Masonry Magazine June 2000 Page. 7
FROM THE PRESIDENT
by Richard M. Johnston,
President MCAA
Addressing The Industry's Manpower Crisis
No doubt to anyone in the construction industry, every trade is suffering from a severe shortage of workers. Read any industry publication and you will discover that from carpentry to concrete finishing, steel and glass, every trade is attempting to deal with this crisis. Many trades are throwing up their hands and turning over the future of their industry's workforce development to outside organizations who promise to deliver the workers so badly needed. I believe that turning over control for recruiting and training a workforce to an outside organization is a very risky attempt to solve the manpower problem because I believe that we created the manpower problem for that very same reason. For too long we as contractors relied solely on the unions to do the recruiting and training for us. And although they did a reasonable job of recruiting, the lack of contractor involvement retarded real growth in workforce development. We felt that someone else was taking care of the problem and we as contractors got out of the recruitment business.
In fact, today, one of our greatest concerns is the lack of commitment on the part of most contractors to hire apprentices. Many resist because they don't want to invest in the training of an apprentice because the apprentice may end up leaving the mason contractor to make fifty cents an hour more from some other mason contractor down the street. So we sit by and lament the problem and wonder who is going to come and take care of the problem for us. Fortunately, the masonry industry is, at least for now, unified in our efforts to solve our workforce shortages.
For several years now, the Mason Contractors Association of America has made training and recruiting efforts our top priority. We instituted a national Masonry Career Day which focuses the entire industry toward conducting career days in high schools. We developed materials to assist contractors in establishing recruitment and training activities at the local level. We continue to distribute our "Check Out A Career In Masonry" kits and our Career Day survival kits. We have expanded our Resource Catalog to include training videos and books which compliment the MCAA's Masonry Training Series. And in fact, the Training Series has made major inroads to becoming the recognized training material in our industry by replacing the Wheels of Learning and the AGC Mason Training books in almost every region of the country. Our program is now the standard.
We have implemented the Skills Challenge this past year which puts first-, second-, and third-year apprentices from throughout the U.S. and Canada in a display of our industry's finest students of the craft. In fact, I will say that the Skills Challenge is one of the most worthwhile projects since it creates excitement and spotlights training on both local and national level. We finally have more contractors than ever interested in what's happening with training in their local area. They are beginning to take pride again in their apprentices.
However, more needs to be done. The MCAA, at our Annual Meeting in Las Vegas, approved an $800,000 campaign to take over the recruitment and training leadership in the masonry industry. Our campaign includes an effort to contact 19,000 high schools to establish career days in these schools. If that effort is successful, we will focus our attention to the middle schools. We will revamp our recruitment materials and include Career Fair exhibit booths that members can use in their local high schools. We also plan to double high school VICA masonry classes from 250 to 500, and to support masonry training with a specialized high school curriculum.
Another strategy we plan to incorporate, which has proven successful in the past, would be to recruit from junior colleges to get a "higher class" of employee. This is a prime target area for recruiting since many of these students, after two years of community college, realize they don't want to continue, or cannot continue - and need to make some money.
To measure our progress and to assure that we are on track with our aggressive plan, we will conduct a bi-annual manpower study. And to implement this program, we must hire additional staff that will focus only on recruitment efforts.
However, as with any plan of this magnitude, additional funding is necessary for its success. We are going to be asking industry associations, suppliers, manufacturers and even mason contractors to assist the MCAA in combating the industry's manpower crisis. The entire estimated cost for the program is $800,000. To reach that level, we are asking for three-year pledges from everyone. MCAA members received the campaign brochure and pledge card. The balance of the industry will be receiving pledge information in the coming weeks. I am asking each mason contractor, regardless of size, to make a pledge to this effort and then ask your equipment manufacturers and material suppliers to make a pledge as well. This unique and energetic approach to unifying the industry's recruitment and training efforts is a large step toward answering our labor shortages.
Our suppliers have invested huge sums of capital in new technology and equipment and have the ability to produce unbelievable quantities of product, but how do they sell them if we can't get them in the wall? Training is a necessity for them and a great opportunity for us.
As an industry, we control the future availability of our workforce. If we all pull together, we can ensure that the U.S. Department of Labor's prediction of catastrophic labor shortages will not be realized in the masonry industry.