Archive for category: News

By CONSTRUCTIONDIVE | Originally posted on constructiondive.com

Illegal immigration has dominated the headlines during this election season, but building pros are calling for help to get skilled workers to jobsites.

Construction has an open secret when it comes to the number of workers lacking permanent legal status on jobsites.

Immigrants entering the country illegally make up about 23% of the construction laborer workforce in the United States, according to a 2021 report from the Center for American Progress. A Pew Research Center study pegged that share at 15% for all workers in construction jobs.

Those numbers underpin a tension in the construction sector where an industry that’s starving for help sometimes rolls out the welcome mat to workers lacking the status to work in the country legally. Doing so can give contractors who are willing to look the other way a leg up on the competition, but it also opens the door to abuses by employers.

“Nobody benefits from having a large pool of undocumented workers in the construction industry,” said Brian Turmail, vice president of public affairs and workforce at Associated General Contractors of America. “It becomes too easy for those workers to be exploited by unscrupulous contractors who then underbid responsible contractors.”

As the 2024 presidential election draws near, the issue has taken on even more importance for construction executives looking for a way to legally expand their workforces.

The construction industry will need to bring in nearly 454,000 new workers in 2025 on top of normal hiring trends to meet industry demand, according to Associated Builders and Contractors. That estimate also presumes construction spending growth slows significantly next year, even though other data indicates nonresidential construction planning should accelerate by mid-2025.

For that reason, construction trade organizations continue to advocate for meaningful reform to the current immigration system. That means pushing for more programs to allow workers to lawfully enter the country and work in construction, said Anirban Basu, ABC chief economist.

“If we can figure out a way to deal with these 11 [million] or 12 million undocumented migrants — is there a pathway to, if not citizenship, at least a work visa? Can we bring them out of the shadows?” said Basu. “Can they be employed by a contractor without fear of penalty, either for the employee or the employer?”

H-2B visa reform

One of those reforms is to raise the current cap of 66,000 visas issued annually under the H-2B visa program, said Kristen Swearingen, ABC vice president of legislative and political affairs.

The H-2B visa program provides temporary foreign workers to industries like construction, helping to address labor shortages.

“Commonsense solutions to address the 12 million undocumented immigrants in the United States include expansion of H-2B visa and reforms to the overall program,” said Swearingen. “Currently, the H-2B cap is too low to meaningfully improve the massive shortage of workers in construction and other industries, and that cap should be based on economic need.”

In terms of the presidential election, both candidates have pledged to decrease illegal crossings at the border. But when it comes to making it easier for foreign-born nationals to immigrate legally for work, each has taken a different stance.

Vice President Kamala Harris, if elected, is likely to continue the Biden administration’s approach to expanding legal immigration pathways such as the H-2B visa program, said L.J. D’Arrigo, partner and leader of the immigration practice at Harris Beach, a Rochester, New York-based law firm.

During Harris’ time as vice president, the Department of Homeland Security announced a record allocation of 20,000 H-2B temporary nonagricultural workers visas for citizens of El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Haiti, as part of almost 65,000 supplemental H-2B visas made available for fiscal year 2023.

“I think it’s clearer to project what would happen under a Harris administration. I would expect that there would be at least a status quo in terms of H-2B visa allocation and availability,” said D’Arrigo. “Although Trump personally uses the H-2B visa program for his businesses, it’s less clear on how he will approach the H-2B visa program based on his history of restricting legal immigration.”

During his administration, President Donald Trump nearly doubled the number of H-2B visas available in 2019. However, in June 2020, his administration suspended the program, saying it was to protect U.S. workers from job competition due to the economic downturn caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Little has been reported on what Trump’s policy will likely be on ‘legal immigration’ in a second Trump term,” said D’Arrigo. “We have the benefit of forecasting what Trump immigration may look like in 2025 through the lens of Trump’s prior administration. Under his administration, we witnessed a record-breaking number of visa denials, leaving U.S. businesses without the talent they need to succeed in a globally competitive economy.”

DACA and TPS

In addition to significant expansion to the H-2B visa program, AGC has asked Congress to enact legislation authorizing both the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals and Temporary Protected Status programs.

DACA grants deportation relief and work permits to young immigrants brought to the U.S. as children, often referred to as “Dreamers.” Trump attempted to end the DACA program in 2020, but Congress blocked the move. If re-elected, Trump will likely seek to end DACA again, said D’Arrigo.

TPS provides temporary legal status to immigrants from countries under crisis. Trump would likely seek to roll back TPS designations as well.

