As Colorado construction industry makes plans to hire 30,000, Denver is using its leverage to add local-hiring rules on projects (CO)

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National Western Center’s $275 million site-prep contract is first to require outreach to lower-income areas

By JON MURRAY
PUBLISHED: June 25, 2018 at 7:00 am

The Denver metro area’s construction boom is about to intensify as upward of $4 billion in big projects get underway in the city, requiring a lot of hiring to fill jobs on building sites.

And for the first time, local leaders have used the city’s leverage on a large public contract to make sure residents of disadvantaged neighborhoods share in the thousands of new jobs. The City Council on June 11 approved a $275 million site-preparation contract – the first nine-figure deal for the National Western Center project – that requires Hensel Phelps Construction and its subcontractors to recruit heavily from the city’s six most economically disadvantaged ZIP codes, largely southwest and northeast of downtown.

For now, the requirements in the pilot program stop short of setting local-hiring quotas or even targets, and it’s considered a bit of a dry run.

But if the initiative is successful at training residents and placing them in project jobs, it could portend more aggressive steps by the City Council and Mayor Michael Hancock’s administration to extract local job benefits on some upcoming projects.

Construction is an industry flush with opportunity in coming years, both for entry-level jobs and those that require light training or apprenticeship programs, from masons to electricians to pipefitters. Starting wages for many jobs begin at $13 or higher.

The state’s industry employs about 175,000 workers, according to the Associated General Contractors of Colorado, and that’s slightly more than the pre-Great Recession peak in 2007. But a Colorado State University study has projected the industry will need to fill 14,000 more positions in the next five years, a figure that equates to hiring 30,000 new workers, once baby boomers’ retirements and other attrition are factored in.

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150 Americans Die Each Day Due to Workplace Injury or Disease According to New Report

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WASHINGTON, DC – According to a report released today by the AFL-CIO, 4,628 workers were killed in the United States during 2012 due to workplace injuries. Additionally an estimated 50,000 died from occupational diseases, resulting in a loss of nearly 150 workers each day from preventable workplace conditions.

“A hard day’s work should not be a death sentence,” said AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka. “It is unconscionable that any worker has to choose between life and putting food on the table. When Congress votes to weaken worker protections or defund critical programs and when big corporations marginalize and deemphasize worker safety, they insult the memory of all those workers who have died while fighting to attain the American Dream.”

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(Copy of Report)

Construction poised to be CT’s growth industry

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Construction will lead Connecticut’s industries in job growth over the next 10 years, economists and labor analysts say.

The industry hit hardest by the Great Recession is poised for a strong rebound this year and beyond as public projects move forward and the backlog of private projects built up during the economic downturn starts to clear, said Andrew Condon, director of the state Department of Labor office of research.

“It is coming back, but it is coming back from a very big fall,” Condon said. “You have to put that in context because construction was coming from a very low place.”

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