The Mountain West Regional Council of Carpenters has revamped its training center in an effort to get a bigger share of the tenant improvement work underway in offices throughout the city.
Union carpenters did about 1 percent of the tenant improvement work in downtown Denver last year. In the first six months of 2006, union workers got about 13 percent of $15.5 million in downtown work, said Jim Gleason, the union’s executive secretary.
At the heart of the newly renovated 40,000-square-foot training facility is a mock-up of an aluminum-framed office space where apprentices and experienced carpenters learn and upgrade their skills. Classrooms were eliminated to add the new 18,000- square-foot interior-systems portion of the building where members get hands-on training, said Gleason.
The training center at 4290 Holly St. “is specific to the work we are trying to organize,” Gleason said. “It shows contractors that we are serious about training. It was done to get more of that work.”
He said it’s also designed to keep workers up to date with technological changes in the industry. Once a trade practiced with a plumb line and a box of manual and electric tools, carpentry now includes a high-tech component. Global positioning systems are used to lay out a wall’s position and laser levels ensure that surfaces are level.
A union campaign to increase its share of available work by picketing in front of downtown buildings that use nonunion subcontractors has caused some building owners to hire more union carpenters, Gleason said.
An increase in the amount of available construction work has also helped boost the union’s share, he said.
“With the right training, you can become a foreman, a superintendent. You can make a living and provide for your family,” said Hipolito Hernandez, 30, an apprentice with the union for more than two years.
The Denver resident, who is married with three children, was hanging drywall for a nonunion company when he heard about the program. He had reached top dollar on the drywall job, about $18 an hour. But he didn’t have health insurance, vacation, sick pay or other benefits, he said.
His starting pay as an apprentice with general contractor Weitz Construction, was $12.27 an hour, with benefits. He now makes $17.50 an hour, has benefits and can look forward to earning more than $20 an hour when he finishes the four-year apprenticeship program, he said.
Companies such as Weitz and Gerald H. Phipps, which both have collective bargaining agreements with the union, pay the more than $1 million annual cost of running the training facility.
“The focus is to make the industry more competitive, to make younger folks become more productive carpenters,” said Joe Ostemeyer, senior project manager for Weitz.
Union enrollment in all trades is dwindling throughout the country, and companies who hire union labor must compete with those who pay less, Ostemeyer said.
The carpentry training program leads to a more qualified workforce, Ostemeyer said. But paying the union wage when many other companies pay less “is a challenge.”
“There is a lot of downward pressure on salaries, and we are subject to that,” he said. “It is a constant battle to be competitive.”
Apprentices get 36 hours of training at the facility every three months. They work at job sites the rest of the time.
Hernandez, for instance, is working on a seven-story building at Cherry Creek Plaza.
Between 50 and 60 apprentices graduate from the program each year, said Bob Disney, who oversees the program.
The carpenters have been aggressive in organizing members from a construction workforce that’s about 35 percent Latino, according to the Associated General Contractors of Colorado.
The number of nonnative workers on a construction job depends on the trade. Gleason said about 65 percent of those in the carpentry apprenticeship program are Latino, matching the percentage of Latinos working as carpenters.
