Seattle’s Building Boom is Good News for a New Generation of Workers

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By Ron Judd, The Seattle Times

For better or worse, Seattle is back in boom phase, fueled by the explosive growth of Amazon.com and other tech-related industries.

In Seattle’s love-it-or-hate it building boom, even the color of the construction cranes is a matter of perspective. For most of us, they’re ominous yellow flags, signifying change, progress or disruption. But for anyone wearing a hard hat and toiling beneath one, they’re pure gold.

Nothing new there. In a city defined by boom/bust cycles, the up and downsides of such “progress” have been the subject of booze-fueled banter in local imbiberies since Filson was selling clothes to miners, not hipsters. More than a century later, that bar tab is still open.

For better or worse, Seattle is back in boom phase, fueled by the explosive growth of Amazon.com and other tech-related industries.

Mostly lost in arguments over this seam-bursting is one undeniable human upside: Beneath all those hard hats are real, mostly local, people, quietly enjoying unprecedented job security.

If you can get him on the phone, just ask Monty Anderson, head of the Seattle Building & Construction Trades Council.

“I represent 11,500 construction workers,” says Anderson, who helps dole out work done by carpenters, cement masons, boilermakers, painters, bricklayers, electrical workers, glaziers, ironworkers, plumbers, roofers, sprinkler fitters, laborers and other craft workers. “All of them are working.”

Not just that day. In an industry known for its feast-or-famine uncertainty, the Seattle- area construction calendar is booked as far as the eye can see.

“We’re in for a good, solid, absolute full-employment decade,” predicts Lee Newgent, executive director of the Washington State Building & Construction Trades Council. “Starting right now.”

Read the rest of the article and view pictures at The Seattle Times' website here.