The exploding South Florida concrete construction market, with an annual put-in-place value of $350 million, is proving a successful organizing target for the Laborers' International Union of North America.
The union began exploring the Florida concrete market in mid-2001. It is a market with a number of high-rise hotels and condominium projects along the Florida coast being built by contractors that often tap the immigrant community for craft workers despite deficiencies in language and skills. The contractors were "all competing using the people that were available at the competitive wage rate," says Bob Hanna, director of the Ohio Valley and Southern States Laborers' Employers Cooperation Education Trust, Nashville. That was not a living wage, he says.