Unions Come to Dakotas’ Aid

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http://www.mn2020hindsight.org/view/unions-come-to-dakotas-aid?utm_source=email&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=dakota

By Conrad deFiebre, Transportation Fellow, March 25, 2014 at 8:30 am

With more than 20,000 job openings and the nation's lowest unemployment rate, North Dakota is desperately seeking skilled workers to build infrastructure that keeps pace with its oil boom. Despite the conservative state's laws unfriendly to organized labor, six Minnesota-based trade unions are stepping up to help.



The unions launched the Dakota Construction Careers Campaign, which will conduct 12 open houses for job seekers in both North Dakota and South Dakota, another low-unemployment, anti-union state. "The work is so plentiful we don't have time to be picking a fight over that," said Robb Leer, spokesman for the campaign. "We're just asking people to give us a chance to provide them with training and a good career."

Minnesota-based union contractors' pressing need for workers in the Dakotas prompted the initiative by locals of bricklayers, masons, plasterers, painters, heavy equipment operators, iron workers and laborers headquartered in the Twin Cities, Leer said.

"A few years ago we had hundreds of members sitting on the bench," Laborers Local 563 business manager Tim Mackey said in a news release. "Now we're looking at a couple of decades worth of work for skilled labor from construction owners who want their projects built to specs, on time and on budget."

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