Jan 30, 2012 12:19 PM
Peter Zarcone, an executive board member for General Building Laborers Local 66 in Melville, gave a presentation to the Southampton Town Board last Friday. ROHMA ABBAS
While many of today’s high school seniors will head off to college after graduation, a smaller group will have no such plans, according to Peter Zarcone, an executive board member of the General Builders Laborers Local 66, a Melville-based union.
And those are the teenagers who could benefit from a different kind of higher education, one that could eventually lead to paid jobs in the construction industry, Mr. Zarcone said while pitching a new idea to Southampton Town Board members at a work session on January 20.
He and his colleague, Mike Labate, asked the Town Board to consider requiring contractors working on private construction projects within the municipality to have a New York State Department of Labor-backed apprenticeship training program in place before town officials sign off on the work. The... more
And those are the teenagers who could benefit from a different kind of higher education, one that could eventually lead to paid jobs in the construction industry, Mr. Zarcone said while pitching a new idea to Southampton Town Board members at a work session on January 20.
He and his colleague, Mike Labate, asked the Town Board to consider requiring contractors working on private construction projects within the municipality to have a New York State Department of Labor-backed apprenticeship training program in place before town officials sign off on the work. The... more
As the migration of construction moves toward a population that is heavily ...more weighted toward immigrants, one can only guess that this union is desperate for young workers/members, and hoping to find them by talking Town officials into more and more regulation. While it would be admirable to find a way to train our local young people in construction, partnering with this old "up-island" organization is probably NOT the way to do it!
Any movement requiring contractors to run an apprentice program, will result in "spec" builders building in East Hampton, rather than Southampton, because it will add significantly to construction costs. So any programs to help our youths move toward construction should be undertaken by BOTH Towns at the same time, or not at all.
This type of program will also hurt small builders and favor larger ones.