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NEWS BRIEFS

Date Posted: May 28 2010

Downward trend for wage hikes

Wage and benefit increases in the U.S. construction industry are headed south.

The Construction Labor Report said that from Jan. 1 through May 3, 2010, for all first-year construction collective bargaining settlements, increases averaged 1.7 percent, compared to 2.8 percent for the same period in 2009. That 2.8 percent figure was the same for all of 2009.

Between 1999 and 2008, average first year construction industry settlements ranged from 3.8 percent. Prior to 2009, the last year the average first year increase was under 3 percent was in 1996.

Pension plans still troubled

Assets of multi-employer pension plans, which include those in the unionized construction industry, declined by 22 percent since 2008.

That comes according to a report by the union-backed National Coordinating Committee for Multiemployer Plans (NCCMP). In 2008, more than 75 percent of the plans were in the Green Zone, or more than 80 percent funded. A year later, only 20 percent were in the Green Zone.

Randy DeFrehn, the NCCMP’s executive director, told the Michigan Building and Construction Trades Council’s Legislative Conference in March that building trades plans are conservatively funded. Still, the plans were rocked by the loss of man-hours and stock market downturns brought about by the start of the Great Recession in the fall of 2008. Since then, he said in an effort to shore up their plans’ financial positions, union members have increased contributions from an average of 3.88 per hour to $4.80 per hour, on average, according to the report.

“The investment losses suffered in the 2008 global financial collapse now threaten the viability of a small, but significant minority of these plans,” the report said.

DeFrehn told the Construction Labor Report, “It is important for Congress to pass relief as quickly as possible. Many plans have already passed the deadlines for their certification of their funded status and notices to participants.”

Relief, DeFrehn said, would in large part take the form of changing federal accounting rules to give plans more time for the economy to turn around and allow man-hours to increase, as well as (hoped-for) higher stock market returns.