On the other hand, D’Arrigo anticipates a Harris administration to make DACA a high priority, as it has been for Biden’s immigration policy.

But just increasing the number of workers in the U.S. isn’t enough to solve the issue for construction, said Basu.

Opponents of immigration reform say bringing in more workers would reduce wages, according to the Center for Immigration Studies. However, for Basu, the key challenge remains finding workers with the specialized skills.

“I don’t talk about worker shortages so much because I don’t think it’s really about a worker shortage,” said Basu.  “It’s about a skills shortage, a skilled worker shortage.”

Many of the people coming across the border lack the refined skill sets needed for the types of equipment, technologies and processes used in the U.S. construction industry, said Basu. So, while the influx of workers can help fill gaps in the short term, it does not address the core issue of specialized training.

Training solutions

AGC is engaged with U.S. Reps. Morgan Luttrell, R-Texas, and Tom Suozzi, D-N.Y., to craft bipartisan legislation to address a range of immigration and work authorization programs.

AGC suggests doubling the funding for the Perkins Act, a federal funding program that supports career-technical education, and to boost federal post-secondary funding for construction education and training programs. Federal officials currently put about 80% of post-secondary funding into four-year degree programs even though only 38% of Americans will earn such a degree, said Turmail.

Basu also highlighted the need to retain skilled foreign talent. He questions the logic of sending back talented individuals trained in U.S. universities to their home countries, arguing if they are “gifted in science, technology, engineering or math, we need them here.”

“There are a ton of kids coming from India, China and elsewhere to our world-class colleges and universities [in the United States.] They get their STEM degree, and then what do we do? We send them back to Seoul, Beijing, Delhi, Baku, or wherever it happens to be,” said Basu. “That is silly. I’ve said many times, let’s build a wall to keep those people in.”

Improvements to training and comprehensive immigration reform remain equally critical to fix the workforce issue, according to AGC. Turmail highlights the need for both better border security and a legal pathway for immigrants already in the industry.

“There is no doubt we need better border security and also need a path to earned, legal status for undocumented workers already in the country,” said Turmail. “We remain focused on reinvigorating the domestic pipeline for new workers and ensuring there are sufficient, lawful ways for people to enter the country and work in construction so our industry can keep pace with demand for new infrastructure and economic development projects.”

By Mitchell Keller | Originally posted on constructionbriefing.com

Citing divisional efforts to “increase awareness and improve compliance”, the US Department of Labor (DOL) will hold an informational seminar on 29 August to cover the ins-and-outs of prevailing wage rules on federally-funded projects.

The full-day meeting will deliver sessions detailing labour standard protections from the Davis-Bacon Act and Service Contract Act and offer guidance to contractors and service providers on how to meet contractual expectations dictated by those US labour laws.

US DOL Wage and Hour Administrator Jessica Looman said historic investment in US infrastructure means “a significant increase in the number of federal and federally funded projects, and the Wage and Hour Division is committed to ensuring stakeholders understand the labour standards protections critical to these investments.”

Two DOL prevailing wage seminars have already been held this year: one in February and a second in May.

The seminar is scheduled for Thursday, 29 August, 2024, from 11 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. EDT. The seminar is free to attend but registration is required.

Wages and labour agreements a hot topic in US construction

The discussion on prevailing wages turned litigious this year, particularly as they pertain to federally-enforced Project Labor Agreements (PLA); pre-hire collective bargaining agreements that establish terms and conditions for employment on a specific construction project.

Two national contractor and builder associations – the Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC) and the Associated General Contractors of America (AGC) – have sued the US government for making PLAs mandatory on projects valued US$35 million or more. The AGC dispute was dismissed earlier this year, while state chapters of ABC have had some success challenging specific regional contracts.

In an election year in the US, some contractors may have been waiting to bid on large federally-funded projects to avoid needing to comply with PLA requirements. It’s expected that a Republican president with support in Congress could pass laws to eliminate or deregulate PLAs. On the other hand, a Democratic president with support from Congress would be likely to maintain and expand on PLA regulations.

This “wait-and-see” approach, said Michelle Ritchie, industrial products deals leader with global consultancy PwC, can cause the construction industry to appear stuck.

“It’s all about, not necessarily where the policies are going, because we can figure out policies and people can react to that, but it’s about uncertainty of the change, and that’s what’s pausing people,” she said.

At least two major contractors – Tutor Perini and Skanska USA – suggested the pool for massive infrastructure projects was thin and waning; that firm said it was the lone bidder on more than one multi-billion project during the year’s second quarter.

