Another strong year, with more on the horizon

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

Happy New Year to the members and friends of our Building Trades, and to the family of Labor.

It has been a terrific year here at the Sacramento-Sierra’s Building & Construction Trades Council. Our members have been working hard, and this Council has also been hard at work ensuring that construction in our region is done by skilled union members.

Our skilled workforce provides employers with the experience, knowledge, and background necessary to ensure the completion of projects on time and under budget. Founded 50 years ago, SSBCTC represents more than 15,000 union construction workers in Sacramento, Amador, El Dorado, Nevada, Placer, Sierra, and Yolo counties and we are continuing to grow.

As we enter another year, my message to Building Trades members is that the best is yet to come. We weathered hard times during the pandemic, but those hard times have faded into a boom era that will continue for years to come.

In 2018, the SSBCTC entered into its first Community Workforce & Training Agreement (CWTA) with the city of Sacramento. This initial agreement covered all public works projects within the city with an Engineers Estimate over $1 Million. The CWTA came after the successful completion two years earlier of one of our proudest projects, the Golden One Center, which helped prove the value of our union labor in public works. 

Since the Golden 1 Center, the Building Trades Council has also secured agreements with Sacramento Unified School District, Natomas Unified School District, the City of Elk Grove and SMUD. Provisions of these agreements focus on training and employing a local workforce and providing opportunities to disadvantaged workers. Overall, more than 30 PLAs have been produced so far, covering 100 construction sites.

The Sacramento CWTA alone has put 8,000 of our members to work for a total of 1.8 million hours. That included 5,700 local hires, who put in 1.4 million of those hours. With a local hire goal of 50%, the Building Trades went to work and far exceeded that goal ending up at 76% of workers coming from our local area. Due to the overall success of the city-wide CWTA, the Sacramento City Council, Mayor, and City Manager all voted unanimously to re-new the agreement for an additional five years.

In September of this year the Building Trades once again remained engaged and secured another first when a CWTA with the County of Sacramento was secured for the upcoming $1.3 billion worth of work at the Sacramento Airport. The terms and conditions of that agreement are still being worked out, but they represent yet another victory for the hardworking members of the Building Trades.

I promise you as we continue forward, that is the kind of dedication and results you will continue to receive from this Council. We are proud to represent our members, and we are proud to fight for our collective future.

Happy holidays to all of our members and their families. Like I said at the start, the best is yet to come.