{"id":16999,"date":"2015-06-05T20:14:21","date_gmt":"2015-06-06T00:14:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saratoga.com\/saratogabusinessjournal\/2015\/06\/union-construction-workers-doing-well-in-saratoga-county-region-union-head-says.html"},"modified":"2015-06-05T20:14:21","modified_gmt":"2015-06-06T00:14:21","slug":"union-construction-workers-doing-well-in-saratoga-county-region-union-head-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saratoga.com\/saratogabusinessjournal\/2015\/06\/union-construction-workers-doing-well-in-saratoga-county-region-union-head-says\/","title":{"rendered":"Union Construction Workers Doing Well In Saratoga County Region, Union Head Says"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"img-left\">\n<div><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"construction-wm.jpg\" src=\"https:\/\/www.saratoga.com\/saratogabusinessjournal\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/48\/2015\/06\/construction-wm.jpg\" class=\"alignleft\" width=\"300\" height=\"222\" \/>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"img-caption\">Construction projects like this one in Saratoga County are keeping people in the building trades busy. A regional union official says wages are high and the industry is currently strong.\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>BY JILL NAGY<\/p>\n<p>Construction workers in the region are<br \/>\nfinding plenty of work and modest increases in<br \/>\nwages as the business recovers from a &#8220;rough<br \/>\nwinter,&#8221; according to Jeff Stark, president of<br \/>\nthe Greater Capital Region Building and Construction<br \/>\nTrades Council, an AFL-CIO union<br \/>\nrepresenting some 22,000 workers. Most of the<br \/>\ntrades, he said, are at or near full employment.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We&#8217;re pretty content,&#8221; Stark said. &#8220;Who<br \/>\ndoesn&#8217;t want good wages and benefits?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>He estimated that union workers earn 20-30<br \/>\npercent more than non-union workers and enjoy<br \/>\nhealth insurance, retirement benefits and other<br \/>\ntypes of insurance jointly paid for by the union<br \/>\nand employers.<br \/>\n&#8220;Right now, we are doing pretty well,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>For employers, the extra money paid in wages<br \/>\nand benefits means more efficient and better trained<br \/>\nworkers who end up costing contractors<br \/>\nless in the long run, according to the union<br \/>\npresident. &#8220;We build more efficiently and we&#8217;re<br \/>\nbetter at it,&#8221; Stark said. &#8220;We don&#8217;t let a guy on<br \/>\nthe job without skills.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>He said union workers spend four or five<br \/>\nyears as apprentices in a formal program of<br \/>\ninstruction and mentoring by skilled journeymen<br \/>\nand are required to pass a series of exams<br \/>\nbefore they are ready to work on their own. He<br \/>\nnoted that the council&#8217;s apprenticeship program<br \/>\nis recognized by both the state Department of<br \/>\nLabor and the state Education Department and<br \/>\ncompares it to a college education.<br \/>\n&#8220;We are a leader in the industry,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>Graduates of the union&#8217;s apprenticeship<br \/>\nprogram are well prepared and well equipped<br \/>\nwith the tools of their trades, he noted. &#8220;It comes<br \/>\ndown to efficiency.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>On the other side, the union works with<br \/>\n&#8220;contractors who are extraordinarily good at<br \/>\nwhat they do. They pay their bills. They obey<br \/>\nthe law,&#8221; Stark said.<\/p>\n<p>The union contracts separately with different<br \/>\nemployers. In particular, they negotiate wages.<br \/>\nWages, according to Stark, depend upon how<br \/>\nmuch work a contractor has and how much<br \/>\nmoney they are making. &#8220;Right now, they are making money,&#8221; he commented. They also<br \/>\nnegotiate the amount of contributions to various<br \/>\nbenefit program and how those funds will<br \/>\nbe allocated.<\/p>\n<p>Another benefit for employers who use union<br \/>\nlabor, Stark said, is &#8220;if they call the union hall<br \/>\nwhen things are tight, they are assured of finding<br \/>\nworkers.&#8221;<br \/>\nHe estimated that 90 percent of the construction<br \/>\nin the greater capital region is done by<br \/>\nunion employees.<\/p>\n<p>The union represents workers in 14 building<br \/>\ntrades in a geographical area stretching from<br \/>\nColumbia and Green Counties in the south<br \/>\nup through Washington and Warren Counties.<br \/>\nMembership has been growing &#8220;modestly&#8221; for<br \/>\nthe last decade, according to Stark.<\/p>\n<p>While he boasts of the efficiency of the union<br \/>\nworkers, Stark also points out that &#8220;this is the<br \/>\nonly job in the world where the better and<br \/>\nfaster you work, the quicker you work yourself<br \/>\nout of a job.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Stark has been president of the Greater Capital<br \/>\nRegion Building and Construction Trades<br \/>\nCouncil since 2011. He was elected to a second<br \/>\nthree-year term in 2014. He pointed out that it<br \/>\nis an unpaid position to which he was elected<br \/>\nby his peers.<\/p>\n<p>The group is an affiliate of the New York State<br \/>\nBuilding &amp; Construction Trades Council.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p> Construction projects like this one in Saratoga County are keeping people in the building trades busy. A regional union official says wages are high and the industry is currently strong.BY JILL NAGY Construction workers in the region are finding&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":121,"featured_media":22616,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[57,59],"class_list":["post-16999","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-building-trades","tag-business-news","tag-capital-region"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\r\n<title>Union Construction Workers Doing Well In Saratoga County Region, Union Head Says - Saratoga Business Journal<\/title>\r\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\r\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.saratoga.com\/saratogabusinessjournal\/2015\/06\/union-construction-workers-doing-well-in-saratoga-county-region-union-head-says\/\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Union Construction Workers Doing Well In Saratoga County Region, Union Head Says - Saratoga Business Journal\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Construction projects like this one in Saratoga County are keeping people in the building trades busy. 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