Ultimately, mid-sized contractors would be wise to learn how to accommodate federal contracts with PLAs (or partner with a firm that does) or risk losing substantial work to larger competitors.

By Mark Gruenberg | Originally posted on peoplesworld.org

WACO, Texas —In yet another case of successful judge-shopping by a right-wing corporate chieftain, U.S. District Judge Alan Albright of Waco, Texas, a Donald Trump appointee in the rural area of a deep-red state, has ruled the National Labor Relations Board’s makeup and procedures may be unconstitutional.

Albright’s late-July decision, which he forecast in a preliminary order two months before, gave a win to one of the nation’s richest people, Elon Musk.

Musk challenged the board’s right to rule on labor law-breaking, formally called unfair labor practices, at Musk’s company, SpaceX. Judge Albright granted Musk’s demand for an injunction barring the NLRB from penalizing his illegal actions.

But then the judge went further, directly flying in the face of Supreme Court rulings decades ago legalizing the NLRB. Those rulings overrode a furious onslaught by the criminal corporate class against the board and the National Labor Relations Act, which created and empowered it.

Seek freedom to repress workers

The companies wanted to be free to continue to repress and exploit workers, but the New Deal law was designed to give workers leverage against the tycoons, and the justices upheld it. Republican-authored laws and judicial decisions have since weakened the law and the board, creating the cumbersome and court-heavy obstacle course workers must traverse as they try to organize.

Now Judge Albright has apparently gone all the way back to pre-New Deal days. His injunction questions the board’s structure and decision-making process, even though that process is now the obstacle course.

Musk’s trip to the U.S. District Court for Western Texas, located in the distant rural city of Waco, is par for the course for right-wing corporate chieftains and their lobbies, such as the Chamber of Commerce or the Associated Builders and Contractors. Right-wing politicians, especially Texans, do the same thing.

Both groups “judge shop” for friendly jurists, usually named by right-wing former Republican President Donald Trump, to hear their cases against federal rulings, workers, or both—knowing that for such judges, ideology comes first. Trump named Judge Albright to the bench.

If higher courts uphold Judge Albright’s decision, labor-management relations in the U.S., already skewed towards bosses after Republican emasculation of the National Labor Relations Act, could be thrown into chaos.

That’s because the board’s system for handling labor-management cases calls for board staffers, representing the General Counsel, to investigate labor law-breaking complaints, for assistant GCs to present them to an NLRB administrative law judge, and for that judge to rule on the case—including penalties—before it heads upwards to the full board and then to the courts.

In lay terms, that puts the board in the position of being both attorney and judge of a firm’s conduct, and that’s what’s unconstitutional, Judge Albright ruled.

Judge Albright declared NLRB members “clearly wield substantial executive power through their administrative, policymaking, and prosecutorial authority.”

But the agency also wields power through its administrative law judges’ decisions on labor law-breaking cases and through the General Counsel’s role in seeking to use the board’s strongest tool against law-breakers, a federal 10(j) court injunction.

The injunctions order immediate relief, restitution, and reinstatement of wronged workers. Since the full board must OK the counsel’s request for the injunctions, it functions as both attorney and judge, Judge Albright said.

Relying on a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling in a similar case involving the Securities and Exchange Commission and its ALJs, the judge said that makes the labor board unconstitutional.

Neither the NLRB’s General Counsel’s office nor the independent staff union for the board’s workers had any immediate comment on Judge Albright’s ruling. NLRB General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo is also the board’s chief administrator.

By Scott Judy | Originally posted on enr.com

By Shannon Pettypiece | Originally posted on nbcnews.com

The construction industry has one of the highest suicide rates among professions, with an estimated 6,000 construction workers dying by suicide in 2022.

In a swath of Arizona desert that will soon be home to a multibillion-dollar semiconductor plant, Justin Azbill stood before thousands of construction workers and told the story of the day he almost took his life.

Pressure had been building on Azbill for months at his job as safety director for a large Boston construction firm during the height of the pandemic. Sleep-deprived and overwhelmed, Azbill said he packed a lethal means to harm himself in his lunch sack.

But as he was preparing to leave for work that morning, his daughter asked him to stay home with her that day. He did and the day provided a moment of clarity for Azbill, who then sought out help from a friend.

Azbill, who got his start in construction as an ironworker, has been traveling to construction sites across the country sharing his story as he and others in the industry race to address what they say is an epidemic of suicide among their colleagues — many of whom are under increasing strain amid a nationwide construction boom and a shortage of workers.

