Applications are now being accepted for the 2013 New England Regional Council Scholarship Program. Last year 148 students applied and a total of $50,000 was awarded, including the top prize scholarship of $5,000.
To be considered for an award, a completed application package must be received by 5:00 pm on April 12, 2013.
Please review the Eligibility and Guidelines for the program before completing the application. Applicants will be required to write an essay of between 500 and 1000 words on the following topic:
What impact does “Right to Work” legislation have on labor unions, economic development and the standard of living in a state that adopt the law?
To eliminate bias, the scholarship committee is blind to the identity of the applicant. Essays are numerically coded to prevent any reader from having knowledge of the writer. Winners of the top two prizes will be asked to read their essays at the June 2013 delegate meeting. Persons awarded first or second place in a prior year are ineligible for first or second place in subsequent years.
Bryan Bouchard, who serves as Business Manger of Local 1996 in Vermont, Regional Manager for Northern New England and a member of the New England Regional Council of Carpenters Executive Board has announced his retirement, effective March 11. Bouchard is a 36-year member of the UBC.
Executive Secretary-Treasurer Mark Erlich is appointing John Leavitt to fill Bouchard's unexpired term on the Executive Board as well as his role as Regional Manager for Northern New England.
"Bryan served the members on staff for the Carpenters Union for 26 years," Erlich said. "He has been a quiet but effective leader who always carried himself with dignity and integrity. He will be sorely missed by his members and the Council. We wish him a long and happy retirement."
The 5th Annual New England Carpenters Ice Fishing Derby will be held Sunday, February 17 from 7am-2pm at Singletary Lake in Millbury, Massachusetts.
Organizer Joe Broderick will be set up at 5am at the lake, which can be accessed by West Main Street in Millbury. Look for a banner with the carpenters emblem by the boat ramp. There is a $20 fee to enter. Twenty-five percent of proceeds will be donated to the Valley Tech Educational Fund
Power augers will not be allowed before 7am and no tickets will be sold after 9am. Awards and a shore drawing will be held at the boat ramp at 2pm. Prizes will be awarded to the heaviest fish of any species, with 40% of proceeds going to the winner, 25% to 2nd place and 10% to 3rd place. Ties will be broken by fish length. All fish must be brought in alive.
For questions, please call Joe Broderick of Local 535 at 781-983-1383.
On January 12, 2010, a catastrophic earthquake hit Haiti, devastating an already impoverished nation. With much of the country's medical infrastructure destroyed, plans that were in place to build a 110-bed community hospital had to be revamped. The Ministry of Health, along with Partners In Health, launched a far more ambitious plan to build a 320-bed state-of-the-art teaching hospital in Mirebalais, which is located thirty-five miles north of Port-au-Prince in the Central Plateau.
Haiti's building industry, however, was simply unable to meet the needs of the new building design. Massive donations of time, materials and skills would be needed for the project to succeed. Union carpenters and contractors stepped up to the challenge to help secure materials and volunteer their time and labor to help build the hospital while teaching Haitian workers valuable craft skills
To learn more, check out the piece NERCC Executive Secretary-Treasurer Mark Erlich wrote for Commonwealth magazine about this amazing project following a trip to Haiti in 2012.
Got Training? Posted by
NERCC
on January 07, 2013 at 11:34 AM
Registration is now open!
Registration is now open for 2013 Spring Semester. All training is provided FREE to UBC members. Classes are filled on a first-come, first-served basis, so register early!
To register, log onto the training website NECTF.org by using your UBC number (found on your union card) and your date of birth.
Applications are now being accepted for the 2013 New England Regional Council Scholarship Program. Last year 148 students applied and a total of $50,000 was awarded, including the top prize scholarship of $5,000.
To be considered for an award, a completed application package must be received by 5:00 pm on April 12, 2013.
Please review the Eligibility and Guidelines for the program before completing the application. Applicants will be required to write an essay of between 500 and 1000 words on the following topic:
What impact does “Right to Work” legislation have on labor unions, economic development and the standard of living in a state that adopt the law?
To eliminate bias, the scholarship committee is blind to the identity of the applicant. Essays are numerically coded to prevent any reader from having knowledge of the writer. Winners of the top two prizes will be asked to read their essays at the June 2013 delegate meeting. Persons awarded first or second place in a prior year are ineligible for first or second place in subsequent years.
