build it, they will come.”

 These days, Kinsella might have a hard time finding the help he needs as a nationwide labor shortage continues to impact the building trades industry, a problem that’s especially acute in the Greater Capital Region.

 “There’s not nearly enough bodies to fill the openings,” said Chris Dudley, a heavy equipment instructor at the WSWHE BOCES center in Hudson Falls. “All the big employers like DA Collins and Peckham Materials are really hurting for heavy equipment operators, truck drivers and laborers. State, county and town highway departments are reaching out to us, looking to hire kids directly out of high school. They’ve never had to do that before. Everybody’s really having issues.”

 There are so few truck drivers that the state recently lowered the age for obtaining a Class A commercial drivers license from 21 to 18, allowing more young adults to drive tractor-trailers.

 A recent U.S. Labor Department study says there were 7.6 million unfilled trades jobs and only 6.5 million people looking for work.

By Christine Graf

At a time when local contractors are struggling to find qualified skilled trade workers, Local 773 Plumbers & Steamfitters has at least 40 qualified applicants anxious to join the union’s five-year apprenticeship program. 

The union represents more than 450 plumbers, pipe fitters, steam fitters, refrigeration fitters, and service technicians in Clinton, Essex, Franklin, Hamilton, Saratoga, Warren and Washington counties. The local headquarters is in Glens Falls.

“I am seeing no shortage, and I know that I can recruit the people I need because we pay a living wage,” said Mike Jarvis, business manager at Local 773. “People see that they will have a future with us. They know they will be treated right.”

Despite being overwhelmed with applicants, Local 773 has been able to accept just three people into the Glens Falls apprenticeship program so far this year. Jarvis expects that number to top out at six, with an additional three apprentices likely to be selected from another large applicant pool in Plattsburgh where the union has its second location, he said.

Expanding its apprenticeship program will be possible only if the union is able to secure additional signatory union contractors. 

In recent years, Jarvis and Brian Kill, business agent at Local 773, have been working to attract contractors from the residential and light commercial sectors. 

By Christine Graf

As the skilled labor shortage reaches an all-time high, educators and trade professionals are working to eliminate the widespread perception that vocational training is not a viable career paths for students of all academic levels. 

While a four-year college degree costs an average of $127,000, a trade school degree averages just $33,000. Although college graduates earn an average of $16,900 more than those working in the skilled trades, the pay gap is shrinking as companies pay higher salaries to fill open positions in various trades.

Data provided by the U.S. Department of Education indicates that workers with trade school training are slightly more likely to be employed than those with academic credentials. They are also more likely to be working in their field of study and less likely to be burdened by crippling college debt. The amount of student debt in the U.S. has surpassed $1.73 billion.

According to Mike Martell, assistant business manager at IBEW (International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers) 236, students and their parents no longer believe that college is the only option.