By : Dr. Giovanna Brasfield, CEO and Principal Consultant of Brasfield & Associates, LLC; Amber Meshack, Director of LAWA’s Business, Jobs & Social Responsibility Division; and LCPtracker

Does your city or county implement workforce development goals on its public works projects? If not, should they? While perspectives on the matter vary, these initiatives can actually offer great value for both the project owner and contractor alike.

Reps. Maria Elvira Salazar (R-FL) and Rep. Veronica Escobar (D-TX) plan to introduce comprehensive immigration reform legislation to provide a pathway to legal status for millions of undocumented immigrants, revamp asylum processing, and slash visa backlogs.

Cleveland’s regional chamber of commerce is asking City Council to scale back its proposal to require more community benefits from developers that receive taxpayer incentives.

Citing “unintended consequences that would actually chill development,” Greater Cleveland Partnership CEO Baiju Shah asked council not to require community benefits from developers who receive incentives in the form of tax abatements and tax-increment financing.

You may remember that we told you earlier in the year that Ohio BWC’s “Base Rate Reduction” didn’t mean lower rates for everyone. Now we have the data on which base rates are going up, and the Ohio workers’ comp policies that increases will be impacted.

Manual (NCCI) codes within all industries will see increases, but some more than others. If your business classifies payroll under manual codes for commercial, transportation, construction or agriculture, some of your base rates may increase as much as 20%.

Recent data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that the number of unionized workers in the United States increased by 200,000 from 2021 to 2022. And that growth came entirely from workers of color. There was an increase in 231,000 unionized workers of color last year, while white unionized workers actually decreased by 31,000. 

This afternoon, the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee voted 12-9 to advance the industry-supported nomination of Jessica Looman to serve as Administrator of the Department of Labor’s (DOL) Wage and Hour Division (WHD). 

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The Mason Contractors Association (MCA) recently awarded BAC Local 5 family member, Nicole Pishnery its 2021 MCA Scholarship. Nicole graduated magna cum laude from Baldwin Wallace with a Bachelors of Arts degree in 2014.

The News-Herald

Glen Shumate, Executive Vice President, Construction Employers Association (CEA) and founder/executive director of Construction Assistance Association (CAA) is a 2021 ODOT Director's Award for Excellence in Diversity and Inclusion Advocacy.

By Michael Blakemore, Construction Executive

Construction’s current evolution sees the introduction of futuristic technologies, such as drones and augmented reality, that are radically shaping the way projects are built and delivered to clients. And yet, in other ways, the industry is stuck in the stone age. One such dinosaur is the existing template for the general contractor/trade partner dynamic, which is one of adversaries, not allies. 

Written by Lanre Onibalusi, Business 2 Community