By Jim Nicholson
Viewed from a national perspective,
St. Louis is an oasis of sanity in terms of construction.
The union-contractor-owner disputes that bedevil the rest of
the country are, for the most part, absent here. Project disasters,
either in process (Milwaukee’s Miller Park, for instance) or
after-the-fact (like Boston’s Big Dig), do not grab the headlines
and start fingers pointing, simply because they do not exist.
St. Louis remains a bulwark of union construction in a country
where construction standards have become haphazard and construction
projects are too often viewed in hindsight as slipshod. Much
of the credit for the region’s enviable well being in construction
belongs to PRIDE, a labor-management organization founded in
1972.
It did not use to be this way. “Thirty-five years ago, it was
horrendous,” says Jim LaMantia, PRIDE’s executive director.
“Con-tractors were viewed (by union members) as the enemy. ”The
increasingly deteriorating situation was righted when PRIDE
was founded to meld union members, contractors and business
owners into a solid unit, which realized that the goals of each
benefited the needs of the others. “PRIDE kept the town union,”
states Gerald Feldhaus, the executive director of the Building
and Construction Trades Council of St. Louis. “Nationwide, the
construction industry is 12 percent union,” LaMantia observes.
“Locally, it’s easily the reverse.” “And,” Feldhaus adds, “95
percent of that membership is at work.”
“In St. Louis,” Feldhaus explains, “economic incentives prompt
the unions, contractors and owners to work as a team. Without
PRIDE, St. Louis would be just like any other town where contract
negotiations are the only time they (the three component parts
of the Industry) get together. Our goal is to make St. Louis
the most productive, safest building trade environment in the
country.” $30 million dollars worthy of training have produced
a union work force that is 99 percent (“Our goal is a full 100
percent,” points out LaMantia) OSHA trained—which means that
each member of each building trades union will receive 10 hours
worth of OSHA safety training. “Owners know,” he continues,
“local unions provide the most productive, safest and best trained
work force in the country.”
Instead of simply coasting on its list of achievements, PRIDE’s
leadership is in the forefront when it comes to progressive
programs. For instance, for the Missouri Department of Transport/Interstate
64 project, under the PRIDE umbrella, MoDot has put money on
the table for training minority workers, while PRIDE has formed
a partnership with several minority construction groups and
engaged the University of Missouri-St. Louis as an administrator.
As a result, the massive highway project will also serve as
a recruiting tool for minority workers and a showcase opportunity
for minority contractors.
PRIDE’s Operation Excel, working in conjunction with the Construction
Careers Center (CCC), serves as a training program designed
with a goal of recruiting 200 minority workers into the workforce,
and has graduated three classes thus far. The program has supplied
local contractors with trained students ready to enter apprentice
programs. “We’ve received quite a lot of feedback from across
the country,” LaMantia says about the program. “We recognize
that the future of the trades lies in the hands of the apprentices.
Being both proactive and progressive ensures that future.”
Sandra Marks, director of supplier diversity at Washington University,
lauds PRIDE’s publication of “Careers In Construction,” a manual
detailing construction trade specialties and providing work
and training program descriptions, application processes and,
most important of all, contact information. “It gives people
access to information which, heretofore, only belonged to someone
related to the industry.” She also notes that PRIDE and the
Home Builder’s Association provide the funding for a Construction
Career Day Event which provides over 500 students (representing
40 high schools) a year a hands-on opportunity to meet with
trade representatives and to actually see what they do. She
also serves as a consultant to PRIDE for the Access Collaborative
Organ-ization, an association fostering a collaborated effort
to promote construction industry workforce and economic growth
in the St. Louis region. “I personally have seen a difference
(in PRIDE) since Jim LaMantia came aboard,” Marks says, citing
a new “synergy” and “willingness to try something new. PRIDE
recognizes the (organization as a) whole needs to address issues
of minority recruitment and participation.”
PRIDE has been in the forefront in both promoting the industry
and in addressing issues plaguing the industry nation-wide.
A Prevailing Wage Study done in conjunction with the University
of Missouri-Kansas City’s Department of Economics surveyed statistics
in ten Midwestern States and demonstrated that the prevailing
wage is less in Right-to-Work States. Board meetings involve
representatives of owners, contractors and unions. “We leave
the egos at the door,” Feldhaus grins, “and address the issues
pertinent to the industry.” The education of rank and file members
is addressed in job site lunch programs. Teamwork is stressed.
LaMantia explains “the concept of a job starts in the mind of
an owner, goes through an architect to the contractor to the
supplier to the worker.” All are viewed as working members of
the same team.
The PRIDE bottom-line is that productivity equates to job security
and its success has been noted from coast-to-coast, from border-to-border
and by the United States Department of Labor. LaMantia summarizes
succinctly: “We’re happy to say that PRIDE is integral in making
a stronger, more productive industry a St. Louis standard.”—and
a national model.
