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---- Terry Moore, president of the Omaha Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO, said the six-county region had about 55,000 union members three decades ago, compared with about 35,000 in the past few years.
---- Moore attributed the decline to fewer meatpacking plants and downsizing by companies such as the former Western Electric, which once employed 7,700 people, many of whom were union members.
---- The plant's current owner, Commscope Inc. of Hickory, N.C., said earlier this year that it will close the facility.
---- Nebraska also is a right-to-work state, Moore said, meaning [Note] which makes it difficult to recruit workers into unions. The law means companies can't refuse to hire people because they don't belong to labor unions. That makes it more difficult for unions to recruit members.
---- The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics said 12.3 percent of wage and salary workers belonged to unions in 2009. That was down from 20.1 percent in 1983, the first year federal statistics were available.
---- Joe Ruff
Union electrician Ed Duda of La Vista has been out of work for a year, except for a couple of weeks' work in Wisconsin and Illinois.
Duda, who gets occasional jobs hauling horses across the country, said his unemployment insurance will end soon. Single and without a family to worry about, he hasn't had to dip into his retirement savings to pay the mortgage, as have some union workers, but he doesn't spend the way he used to.
“I haven't seen a slowdown like this before,” said Duda, who began work as an electrician in 1996 and belongs to the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 22. “Many of my fellow members, who have 20-plus years in the trade, have never seen anything this deep or this long.”
The situation is unlikely to improve soon.
Labor Day finds trade unions in the region and the nation anticipating a lean winter and a disappointing 2011 as commercial construction stagnates.
Businesses are nervous about expanding, financing is hard to come by, and there is excess commercial space, according to the American Institute of Architects, which tracks construction activity.
“This problem is coast to coast and border to border. Union and nonunion. It's the Great American Slowdown,” said Terry Moore, president of the Omaha Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO.
Moore said more than 2,000 bricklayers, pipefitters, plumbers and electricians in the Omaha-Council Bluffs region have been out of work since March, and the problem could continue into the third quarter of 2011.
The unemployment rate for each of the 14 building and construction unions is between 15 percent and 28 percent, Moore said. That compares with Omaha's overall unemployment rate of about 5.3 percent and with 4.7 percent for the state as a whole.
Nonunion workers face the same situation, Moore said.
Jerry Koubsky, president of D&J Electric, a nonunion company that does commercial and residential work, said he has laid off about eight workers, or 20 percent of his staff.
“We're not seeing what we need to keep all the trades busy,” Koubsky said.
The counties of Douglas, Sarpy, Cass, Burt and Washington in Nebraska and Pottawattamie in Iowa have more than 10,000 union and nonunion tradesmen working in commercial construction. About a third, or 3,300, are union members.
Residential construction, which generally employs more nonunion workers, has increased slightly after a five-year slowdown. But commercial building began to fade in late 2009.
During previous slowdowns, workers traveled out of the area to find jobs, Moore said, but this time there are virtually no openings anywhere.
Kermit Baker, chief economist for the American Institute of Architects, called this one of the steepest nonresidential construction downturns in generations.
Commercial and industrial construction dropped about 10 percent in 2009 and could fall by more than 20 percent this year, he said. The AIA expects construction to increase by only 3 percent in 2011 before gathering speed in 2012.
“We'll see nothing at all like a recovery in the first half of 2011,” Baker said.
Idled commercial tradesmen have few alternatives.
Union bylaws prohibit members from doing home maintenance jobs, installing a garbage disposer, for example, or wiring a basement home theater. Such work is supposed to be done by union members who work on the residential side, said Mark McColley, business manager for Steamfitters and Plumbers Local 464 in Omaha.
“There are probably some guys doing that, but they're not supposed to,” he said.
Moore said the future holds promise of renewed activity, with projects like the V.A. Medical Center and a new headquarters for the U.S. Strategic Command at Offutt Air Force Base.
But the V.A. center is only in the planning stages, and ground won't be broken on the new StratCom building until 2012.
Many union members were employed in 2009 at condominium and commercial projects in the Old Market, Aksarben Village and Midtown Crossing. But Moore said there are only two major building projects going on now — Blue Cross Blue Shield's office in Aksarben Village and TD Ameritrade's new campus in the Old Mill area — and they aren't employing many workers.
The largest building in the TD Ameritrade project, a $130 million high-rise headquarters, is in early stages of construction. The bulk of the work won't begin until later in 2011, Moore said.
The $98 million Blue Cross Blue Shield building is completed except for finishing work such as drywalling and painting. The insurance company will begin moving into the building in January.
Work also is winding down at TD Ameritrade Park downtown, the $128 million sports complex that will host the College World Series beginning next spring.
Mammel Hall, the new $27 million business school of the University of Nebraska at Omaha, opened at 67th and Pine Streets this August. One other UNO project, renovation of Roskens Hall, will be completed over the winter.
“If it wasn't for those projects, we'd have had a lot more unemployment than we do,” said McColley of the Steamfitters union.
He said about 100 of his 650 members aren't working, and that number could grow over the winter.
Some steamfitters and plumbers haven't worked for six months, McColley said, prompting several to request hardship withdrawals from their retirement funds so they can make their house payments.
“They's dipping into 401(k)s to save their house,” he said. “It's getting bad.”
Today's situation is a dramatic reversal over that in the past 10 years, when no more than 25 union workers were without jobs at any one time, McColley said.
“In the 1980s, when I was still working tools, we had some bad years. Out of 400 members, about 175 guys were off, and we traveled wherever we could,” he said. “Right now, there's just not a lot of work anywhere.”
Some jobs are available in the Omaha area, including service and repair work at hospitals, supermarkets and food manufacturing plants, McColley said. That kind of work could increase next year if the economy gains traction, McColley said.
Gary Kelly, business manager of IBEW Local 22, said about 230, or 20 percent, of the 1,100 commercial electricians are out of work. The union has 150 residential electricians, and about 15 of them aren't working.
But even those officially employed are working only two or three days a week.
“It's going to a be pretty tough winter,” Kelly said.
Like Moore, Kelly said the future looks a bit brighter.
In addition to the projects Moore mentioned, Kelly said the Omaha Public Power District has scheduled a three-month maintenance job at the Fort Calhoun Nuclear Station next March, which could keep about 90 electricians busy for three months. And a 150-room expansion at the Omaha Hilton could begin this fall.
“Without a doubt,” he said, “our members are trying to find a way to make things work.”
Contact the writer:
444-1117, joe.ruff@owh.com
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