LANSING – Good news about employment or financial prospects in the construction industry was nowhere to be found from AFL-CIO Building Trades Department Secretary-Treasurer Sean McGarvey, who spoke April 1 to delegates to the Michigan Building and Construction Trades Council’s 50th Legislative Conference.

Unemployment around the country in most local unions, across all crafts, is now “steadily rising” past an average of 22 percent, he said, and is up to 40 percent and beyond in some locals. (Some building trades locals in Michigan are familiar with the “beyond” part).

“Usually work will come back with the warmer weather, but that’s not what we’re seeing,” said McGarvey, the No. 2 man at the Building Trades Department. “There’s just no light at the end of the tunnel.”

McGarvey pointed out that at a workforce development seminar held at a Building Trades Department seminar two years ago in Washington D.C., Michigan Building and Construction Trades Council Chief Elected Officer Patrick Devlin told him that the seminar subject of attracting and retaining workers probably held little interest for building trades leaders in Michigan.

“‘Workforce development?'” McGarvey said. “In Michigan, you had no idea why were talking about that. You’ve been in a deep, long recession. And now what we’ve seen in the last five months is a collapse of the U.S. construction industry.”

McGarvey added: “I know how tough it is to be a business manager. You drive into the local union parking lot and you see 200 or 300 guys with no work and no health insurance. And you’ve got nothing to give them.”

If misery loves company, Michigan now has plenty of company. Of course, there’s the unemployment in every state of the union. But it’s worse than that: a little farther back in the jobs pipeline, McGarvey said contractors aren’t getting paid and developers can’t get financing for new work.

And now building trades pension plans are really starting to suffer.

“As the stock market started to slide, it has had a serious, serious impact on pension funds,” McGarvey said. He said last fall’s stock market “implosion” makes “irrelevant” the previous recovery blueprints of pension plans, which had banked on improving investment returns and greater man-hours to improve the funds’ bottom lines.

Congress changed federal pension laws two years ago in an attempt to help pension funds work their way past the turmoil in the stock market. McGarvey said the weak stock market and now the downturn in work hours are going to necessitate another change in ERISA, the federal law governing pensions. The alternative, he said, is that poorly funded pension plans – and there are now several in the building trades – “can’t survive.”

Soon to follow, he said, building trades health care funds are going to be rocked. When workers are unemployed, he said they go to the doctor, get the surgery they’ve been putting off, and get their teeth fixed and their new glasses. “All that is starting to hurt” employers and the funds McGarvey said. “I hate to be doom and gloom about all this, but that’s the reality.”

Politically, he said the news is a little better, although he acknowledged that Michigan’s union workforce, especially in the UAW, is angry with President Obama. The president last month continued to call for more “sacrifice” from union autoworkers, who have already made major contractual concessions.

Similar concessions haven’t been demanded of workers in the bailed-out financial industry. In addition, Obama ousted General Motors CEO Rick Waggoner, while leaving in place numerous heads of financial firms whose failures have cost the American taxpayer hundreds of billions more than the loans given to GM and Chrysler.

“A lot of people are disappointed in President Obama, especially here with his stance on the auto industry,” McGarvey said. “But there’s been a sea-change in Washington, and the change is dramatic. First, we have a president from a union-dense area; he listens to us.”

He said building trades leaders visited the White House a single time during the eight years of the Bush Administration. Since Obama has been in office, McGarvey said, they have been to the White House seven times. He said “the phone rings every day” with calls between the Building Trades Department and leaders in the Obama Administration.

McGarvey said the stimulus package will provide $500 billion “that will directly affect our members.” Republicans, he said, attempted to strip Davis-Bacon provisions from the spending, but the Obama Administration made sure the prevailing wage rules applied to the money.

But Democrats in the Senate, didn’t escape scorn from McGarvey. A handful – especially those who hail from more conservative Southern and Western states – have been waffling on their support of labor’s No. 1 legislative priority, the Employee Free Choice Act, which would make it easier for unions to organize. One Republican senator, moderate Arlen Spector from Pennsylvania, last month threw a monkey wrench into organized labor’s plans for the EFCA. After supporting the measure last year, he announced that he would not support it this year. Spector’s vote would have been the 60th vote in the Senate, enough to overcome a Republican filibuster. Spector is up for election next year.

“He will lose his election next year, but I’m far more disappointed with the Democrats,” McGarvey said. “These are people who wouldn’t be in the Senate without the help of organized labor.”

He said one major problem with political influence can be solved internally by the building trades. The individual crafts have individual political action committees, and give their money to candidates and causes without coordinating with other trades – even though there is usually no difference in who they support. The result: McGarvey said when you add up all their contributions individually, the building trades are by a 4-1 margin the largest contributor to Democrats. The building trades are also the fifth largest contributor to Republicans – bigger contributors to the GOP than even the anti-union Associated Builders and Contractors.

“In Washington, they don’t recognize us as one voice,” he said. “They see painters, boilermakers, electricians. “If we speak as one voice, we would be much more effective. The problem is, we just can’t get together enough.”