Masonry Magazine December 2004 Page. 20
Workforce Tensioning
Through Tensioning
By Dominic Cerrato
President, Cercorp Initiatives
ONE OF THE MOST OVERLOOKED FACTORS WHEN discussing the shrinking workforce is its relationship to current building technology. For any industry to be successful and remain commercially viable, there has to be a complementary relationship between the technology used and the state of the workforce. Put another way, we need both an efficient method for building masonry structures and, at the same time, a sufficient labor pool to build those structures. Without an adequate balance between these two factors, the industry will be unable to meet market demand, and profitability will decline. Though this may seem rather obvious to those within the industry, the relationship between technology and workforce can provide insights into both the current problem and a realistic solution.
Like two variables in a simple equation, technology and the workforce each directly affect the total solution that, in this case, is the state of the industry and its ability to meet market demand. By changing one of these variables in relation to the other, the industry is impacted in either a positive or negative way. As a result, there are only two possible ways to positively impact the industry: 1) increase the number of skilled workers in the labor pool; or 2) reconfigure the technology to accommodate the changing labor pool. Of course, in both cases, it is essential to bear in mind that any change must serve the masonry industry. In other words, neither factor can be radically changed so as to create an entirely new industry as in the case of pre-cast and cast-in-place tilt-up construction.
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December 2004
Masonry 21