Despite a shift in federal government that has left it less friendly to labor unions than the previous administration, the mood at the annual conference of the Ironworkers union and its signatory contractors, held in Orlando, Fla., Feb. 24-26, was upbeat. Major topics included the rollout of a new mental health and suicide prevention website for IMPACT (Ironworkers Management Progressive Action Trust) members and their families as well as opportunities presented by megaprojects and mass timber. 

Several speakers on a panel of owner's representatives, which included leaders from U.S. Steel, Ford Motor Co., General Motors and the U.S. Dept. of Energy’s Los Alamos National Laboratory, voiced their strong support for working with union craftworkers and their signatory contractors, but noted that the need for skilled workers will continue to grow as megaprojects funded by such legislation as the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and the CHIPS and Science Act continue to move forward. 

Eric Grubb, Ford’s director of construction, said one of his biggest fears in not having enough workers for projects in coming years. “I think in the next five to 10 years we're going to lose a lot of people, and ... we have lots of mega projects coming up. We're going to need more.”

He noted however, that IMPACT’s development of a team of workers who travel to locations needing workers a few years ago helped avert shortages at new multibillion dollar Ford EV battery plants currently under construction in Kentucky. The traveling workforce program “ensures that we all get the trained professional people that we need. And it was fantastic,” Grubb said. 

Brian Watkins, director of facilities management at Los Alamos National Laboratory, said that his experience has been that union contractors “always deliver. It makes it so much easier when you can point to past projects and know that we've seen [that] over and over again with our union contractors. They always deliver, and that builds that credibility.”  

Rise of Mass Timber

Another opportunity market for Ironworkers is in mass timber, several conference speakers said.  Although mass timber was first used in Australia in the 1970s, its popularity as a sustainable and viable option globally has soared in recent years, due to greater availability of cross-laminated timber (CLT), along with changes to the International Code Council’s standards allowing CLT to be used for taller multistory buildings. 

Nick Milestone, senior vice president of projects and construction Mercer Mass Timber, said these factors have contributed to a market expected to grow exponentially in the coming decades. “The fact that we are on a growth trajectory is a great opportunity” for ironworkers, he said. 

Brandon Brooks, construction management program manager at WoodWorks, which established a construction management program specific for mass timber projects in 2019, invited ironworkers to recognize that rather than taking away jobs, mass timber projects could provide opportunities. After all, he pointed out, hybrid mass timber buildings use the same structural steel and connections found in many other types of buildings. “Open your minds to this,” he said. “This is coming, and it’s here to stay. Understand and get to know it … and show that this is a good fit for you.”  

A major emphasis at the conference was workers' well-being. IMPACT wants to be able to provide resources for workers, contractors, and their families so they can find help when facing mental health challenges, IMPACT CEO Kevin Hilton said.

The group’s board approved the rollout of a new website last summer, which went live in December, and the site is receiving regular traffic, Hilton told ENR. The website is designed to provide a resource to both contractor members and their families, as well as ironworkers and their families, to be able to “self-assess and then access tools that will help them address” mental health issues that come up, including thoughts of suicide, he said. 

Steve Sieracke, president of Holland, Ohio-based Blackswamp Steel, said his firm has incorporated mental health as a routine component of safety talks, and he says he’s seeing a shift. “IMPACT has been taking the stigma out of this, and all these tough iron workers are actually talking about it in the field.”

Rising Concerns

Despite the optimism, there were undercurrents of unease. Although Sage Consulting economist Anirban Basu, who opened the conference with a construction forecast, noted that the economy grew 2.8% last year, “most economists don’t expect that level of growth for 2025,” he said, with inflation staged to make a comeback, and continuation of higher interest rates. Ultimately, the forecast is for growth in 2025, but “there are risks, including rising interest rates and falling asset price selling,” he said.   

Eric Dean, general president of the Ironworkers union, told ENR that “It’s too soon to tell,” what impact the Trump administration's tariffs with Mexico, Canada, China, and potentially other nations will have, but “you can predict that it's going to put some downward pressure on the steel fabricators and the steel erectors for both steel projects and reinforcing steel projects.”

Still, he remains optimistic, noting there’s a lot of work to be had, and that the Ironworkers has established strong relationships with numerous owners that will help its members ride out any rough patches. He said that the efforts to meet the growing demand began in earnest in 2022, when the union made the decision to make recruiting new workers a priority. He added that the development of a cadre of traveling workers has helped owners in a pinch, including at the $5.8 billion Ford Lightning facility currently under construction in Memphis, Tenn., he said.