The following is an excerpt from Walter P. Palmer, 3rd’s Publisher’s Column in the Winter 2010 Construction Today (R) magazine.

Forward or reverse?

This winter the industry in planning mode. Contractors are preparing to weather 2010, developers are trying to secure funding for projects and unions are working hard to keep people employed. At the GBCA we are planning for the upcoming labor negations. This Association will bargain with the carpenters, laborers, cement masons, operating engineers and rodsetters – whose contracts expire on May 30. Many of the trades including the Electricians, Roofers, the Sheet Metal trades, and the Mechanical contractors all are also preparing to begin the bargaining process in the coming weeks and months.

I believe we are at a crossroads.

One path is the road we have been down before which leads to contentions bargaining and work stoppages, and that looses focus on the market and the future. This process has resulted in a reduction of market share and man-hours. The proof that this age-old process doesn’t work is repeated countless times around the nation. Do we want to follow down the same path as Atlanta, San Antonio, and Huston? And much closer to home, dare I say New York, Boston, and Chicago?

All of these cities suffer growing non-union market share. Do we want to go backwards? No. We want to go down the other path. We want to advance, grow, build, and provide good jobs, with fair benefits to more people than ever before.

We want more market share, more jobs, more projects and more honest work. This needs to be our focus — the increase of market share and an increase of man-hours.

The road to take is not the path of before, but the path ahead. This industry is strong with many great attributes. We have built this region with good, strong labor unions and a stable base of general and subcontractors. We must show our clients and customers that we can and will work better than our competition. We will give value to our clients and they will demand us not because they are forced to use union contractors, but because they want to use good union contractors.

This will not be easy, but we are not the people who are called upon for the easy work. We are the people that are called when the challenge is hard. When we work together, capitalizing on our strength of education, training, safety, drug-free workforce, and productivity, no one can compete with us. We must all step forward join together, understand and listen to each other and naturally we will grow. When the road ahead is tough, history shows that the people that succeed are the ones that sit down, plan, train and work problems through.

And that can be us.