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Overtime for Plumbers & Pipefitters, Laborers Unions
YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio -- Drilling for gas in the Utica shale and building the racino in Austintown have led the way in keeping the rank and file in the building trades unions working, says Don Crane, president of the Western Reserve Building & Construction Trades Council.
So has repairing the roads, bridges and other infrastructure that suffered more than the usual wear and tear last winter.
Two locals in the building trades council, 125 of the Laborers International Union of North America and 396 of the Plumbers & Pipefitters, are at nearly full employment and have taken on larger classes of apprentices, their business managers say.
“My hall’s empty,” reports Rocky DiGennaro, business manager of Local 125. “I’ve been calling other halls for manpower.”
Among the 500 active members of Local 396 are 87 apprentices.
“We just took in a class of 20,” says business manager Butch Taylor.
The Plumbers’ program takes five years and many of the recent apprentices have focused their learning on welding although “HVAC [heating, ventilating and air conditioning] has been in great demand,” Taylor relates, because of the construction at hospitals in Mahoning and Trumbull counties.
DiGennaro is delighted that his local with “close to 400 active members … took five apprentices this year so far [and] “we’ll probably take on eight or 10 more. Our labor is still in demand. It’s unbelievable.”
Support for drilling in the Utica shale, which includes building pipelines, resulted in considerable overtime for Taylor’s members. “A lot have worked six and seven days a week,” he says. “At one time 50% were [working] in the shale industry. Today it’s closer to 30%.”
While BP has pulled out of Trumbull County, Taylor sees that as a case of delayed demand until it becomes worthwhile for smaller energy companies to fill the void, likely within a decade.
The pipelines built to transmit natural gas from the wells recently drilled to the cryogenic plants have created a demand for more-skilled pipe welders, Taylor says, “and that number will grow over the next five years.”
The plumbers engage in “X-ray welding” where monitors use X-rays to ensure the welds have been done correctly, whether the conduit is made of carbon or stainless steel or aluminum. X-ray welding insures fewer defects and minimizes the need to dig up pipe for later repairs.
Where members of Local 396 engaged almost entirely in downhill welding before they were assigned to the pipelines, at those pipelines they perform mostly uphill welding, Taylor says. The materials on which they work is the same; all that’s changed is the direction they weld
“Downhill is a faster weld,” Taylor explains, but the larger bore pipe that carries natural gas requires uphill welding.
Laborers Local 125 has been working on the eight natural gas pipelines that cross Mahoning County, “with our people supplying 50% of the manpower” in their installation, DiGennaro relates. “Eighty-three percent of all pipeline work has been union work.”
His members worked “outside in a horrid winter,” he says, “because money is no object on a pipeline project. Every day gas isn’t being pumped is a day they aren’t making money.”
Hence, Laborers often found themselves scheduled to work 10 hours a day, six days a week, “with 35% of our members working overtime,” the business manager says.
Besides providing the men needed to build the pipelines, Local 125 has been working at Youngstown State University – “a ton of work,” DiGennaro remarks, “fixing parking decks” among other projects. They’ve also worked at the St. Elizabeth Boardman campus and the Madison Avenue Expressway where the A.P. O’Horo Co. has the repair contract.
The Ohio Department of Transportation is spending more than $60 million on roadwork in Mahoning County, including state Route 11, DiGennaro says, where his members work “mostly at night” to minimize interruptions to the flow of traffic.
DiGennaro credits Mahoning County officials for having the foresight to have the energy companies sign RUMA – road use maintenance agreements – before allowing the companies to transport materials to drilling sites. More important, the companies agreed to pay workers prevailing wages to repair the wear on the roads their trucks caused.
His membership has seen the benefit in their paychecks.
And 60 Laborers continue to work for Turner Construction at the racino in Austintown, DiGennaro points out.
Pictured: Tim Callion is the business agent for Local 396 of the Plumbers & Pipefitters, Roland "Butch" Taylor is the business manager, and Martin Loney is the union's Joint Apprenticeship Committee coordinator.
Editor's Note: This story first appeared in the June edition of The Business Journal.
Copyright 2014 The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.
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