People can? live with them, can’t live without them.
So goes the old whine. In the construction industry,
finding good people, the kind you can live with, is not
so easy these days. With the market being down in
some areas (the Northwest particularly), finding people,
good or bad, may not be an issue right now and
has not been for two or three years. In fact, five of the
14 people canvassed around the country were either
not hiring or even letting people go. But for those contractors
who are looking every now and then, the
biggest issue seems to be that prospective employees
talk up a storm, but when it comes to walking the walk,
they stumble around, getting in everybody’s road (five
complaints). Three other contractors had a related
complaint—that few prospects were properly trained,
apprenticed or experienced.
How does one navigate this minefield? Two contractors
check references: “When you call references and
they’re evasive,” explains a Californian, “they don’t say
anything bad about the individual but they don’t say
anything positive, either, that raises a flag.”
A contractor from Alabama thinks, “calling references
is trial and error. We pick their mind to find out what
they know and don’t know, what different areas of construction
they’ve been in, what skill levels they think
they have. A lot of them are over-qualifying themselves.
We specialize in waterproofing, which is an application
of a coating. A lot of people think that if they know
how to hold a paintbrush, they know how to apply a
coating.”
Two other contractors also do extensive interviews that
can include asking the candidate to do something. Says
another Californian, “We do a rigorous
interview process with no less than four
interviewers to make sure we’re not
being fed a line. Sometimes we’ll ask
them how they would bid certain projects,
just to get a feel of how they do
things versus the way we do them. These LOOKING FOR A
tests often reveal people who miss an
awful lot—as in, ‘Maybe estimating isn’t
your strong side, maybe you should be
in sales or something!”’
Another Alabaman, like two other contractors,
prefers to “test the applicants
who sound like they’ve set the world on
fire to see if they’re all they’re cracked up
to be, by putting them on the workforce
part time with an experienced foreman
for a few days. That way we can get his
observations of them in action. We have
35 to 40 percent success this way.”
LOOKING FOR A NAIL IN A JOB SITE
How do contractors get these candidates
to walk in the door in the first place?
Word of mouth and networking is the
proven way for five contractors. “Our
hiring is almost totally by networking,
word of mouth,” says an Ohio contractor.
“Our carpenters know the A, B and
C players in town.”
“If we’re looking for an individual,”
agrees a Californian, “we tell our suppliers
or contractors that if they hear of
anyone looking for a job, to have them
contact us. They know our company
and think we’re fair, so they push
prospects our way. That’s the way we
hire most of our people.”
Two contractors rely on ads and two
others on state or private agencies. Neither
routes appear to be successful.
“We’ve tried headhunters but all they
did was bring us a few people they’ve
moved around from one company to
another and couldn’t find a home for,”
recalls a Californian.
A fellow Californian adds, “It seems we
have the most trouble finding reliable
office staff who will show up every day.
They can come through an employment
agency or ads in the paper that generate
a lot of responses, 50 percent of whom
either have all sort of excuses for not
turning up to work or over-qualify
themselves—meaning they literally can’t
add 2 and 2. We normally put them on
a three-month trial basis during which
they show their true colors. I’m sure
there are better screening processes, but
they are awfully costly, too. We receive
screened people through employment
agencies, but they bat a 50 percent average,
too.”
THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE PLAIN UGLY
A perception among four contractors is
that the industry is scraping the bottom
of the work-force barrel. “The most
amazing thing to me is the number of
people in the industry—50 percent or 60
percent—with criminal backgrounds,”
reports a contractor from Alabama, “that
you only find out about when doing your
research. It’s right on our application that
lying is grounds for termination, and yet
they still withhold their criminal history.”
He goes on to add, “These are the people
who can’t pass drug tests. The only reason
they’re working (in residential especially),
is they’re not qualified to do anything else,
period.”
Reflecting the views of an Ohio contractor,
another Alabaman adds, ‘A lot
of these people are like gypsies, traveling
from one construction company to
another. I tell them from the outset that
I’d like the person to stay with me 10 or
15 years. They’ll act that way initially,
but after six months, they’re ready to go
somewhere else.”
Finding an attentive audience, the
Alabaman is on a roll. “We’re mostly in
commercial but residential is the
absolute bottom of the barrel: You don’t
know if they’re going to come to work
that day or not. Residential construction
isn’t a company level project. To build a
house, you have a series of two- or three-man
companies with no insurance, no
nothing, working by the day, cash, no
taxes or anything. It’s just a big black
hole out there, and no one can figure
how to handle it. You can’t attract people
to that industry. You see a lot of
opportunities to work in McDonald’s,
but you don’t see many to work on construction
sites—people don’t want to
work in a dirty, un-air-conditioned environment.