Misclassification has been a serious problem in the construction industry for years, and something against which the Carpenters union has led the fight locally, regionally and nationally. Union efforts resulted first in greater understanding and awareness among elected officials and now regularly lead to enforcement and publicity on the issue that is either directly a result of union action or an indirect result of efforts initiated by the union.
Two items broke this week that reinforce that point. In Worcester, Telegram and Gazette columnist Clive McFarlane wrote about efforts by NERCC Organizer Manny Gines to chase down employers who cheat by misclassifying workers as independent contractors or cheat them out of their wages.
McFarlane's column ties into an announcement earlier in the week by the Executive Office of Labor in Massachusetts that more they had found more than 2,300 workers misclassified by just three employers. Though the three companies were not involved in the construction industry, the eye-popping $11 million in unreported wages and millions of dollars the state should have received for unemployment insurance payments generated new stories that put the issue in front of the general public.
John Leavitt, the Business Agent for Local 1996 in Portland hit the airwaves this week to promote the union and help a disk jockey fill time as he stays on the air for four consecutive days. The Mark-a-thon is an annual event held by WCYY's Mark Curdo to raise money for the Center for Grieving Children. CYY is one of the radio stations on which NERCC and the New England Carpenters Labor Management Program place ads to promote the union and industry standards. They also carry radio broadcasts of New England Patriots games, on which the union advertises. Leavitt was on air with Mark on Tuesday afternoon at 3pm.
Yesterday was a good day for union carpenters across New England. Amazingly, all of the Council’s endorsed candidates won election. Obama swept the six states, including winning swing-state New Hampshire by a larger-than-expected margin. In the critical races -- Warren in Massachusetts, Murphy in Connecticut, Hassan/Kuster/Shea-Porter in New Hampshire, King in Maine, Cicilline in Rhode Island – our picks were all winners!!
There is no doubt in my mind that some of the credit for these outcomes belongs to all of you and our members. We worked as hard as we ever have in an election season. We used all the tools available to us – new and old techniques – to educate and mobilize our members. And they responded. Door knocking, phone banks, rallies, visibilities, robo-dials, tele-Town Halls. We had a good story to tell…and we told it well and often.
But it’s important to keep a clear-eyed perspective on where we stand the morning after Election Day 2012. In many ways, we “held serve”. We helped fend off the right wing Republican assault on the middle class. There should be a clear message to the nation’s anti-union forces that their philosophy is not welcome, that the voters do not buy an agenda that favors the wealthy over working families. Yet we still have a divided Congress; we still have a Republican Party that attacks unions. We have some new articulate champions but we also have some old foes. Paul Ryan is still chair of the House Budget Committee and there are no signs yet that the House leadership is prepared to move forward in terms of solving our country’s problems as opposed to scoring political points.
So, as much as all of us deserve to take a deep breath and feel a justified sense of pride in our efforts, we will need to remain vigilant. The economy will not fix itself; it will require more federal and state action to invest in jobs and people. And it will require our continued involvement. Our members need to work; that’s why we endorsed the candidates who understood that the best social program is a job.
Thank you all for your efforts these past weeks and months. It was worth it. Congratulations.
Mark Erlich
Executive Secretary-Treasurer
New England Regional Council of Carpenters
Mark Erlich, Executive Secretary-Treasurer of the New England Regional Council of Carpenters announces the union's endorsement of former Governor Angus King for United States Senate. The text of his entire statement is below.
"My name is Mark Erlich and I’m the head of the New England Carpenters union.
"We’re proud to have close to 20,000 members in Maine and the region’s other five states under our umbrella. And if anyone thinks they all look the same, act the same or think the same, I’m here to tell you that’s not the case. They don’t even sound the same. But there is a core set of beliefs -- the desire for decent wages, quality benefits and safe jobsites. Our members hold a variety of views on social issues, but they all know that “the best social program is a job”.
"We believe in partnerships. We know that in order for our members to succeed, our employers have to be competitive. We invest in training to ensure that quality and productivity offers a higher value for project owners. We provide contractors flexibility in hiring. And we have created a culture where hard work on the job and involvement in the community and our democracy is expected, not just suggested.
