Masonry Magazine January 2017 Page. 50
WORDS: JEFF BUCZKIEWICZ, MCAA PRESIDENT
-he 2017 MCAA Convention at World of Concrete/Masonry will be exciting, with several new components added to the program. As we begin the New Year and kick it off with
the convention, our industry will be in store for new challenges ahead and will have some unknown variables with a new Administration and Congress. We expect those (political) changes to be good for our industry, however, we can never be certain.
That is why we will be kicking off our convention with a new Top Golf event. The event at Top Golf will take place on Monday, January 16 at 5:30 pm. The event will start off with open play for 2 hours, and all proceeds raised then will benefit the MCAA political education fund. Those are dollars we use to educate members of Congress on issues impacting our industry. These funds are critical to our political outreach and help us fund, among other things, our lobbyist in DC. These funds can be supplied with corporate dollars or personal dollars as they are unregulated.
The second event that evening kicks off at 7:30 and will be our PAC fundraiser. It is our only PAC fundraiser of the year, and it is critical to our ability to support candidates who are friendly to our industry's issues. These funds are regulated, and can only be personal dollars, not company money.
Tuesday we will start off with our committee meetings, where we discuss issues impacting our industry and how we are dealing with them as an Association. Everyone is welcome to attend and provide input. This is a great opportunity to get more involved with the planning and development of the MCAA. We will also be launching the first "Train The Trainer" program for silica compliance. This education series will train someone from your company to go home and be able to train people on your staff to be considered "competent" (one of the new requirements ofthe silica rule being implemented June 23, 2017).
The program will be training people on how to identify silica issues on a job site and to implement the written program. The MCAA is also developing the written program for masons that they will be able to use on all jobs. Members will have access to the program online and will be able to slide that will be present on job-sites in and out. The written program content will meet the requirements of the new rule's written program criteria.
Both of these programs will be critical components of the new silica rule, and you can get them by attending the course in Vegas. When the convention ends, the MCAA will be taking this "Train The Trainer" on the road. It will be in 15 different cities before the end of June, so you will have several other opportunities to send your people to a local program. That being said, the program in Vegas will be taught by the law firm developing the program and should be an excellent option.
Later that night, we will host our South of 40 event at Senor Frogs, an event you will not want to miss.
Wednesday is Masonry Madness Day. I really not need to say more, it is the biggest masonry event of the year and truly is the biggest day of pride for our industry. We will have four competitions take place this day. The day will begin with the MCAA's Masonry Skills Challenge, our apprentice competition. It is sponsored again this year by our friends at the BAC, IMI and LIUNA. We have competitors from all over the country competing for the top spot at the one, two and three year levels.