"There's not enough qualified tradesmen out there."
"You can't hang on to the good ones."
"These guys off the street come and go everyday."

Every one of you hear comments like these from your foremen and superintendents on nearly every jobsite these days. And nearly every industry study in the last few years lists finding, training, and keeping a skilled workforce as your number-one concern.

In the rigging and transportation industry, that means finding workers who know crane movement language and who can install equipment where and how it belongs. It means having mechanics who can work safely and smartly in a dangerous industry where accidents are rarely small.

As a union, the United Brotherhood of Carpenters (UBC) has trained the carpenters, millwrights, and piledrivers doing that work on the jobsites today. Hand-in-hand with contractors and industry leaders, we've developed certification and qualification courses to keep our tradesmen productive and safe in the industry. Our commitment hasn't changed.

Rigging is just one example of our union's widespread training efforts. The 32-hour rigging qualification course begins with basic procedural and inspection requirements, to highly dangerous work in critical work environments like power and electrical hazards, confined spaces, and critical lifts. And as rigging requirements develop, UBC members will continue to train for the work you do.

As a union leader, I have one responsibility: to serve the needs of working carpenters. I do that by seeing that they have the skills and training to be competitive, because their success is dependent upon the success of our contractors.

That means developing training with contractors, getting members trained, and getting them on the job. Decisions in the UBC get made on that basis.

Just like a business, we hold ourselves accountable for the job we do, and we put our money and our resources where they ensure us the best return. That place is training.

The UBC has more than 250 training centers and an annual training budget of more than $100 million. We have 1,500 qualified craftsmen working as instructors and over 50,000 apprentices getting the latest industry training available. What's more, our journey-level craftsmen are continuing their training. Last year alone 19,000 journeymen completed a wide range of upgrade training programs to meet the needs of our contractors.

UBC partnerships with contractors, industry users, suppliers, and governmental agencies alike have generated dozens of industry certification, qualification, and workplace safety courses available to our members. Those run the gamut from industry-specific qualification courses like rigging, to manufacturer-specific certification programs, to general workplace safety courses like CPR.

The baby boomers trained in union apprenticeship programs are beginning to retire. Service-sector wages are becoming comparable to traditionally high construction wages and taking away potential workers. The success of the economy is bringing more work and more unskilled workers onto the jobsite. The equation is simple: the pool of skilled craftsmen is drying up.

That leaves our industry where it is today – caught in a vicious circle. Contractors are looking for good mechanics, trying desperately to hang onto the ones they have, and luring the good ones away from their competitors. They can't afford to spend their time, efforts, and money to train employees when that mechanic can go to work for the competition next week. And training expenses can't be budgeted in today's cutthroat bidding – especially when a competitor doesn't have that same overhead.

As a result, nobody outside the union sector is getting trained. And training is what the industry needs most.

Fortunately, training is our strength.

To ensure that, we've put our money where our mouth is. The UBC has built a $22 million, 178,000 square foot, state-of-the-art international training facility for hands-on training for our apprenticeship and training, and health and safety programs. Here we can develop the programs that the construction industry will need for the 21st century.

As a union, our industry strategy for the future isn't complex. We want to continue to work with contractors to develop the training programs they need to be competitive and provide them with skilled workers they need to get the job done.

As a union leader, I owe it to our members to make these partnerships and programs work. As businessmen, I hope that contractors understand our pool of skilled workers will be a valuable resource in today's – and tomorrow's – tight labor market.

Together, we can offer our industry strong tools: union members that are the best trained mechanics and union contractors that are the most productive. That's a relationship that has more than a century of success behind it. Working together, with past lessons and experience on our side, the next century can be even more successful.

• President McCarron's Message
• Vice President Banes' Message
• Secretary Treasurer Silins' Message