“In the construction industry, we’ve generationally been taught that if you talk to someone about a weakness or you’re struggling then you’re weak and you won’t get hired,” said Azbill. “One of the reasons I talk about it so freely is so people know that it’s normal and it’s OK.”

The construction industry has one of the highest suicide rates among professions — with the rate among male construction workers 75% higher than men in the general population, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. An estimated 6,000 construction workers by suicide in 2022, an increase from 2021, according to the most recent data available. That compares to around 1,000 who died from a construction work-related injury.

“When you’re more likely to be killed by your own hands than to get killed in a jobsite accident, that’s a crisis in our industry,” said Brian Turmail, vice president of public affairs and workforce for the Associated General Contractors of America. “We know pretty much what needs to happen to protect people physically. We’re figuring out how to protect people mentally.”

While construction wages are up and jobs are plentiful, those in the industry fear that the pressures on their workers’ mental health are only getting worse. A recent surge in construction projects, spurred by billions of federal dollars for infrastructure, clean energy and semiconductor projects have put increasing strain on an already stretched workforce.

As a result, workers are putting in more than 10-hour days in harsh weather conditions, facing high-pressure deadlines and having to spend months away from home living in hotels, temporary workforce housing or their vehicles. There is also the risk of workplace injuries and a higher rate of opioid misuse along with the general financial instability of hourly work.

“There’s a lot that goes into how stressful it is, not just physically, but mentally and psychologically,” said Josh Vitale, a superintendent for Hoffman Construction, the general contractor overseeing the Intel Arizona project where Azbill recently spoke. “I think progress is fantastic, but we have to realize that we are legitimately wringing the life out of people.”

One of the biggest building booms is being driven by the semiconductor industry. Companies are planning to spend $450 billion on 80 new semiconductor manufacturing projects in 25 states as part of a nationwide push led by the Biden administration to increase U.S. manufacturing of high-tech chips that go into everything from cars to military equipment, according to the Semiconductor Industry Association.

In Arizona, workers building the $20 billion Intel facility typically work two 60-hour weeks followed by a 50-hour week for months at a time in the hot Arizona weather with no paid vacation time, said Vitale. Because of a shortage of local workers, many are coming in from out of state, leaving behind friends and family and living for months or years in hotels or temporary housing.

For Azbill, a number of factors came together in a matter of months that pushed him to a place where he was close to ending his own life.

Azbill had spent decades working his way up the ranks of the construction industry, and when the pandemic hit, he was thrust into the role of Covid czar, working in an emotionally challenging and negative environment as his company tried to navigate the pandemic on its worksites, he said.

“I was working 19-hour days, and then I couldn’t sleep at night. Try that for six months and see where someone would be,” he said. “You start seeing everything negatively, there is this darkness. I was crying myself to sleep.”

At home, his relationship with his wife and daughter was fraying because for months he had barely been around, but he worried that if he cut back his hours at work he would let his family down financially, he said.

“At the time, I didn’t think that my wife or my daughter really cared for me because for six months I was angry all the time, they were cautious being around me, they didn’t want to cause more problems for me,” Azbill said.

After about six months, Azbill said he hit a breaking point. There was a Covid outbreak on a jobsite after some workers weren’t following safety protocols. The incident angered him in a way he’d never experienced. He said he blacked out and started having thoughts of suicide. He knew something was wrong so he went home to try to get some sleep.

He woke up at 2:30 a.m. the next morning and decided he was going to take his own life. He wrote three goodbye letters: one to his mother, one to his wife and one to his daughter.

“Before I left, I said, ‘Goodbye. I’m going to work, I love you guys,’” he said.

Then, his 8-year-old daughter, who was doing remote school, came running out of her room.

“She says, ‘Papa, Papa,’ and anytime she calls me Papa she steals my heart. It’s also her way of saying she loves me,” Azbill said. “I think she knew I was struggling bad, and I was her best friend. She said, ‘Papa, I love you, spend time with me, I don’t like my teacher and I don’t like school, can you spend time with me today?’ And so I did.”

Azbill stayed home from work that day and watched his daughter.

In the afternoon, he got on a weekly Zoom call with dozens of other safety professionals in the industry. Near the end of the call, one of the participants began crying, talking about losing one of his best friends to Covid and shared how he was struggling with the loss.

“I call that my clarity moment. It completely changed my mindset,” he said. “I realized I can’t do that. I’m not going to do what I was thinking.”

After the Zoom meeting, Azbill called a friend and shared that he was struggling. His friend told him how important he was to those in his life and that people are grateful for all he does. That phone call, he said, helped save his life.