There’s a stigma to being a
construction worker. Where you are
going to work the next day is another
issue. Now we’re in a slowdown, we’re
laying off people who’ve been working
with us for a while.”
Rather than just complaining, though,
this contractor does suggest that “the
best way to solve the problem is to educate
people that construction is a good
livelihood, which we’re trying to do.”
A Washingtonian has a similar suggestion
to make: “I think there’s a perception
out there about construction that is
incorrect. I read a survey a few years ago
that said drywall workers were considered
right down at the bottom of the list
with migrant farm workers. In my view,
what we do in the commercial drywall
industry with firewalls and structural
walls is every bit as important as any
mechanical or electrical contractor’s
work—look at the fire-safety and life safety
aspects. It’s hard work, and it’s not
simple—you have to know what you’re
doing to get it right, and I think it’s a
prideful trade.”
American youth is not interested in joining
the trades, as one of the Alabama
contractors implies, and the Washington
contractor continues to spell it out: “All
of our kids are going to college and
training as computer programmers
today and just don’t want to do the hard
work that drywall and metal stud framing
requires. The old second- and third generation
family worker seems to be a
thing of the past, a problem that echoes
throughout our industry.”
Like the Alabama contractor, he is focusing
on education as the solution: “We
are working with the unions to reach the
high school kids, let them know there
are other options if they choose not to
go to college, there are well-paying jobs
and respectable careers. But getting that
word out is not easy. We’ve been in the
business for 18 years and have seen a
change—we’re not able to replace the
guys that are retiring, and trying to get
apprentices into the trade to grow them
into the same position is getting a lot
harder these days.”
This perception problem is actually a
problem for public relations. Rather than
a few uncoordinated contractors doing
their best in their own area, the industry
as a whole might be better off hiring a PR
agency to run a campaign that finds the buttons
youth has today and works out how to
promote the industry as a desirable career
choice. If the army could gain popularity
through a PR campaign, so can the construction
industry. There is nothing glamorous or
desirable about being a grunt and risking having
one’s head blown off, but the army pushed
the right buttons and found a lot of people
wanted to be all they could be . . . .
HELP FROM UNIONS AND …
There are two other sources that can make it
easier to ‘rind good people. In a nutshell, they
are two conflicting but possibly synergistic
forces that can pull the building industry up
by its bootstraps: Unions on one boot and Hispanics
as a group on the other. How come?
Half the contractors cited unions as sources
of good employees through their training and
apprenticeship programs. “The Carpenters’
union has been very successful in providing
quality people to us,” notes an Arizonan.
“The pendulum is swinging back in favor of
unions as people realize that quality, service
and value all go together. They’re committed
to providing training programs, and these
have been real helpful.”
“The union is keeping us supplied with good
guys,” agrees a Massachusetts contractor.
“They have a decent four-year apprenticeship
program where someone comes in for less
money than a journeymen, like half the money.
Every six months, they go to school for
two weeks to learn a new aspect of carpentry
and after four years, they’re journeymen.”
Three contractors mention the difficulty in
keeping personnel during downturns, but an
Arizonan points out that unions prevent the
cyclic loss of personnel during these down turns:
“Sometimes, when well-qualified peo-ple
can’t find a job as a carpenter, they’ll go
to work for Motorola or something, and we
lose good people that way. With the union,
the employee returns to union hall and other
union contractors hire them, so they stay
in the system.”
While one of the Alabama contractors doesn’t
openly support unions, it seems, he admits
that “One thing hurting the construction
industry more than anything is that we have
moved from a union shop to a non-union
shop over the years. I’m not advocating bringing
in the union, but a lot of people stopped
receiving any increases in wages. The construction
worker used to be paid fairly well
compared to a factory worker. Now he is at
the bottom of the barrel. Twenty years ago,
we were paying a journeyman plasterer $10
to $12 an hour. Now they’re at $18. The car
they used to buy for $4,000 now costs
$40,000! A pick-up truck was $6,000 and
now is $22,000. They should be in the $30 to
$40-an-hour range. It’s the owners who have
won out at the expense of the men on the
job.”
