Older Issues
The Building Tradesman Newspaper Editions
U.S. union membership sinks to historic low
Date: Feb-22-2013
WASHINGTON – More bad news for the nation’s labor movement. The union membership rate in the U.S. – the percentage of wage and salary workers who were members of a...
Record low construction fatality, injury rates
Date: Feb-08-2013
LANSING – Michigan experienced a record-low eight construction fatalities in 2012. And low injury rates in the industry are becoming the norm, too. “It’s amazing, construction has almost knocked itself...
Renewable energy capability to transform NMU plant
Date: Feb-08-2013
MARQUETTE – Northern Michigan University’s Ripley Heating Plant is getting a new look and a new purpose. Johnson Controls and the building trades are moving toward completion of the Ripley...
Big money backed long-term RTW plan in Michigan
Date: Jan-25-2013
Michigan’s right-to-work law didn’t just pop up out of the legislative swamp in last December ’s lame-duck legislative session. Big political money, from inside and outside of Michigan, started to...
Good teamwork noted in Beaumont’s busy build-out
Date: Jan-25-2013
TROY – A “vertical expansion” of the Beaumont Hospital-Troy West Bed Tower was completed in 2009 and included the addition of levels five, six and seven above an existing four-story...
Legally speaking, here are some right-to-work questions and answers
Date: Jan-25-2013
By Andrew Nickelhoff (The writer is a long-time Michigan labor attorney who prepared this document for distribution among local unions, to help answer members’ questions about Michigan’s new right-to-work laws)....
Snyder asks Supremes if RTW is Constitutional
Date: Jan-25-2013
LANSING – Gov. Rick Snyder did an end-around on any potential for labor unions to win a lower-court injunction against the state’s new right-to-work law. On Jan. 28, Snyder went...
So, boycott Koch Bros. products? Not so fast…
Date: Jan-25-2013
(By Jon Geenen, International Vice President, United Steelworkers) By now anyone who had not yet heard of the Koch brothers has been introduced to them. Every major newspaper and magazine...
Survey predicts better year for U.S. construction
Date: Jan-25-2013
A ‘generally optimistic’ outlook for U.S. construction in 2013 as a whole is tempered by some foreboding survey results of Michigan-specific contractors. Significantly more construction firms are planning to add...
Big money drove the RTW bus in Michigan
Date: Jan-11-2013
(By James P. Hoffa, General President, International Brotherhood of Teamsters) Extremist billionaires have achieved what seemed unthinkable only a few years ago. They rapidly forced through union-busting laws in Michigan,...