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News Briefs

Date Posted: June 23 2006

Hurricane work hasn't led to boom
So far, wrecked areas of the Gulf Coast have not been a construction worker magnet.

More than nine months after the second of two devastating hurricanes hit the Gulf Coast, the Engineering News Record reports "there really isn't a giant sucking sound coming from the Gulf Coast region that represents workers pulled from the rest of the U.S. to shoulder the tremendous amount of debris removal and reconstruction resulting from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita."

The level of construction activity in the region "still won't create a giant vacuum on the rest of the country," said Ken Simonson, chief economist for the Associated General Contractors of America. "I hear all the time that worker shortages are due to all of the work going on in this region because of the hurricanes, but I can't find the level of activity that would swing the national market," which is overall doing very well.

Construction statistics, Simonson told an AGC Rebuild Louisiana Forum June 2-3, show that from last August and September, when the hurricanes hit, Louisiana lost 26,000 construction jobs, or 22 percent of total state construction employment. Since then, he said the amount and pace of reconstruction in Louisiana has been greatly exaggerated.

Insufficient flood insurance by home and business owners has slowed construction. Building codes haven't established new flood plain codes until recently, and Congress has yet to approve rebuilding money, a process which could take until late summer or early fall.

Good jump for 2006 construction
The AFL-CIO Building Trades Department continues to hound the U.S. Department of Labor to investigate financial improprieties between various Associated Builders and Contractors chapters and the training programs they sponsor.

The ABC is a national contractor group dedicated to the preservation and proliferation of open shop contractors. Over the last three years, the Building Trades Department issued an extensive study showing the poor graduation rates of apprenticeship schools sponsored by ABC chapters.

The Building Trades Department also requested that the Labor Department look into alleged illegal activity by several ABC chapters, involving "failure to disclose financial transactions" between ABC nonprofit apprenticeship trusts and local ABC chapters, and excessive payments from the apprenticeship trusts to the chapters.

"It is time for the Department of Labor to take serious and credible action," said Building Trades Department President Edward Sullivan. An ABC executive called the allegations "groundless."

The DOL has yet to respond. "To date," said the Construction Labor Report, "there has been no public response to allegations in the report" from the IRS, DOL or any other federal agency." A response may have to wait for a regime change in Washington D.C.