Confirming this view is the Washingtonian,
who notes, “We are union and get better per-sonnel
because the wages are higher and the
benefits better. The wages have certainly
stayed up and so have the benefits-these
guys are making about $30 an hour plus ben-efits.”
Although unions come across clearly in the
survey as a definite asset, they do have some
quality issues. “Some guys slip through the
cracks,” claims the Massachusetts man. “We
do drywall, and we’ll call the union and they
send us a guy that has never even seen a screw
gun before and can’t even figure out what
gauge or tool to use. We had that problem
especially in the late nineties when we were
booming with 200-plus guys and we would
turn over a dozen each week.”
“There are always good (80 percent) and bad
(20 percent) union workers. We judge them
on their skill ability and productivity,” agrees
a Californian. And the Washingtonian adds,”When there was a demand for men, a
lot of guys came into the union because
of the money, but they didn’t have the
training. When we hire a guy, if we don’t
know him, there’s a good chance he just
doesn’t have the training to do this work
properly. So there’s a very aggressive joint
effort by contractors and unions right
now to get the men trained across the
boards.”
… IMMIGRANTS
When it comes to unions and illegal
immigrants, it seems there is no love
lost, at least not for a South Dakotan:
“There are so many of these undocumented
brethren from south of the border
working up here that finding real,
union-type craftsmen isn’t that difficult,
because they are out of work. How
many plasterers do you want by the end
of the day? You want some good rock
hangers? I can get you some. How about
some stud men? They’re here, too.
“The INS says it’s too busy fighting ter-rorism
in South Dakota to arrest illegal
aliens unless they commit a felony. We
have no idea what their scale is, they’re living
in garages and I think they work for
$5 per hour plus meals. Up here, union
people are at $22 per hour. But by the
time you’ve paid your insurance etc., the
real cost is over $30. These undocumented
aliens are no different than us,
after a few years they catch on in terms
of gaining the needed skills. I’ve tried
whining and that didn’t work. [Senator]
Tom Daschle came and did some stuff
and got a response from the INS. There
are only about 15 or 20 of us living in the
whole state, so when somebody whines,
he usually answers up.”
These outspoken words may well be
heard echoing through building sites in
many states. But there is another angle
on this whole issue that the Washingtonian
expresses best: “We’ve had a lot
of Hispanic people come up to the
Northwest over the last five years. We
welcome this influx because most of
them don’t just talk-they just work
hard! They don’t have the training, but
they make up for it in plain old work
ethic. We send them to ongoing classes
to learn new things and make them
more universal in their skills. In a way,
they are the replacement for the second
and third generations who are opting
out of the trade. A lot of the ‘old school
didn’t want to see these Hispanics up
here at first, but they have come to
appreciate their presence. We’ve finally
got guys who don’t grumble about hang-ing
[wallboard]. It was at a point before
where workers only wanted to frame:
‘We don’t know who is going to hang
that board, but it’s not us!’ But these
Hispanics, they’re paid to hang [wallboard],
so they do it.”
WON’T YOU STAY A WHILE?
Finally, the contractors were asked what
actions they found to be successful in
keeping the good people. Half of them
said maintaining a friendly working
environment, often from the boss on
down, with a family atmosphere, group
activities and maybe things like the
exchange of Christmas presents.
Five contractors said it was good wages
and benefits, and two more said provid-ing
steady work. Another five said they
run profit-sharing schemes: “Share the
wealth and if they’re good, they’ll reciprocate,”
claims a Californian. The South
Dakota disagrees: “Cutting them in for
a share of the action isn’t a good idea as
the bookkeeper is smarter than me and
can make those numbers look like anything.
If you really want to keep them,
give them a pickup [truck].”
Two claim that treating employees fairly
is important. A Californian even helps
employees with life goals: “We make
sure we understand their needs and goals
in life. If he comes in as an estimator and
he wants to be a project manager, we
don’t say, ‘No, you’re going to be an estimator for the rest of your life.’ We’ll listen
to him and if that’s really what he
wants to do, maybe that’s what we’ll
have him do.”
The overall impression in talking to contractors
is that recruitment is not a major
issue at present because existing
employees are happy enough to be staying
in sufficient numbers to handle the
workload. But before the next building
boom occurs or the Old Guard retires,
it might be better if we, as an industry,
have our solutions in place. If there’s one
thing we can’t do without, it is
people.
About the Author
Steven Ferry is a freelance writer based
in Clearwater, Fla.