At the Intel project, the site’s general contractor, Hoffman Construction, has tried to tackle the risk of suicide in a number of ways across its worksites after the company lost two of its supervisors to suicide over the past several years, said Vitale. Intel doesn’t employ any of the construction workers on the site or have direct involvement in the construction process.

The company has created community center-style spaces on its worksites where workers can have some personal space, attend a substance misuse meeting or talk with a peer who can help connect them to mental health resources. It also started including discussions about mental health in its regular staff meetings.

“It would be rare to find someone in the industry who hasn’t known a person that has taken their life within the last year or two,” said Vitale. “As an industry, we just keep putting more and more pressure on the worker to outperform what they’ve done before, and at some point it’s just untenable.”

Vitale has gotten involved in a number of efforts to reduce suicides in the industry after he struggled with his own mental health crisis after the loss of his baby, he said. Several times a week, he said, he is involved in a suicide intervention at the Arizona jobsite and has counseled dozens of colleagues thinking about hurting themselves, like a young carpenter he’s been talking to recently who is struggling with the loss of his mother and grandmother.

But even with those efforts, the worksite hasn’t been immune from loss — an employee for one of the project’s contractors recently died by suicide at home over the weekend.

Alarm bells about the high rate of suicide started going off in the construction industry in 2016 when a CDC report showed construction workers had one of the highest rates of suicide by profession, leading various industry groups to start looking for solutions. For every 100,000 male construction workers, 56 died by suicide in 2022, according to CDC data. That compared to 32 suicide deaths per 100,000 men in the general population. Males have a significantly greater rate of suicide than females.

A key focus for the industry has been trying to tackle the taboo nature of talking about mental health and seeking treatment. Industry organizations have been using everything from PSA-style videos and worksite talks to stickers, poker chips and magnets plastered around job sites informing workers of the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. Groups have also been creating resources like worksite talks and suicide prevention training courses to help guide employers in how to talk about mental health with their employees.

Construction firm Bechtel said earlier this year that it would spent $7 million toward an effort with the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention to reach 500,000 construction workers with industry-specific mental health programs.

Shannon Niles, safety director for construction firm Paric Corp., said he experienced the mental toll the job can take firsthand after witnessing a co-worker die on a jobsite when a trench collapsed on him. Niles tried to dig the man out but was unable to save him. He said he bottled up the trauma of the incident, becoming angrier and more withdrawn and drinking heavily until his family intervened and urged him to get help.

But Niles said there is an industry culture that discourages many from asking for help and a fear that showing any perceived weakness could jeopardize their job prospects.

“Construction workers think they’re so big and bad, that they don’t ever need any help. But we’ve got to realize we’re all human beings, and we all need help at some point,” Niles said.

Giving added urgency to the issue is an industrywide shortage of workers. At the start of 2024, the construction industry needed an additional 500,000 workers on top of the normal pace of hiring to meet the expected demand, according to Associated Builders and Contractors.

“You spend a couple-hundred-thousand dollars to train a superintendent for 20 years, and you’re going to throw them out the door now because they have a mental health problem or substance abuse?” said Mike Pugh, who oversees safety for DPR Construction. “They’re finding financially it’s not viable, it doesn’t pay any more to ignore and separate these issues because we don’t have anybody to replace them because there’s a worker shortage.”

It’s a stark change from when Pugh was facing his own mental health struggles more than two decades ago. Pugh said he began a downward spiral with drug and alcohol addiction following several traumatic deaths in his family. At the time, he was working in a high-level position for an HVAC company that worked on large-scale commercial construction projects.

“My bosses are watching me circle the drain and nobody’s really saying anything,” Pugh said. “As men, we’re taught to take care of your stuff, take care of your family. When you’re unable to do that you feel even more shame and guilt and it just all piles on until I just kind of snapped and couldn’t do it anymore.”

Ultimately, it was his brother who urged him to get help, and he has been in recovery for 25 years. Like Azbill, he now travels the country talking at worksites about the need for a culture change in the industry.

He thinks the message is starting to get through. Recently, he was at a jobsite in California where he had spoken about a year ago. While talking with the site’s safety manager, a laborer approached him and pulled him aside so no one would see them talking.

“He tells me, ‘Sir, after your talk last year, I went home and told my wife for the first time about my drinking, and I’ve been sober for five months,’” Pugh said. “We both started crying and hugging.”

If you or someone you know is in crisis, call 988 to reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. You can also call the network, previously known as the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, at 800-273-8255, text HOME to 741741 or visit SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for additional resources.