Partnership with city  brings tremendous results

By Kevin Ferreira
Executive Director, Sacramento-Sierra’s BCTC

Happy Labor Day to our members of the Building Trades and everyone in our family of Labor.

As we head into the fall, I am proud and happy to report that we are well on our way to completing another banner year for our construction industry here in Sacramento. We continue to have a booming job scene and more projects in the pipeline than ever before. These are truly great days to be in the Building Trades.

I am especially excited to report that in August the Sacramento City Council voted unanimously to extend the Community Workforce and Training Agreement (CWTA) with the Sacramento-Sierra Building and Construction Trades Council.

You may remember that we fought hard to win this agreement in the first place to ensure our members help build the future of Sacramento. The agreement was meant to ensure that local hires are prioritized for many city building projects.

It is also meant to create training opportunities for local at-risk kids, veterans, women, those who have been homeless and others who have historically had a difficult time joining the trades.

Under the win-win agreement, the Building Trades got a much-needed boost to the numbers in our ranks by opening up more apprenticeship and pre-apprenticeship opportunities for those groups.

The agreement exceeded our expectations. We set out with the aim of a 50% local hire goal. We surpassed that by achieving a 76% local hire rate. That translates to an impressive 5,700 local workers on our construction sites.

Building on that success, the new agreement will include more zip codes – 16 in all – to give a chance to even more local workers. The fact that the agreement wasn’t just renewed, but expanded, shows just how powerful the program is, and how our city leaders value having a union workforce to get the job done right, on time, and on budget.

Now, this agreement will continue into the future, ensuring more local workers are trained and on the job for the Building Trades. This makes us stronger by ensuring that projects are built union, and that we have a deep enough workforce to meet the needs of the coming years.

So we celebrate this Labor Day with strength, and jobs, jobs, jobs. Those are good reasons to raise a toast to the Building Trades, and I salute you all on this important holiday.