"Frankly, we’re pretty proud of the way our union is able to balance different interests in our industry. We look for the same in politics.
"We value the kind of independence and balance that Angus King represents.
"He’s been an entrepreneur, a fan of capitalism, but recognizes our system is not always perfect. Angus King knows that some regulation can go too far and shackle our economy. But he also knows that the abuses we saw four years ago in the financial system are unacceptable and have left a legacy of destruction in our industry and its workforce.
"Angus King has written critically about some of the trade agreements that the United States has negotiated. He has called for fair rather than free trade so that local workers and businesses that play by the rules are not undercut and subjected to unfair competition.
"Angus king is a fair and thoughtful man whose experience and independence are unquestioned. At a time of gridlock in our nation’s capital where scoring political points has become more important than salvaging our economy, Angus King will stand out as a voice of reason. Angus King knows that government can and must provide needed checks and balances.
"Like our union, Angus King is committed to solutions, not slogans. For all these reasons, the New England carpenters are proud to support Angus King as the next senator from Maine.
In recognition of Earth Day 2012 the New England Carpenters Training Fund is sponsoring a FREE electronics Recycling on Monday, April 23, 2012 at the New England Carpenters Training Center (NECTC), 13 Holman Rd, Millbury, MA 01527.
Items may be dropped off between the hours of 7:00 AM and 2:30 PM (any day this week or on Monday, April 23).
Please call the NECTC at 508-792-5443 to let them know if you will participating so they have an idea of when you will arrive and the items you will be bringing.
Information sessions are being held for members who would like to learn more about degree programs available through the union at Wentworth Institute of Technology. Two sessions are scheduled in the coming weeks.
Saturday, April 21 at 10AM: 750 Dorchester Ave., Boston, MA
Saturday, May 5 at 9 AM: 13 Holman Rd., Millbury, MA
Learn more general information about the program by clicking here.
Carpenters in Portland, Maine, recently completed a substantial portion of a $75 million expansion project at the Portland International Jetport.
Turner Construction was the General Contractor on the 145,000 square-foot expansion project. The new terminal features four new departure gates, five security checkpoints, a sky bridge that connects the adjacent parking garage to the concourse, and a new roadway system with separate roads for inbound and outbound traffic. It will greatly expand the capacity for travel to and from Maine.
The project, which broke ground in May 2010, added nearly 80 jobs for union carpenters. Funding for the project came from existing fees being charged to passengers as well as stimulus money from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
“This project came at a crucial time for our Local,” notes John Leavitt, the Business Agent for Local 1996. “We had several jobs fall through due to lack of funding. This project got a lot of members back on track.”
Built in 1968 and renovated twice, Portland Jetport was an ordinary looking commercial building, a mix of carpet, tile and concrete. The expansion project incorporated many modern design features including granite, wood, and lots of glass. The design is reflective of, and speaks to, the Jetport’s location in Maine.
The jetport has many environmentally friendly features, including a geothermal heating and cooling system, which will cut heating oil consumption by 50,000 gallons a year.
It is one of the greenest terminals in the nation. The airport plans to apply for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Gold Certification. If it receives this certification, it
will be one of just two Gold certified airports in the nation.
Although the jetport opened its new expanded terminal in early October, the project is ongoing and it expected to continue in to the beginning part of 2012. Carpenters are currently on site working on renovations to the original terminal, upgrading the facility to help it match the look and feel of the expansion section.
NERCC and the New England Carpenters Labor Management Program will be at the Mainebiz Momentum Convention in Augusta, Maine this Thursday, October 20, to talk about how union carpenters and contractors are the best joint venture in the construction industry.
If you're in the area, stop by the Augusta Civic Center and visit us in the exhibit hall between 8:30-5:00 pm.
Congratulations to union carpenters who recently completed construction on the expanded Portland Jetport. The building, which is receiving rave reviews, opened this weekend. It will greatly expand the capacity for travel to and from Maine. New England Cable News reported on the project:
Applications are now being accepted for the 2013 New England Regional Council Scholarship Program. Last year 148 students applied and a total of $50,000 was awarded, including the top prize scholarship of $5,000.
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