Masonry Magazine April 1996 Page. 23
Management, Constructing Masonry
Under The 530 Code, Sales, Sales and
More Sales, What It Takes To Provide
Mason contractors are
becoming better educated and learning new ways to compete.
Professional Service, Eight Ways To
Prosper In Today's Construction
Market, Transferring The Family
Business, Trouble Shooting Masonry
and Marketing Your Quality.
Supervisory Training
MCAA answered a need for the mason contractor for training their foremen, potential foremen and other key supervisory personnel. No other masonry industry association offers a supervisory training program designed to train your employees to be profit centers.
The Masonry Leadership Institute (MLI) is designed to provide your company's best and brightest with the formal training they need to motivate your crews. A project hinges on the performance of your foremen and other supervisors. The MLI is an intense five day program that gives your supervisors and other potential personnel the ability to understand a crew's behavior, discover what motivates individuals, build and sustain a motivated team effort, construct a project with fewer mistakes, make the contractors life easier and ultimately return greater profits from the project.
Training
The key to a mason contractor's long term survival and success is the ability to find trained, motivated masons. Taking the results from a national manpower study which showed dismal results for the state of an ample workforce. MCAA is in the process of developing a comprehensive apprenticeship training curriculum and manuals which will become the new standard for mason training.
According to the study which was recently completed, no organization, union or nonunion, is pushing hard to train more masons. More importantly, no one is looking to the future to find and train the more than 75,000 new masons that will be needed above the current level of 190,000 masons, to meet the expected sales growth in both brick and block sales.
The need for more masons is national and cuts both union and nonunion segments alike. Even the once vaunted union training program has dwindled and become nothing more than regional training programs in many parts of the country. With a six year loss of bricklayers from 109,000 union masons to under 70,000 today, little help is expected from the union with it current leadership.
MCAA recognizes the need and our role is training new masons. We have budgeted $125,000 to implement programs to encourage training and recruiting programs nationally. We have hired a Director of Education to help develop the training programs and support necessary to train masons to meet our industry's current and future needs.
Recruitment
Before we can begin to train the additional 75,000 masons needed to lay the more than 10 billion brick and 6 billion block expected to be sold by the year 2,000, qualified trainees must be recruited. MCAA has developed videos, brochures, posters and a "how to" manual with instruction in conducting career day presentations and other recruitment opportunities.
LEGISLATIVE ACTVITIES
One of the main services that a national association should provide for its members is to keep abreast of and work towards influencing proposed legislation and regulations at the national level.
During the past eighteen months, MCAA has become very active and influential in Washington, especially with regards to OSHA. We have established a Political Action Committee (PAC) and made several campaign contributions during the past campaign. These contributions to key congressmen and senators, especially with a new Congress and new leadership will be very helpful in the future. We plan to expand this effort in the upcoming 1996 elections.
Associated Specialty Contractors
MCAA is a member and financially supports the Associated Specialty Contractors (ASC) which is an umbrella organization of eight national specialty trade associations like ours.
Each month MCAA attends strategy sessions with the other ASC groups to impact legislation that will impact our members. Each year ASC conducts a Legislative Conference where MCAA members of the other ASC associations travel to Washington to meet with our elected officials to discuss key issues facing the construction industry.
MARKETING & EXPANDING
MASONRY MARKETS
Expanding the capabilities of the mason contractors to compete as well as expanding the masonry industry is another vital service MCAA can provide its members.
MCAA Membership Directory
The key to a contractor's long term survival and success is the ability to find trained, motivated masons.
For the first time in our association's history we have published a yearly membership directory which includes all MCAA members. This directory not only is a good reference for our members to network with one another, but it will be marketed to the top 2,500 masonry customers across the United States. In addition, the Membership Directory will be distributed at the Associated General Contractors annual convention as well as other trade shows throughout each year.
Member Referrals
MASONRY - MARCH/APRIL, 1996 23