Category: News Line

Industry executives, suppliers and stakeholders joined ABC members for the third annual ABC Diversity & Inclusion Summit in Washington, D.C., on June 19-20.

The program was headlined by Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Ben Carson and included sessions on diversity and inclusion success stories, the Tuskegee University architecture and construction science program and the impact of ABC’s Safety Training Evaluation Process (STEP) on MBE companies.

Secretary Carson delivered an address to summit attendees on the value that contractors can bring to furthering HUD’s mission to make home ownership a reality for all Americans in a time when that dream has become an economic glass ceiling for many families. “ABC is such an important part of what makes America work,” Carson remarked. “My biggest expectation is that they [contractors] will get heavily engaged with Section 3…recognizing that everyone in this country is going to be part of the engine, or part of the load.” 

On June 19, keynote speaker Nancy Giordano, futurist, strategist and founder/CEO of Play Big, Inc., Austin, Texas, kicked off the summit with “The Case for Disruptive Thinking,” encouraging leaders to be more experimental in the ways they create value for society. Jobs of the future must incorporate technology, flexibility and creative thinking to attract diverse talent and stay ahead of rapidly changing workplace models. “We can’t be trying to fit [potential employees] into a structure from the 1980s and 1990s that isn’t necessarily working now,” she said.

Giordano engaged in a Q&A with Larry Lopez, vice chair of ABC’s Diversity Committee and founder of Baltimore-based Green JobWorks, who led a networking session for audience members to engage with employers including Balfour Beatty, Clark Construction, Hitt Contracting, Hensel Phelps and Turner Construction. 

Joanne Brooks, vice president & counsel, Surety and Fidelity Association of America, moderated “Diversity Success Stories,” a session during which panelists shared insights on challenges they overcame as well as best practices for MBE companies. Speakers included Brooke Wenger, director of business development of Warehaus, York, Pa.; James Keaney, Jr., president of Diversity Construction Group, Cheshire, Conn.; and Patricia Bonilla, president of Lunacon Construction Group, Miami.

A panel of representatives from ABC’s strategic partners, including Autodesk, CNA, Dexter + Chaney, The Contractors Plan, Tradesmen International and United Rentals, discussed how they can help ABC member companies win and deliver construction projects safely, ethically and profitably. 

Additionally, speaker Erick W. Harris Esq., of the Tuskegee University Board of Trustees, discussed the rich history of Tuskegee University and its Robert R. Taylor School of Architecture and Construction Science program, paying particular attention to the quality graduates of that program who are ready to enter the workforce. 

Finally, in “ABC Safety Academy,” ABC President and CEO Mike Bellaman led a discussion with Diane Koester-Byron, president of I.E.-Pacific, Inc., Excondido, Calif.; and Kirby Wu, president of Wu & Associates Inc., Mount Laurel, N.J., on how ABC’s STEP program helped them transform their company cultures, deploy industry best practices and achieve world-class results. Koester-Byron and Wu agreed that achieving STEP Diamond and Platinum status, respectively, has helped to make each of their companies safer, more competitive and more profitable. 

Bellaman concluded the Diversity & Inclusion Summit by expressing his excitement about the industry’s embrace of initiatives to expand diversity and inclusiveness in the construction industry and reiterated ABC’s commitment to this goal.

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On June 20, President Trump nominated Marvin Kaplan to fill one of two vacant seats on the five member National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).

Kaplan serves as counsel to the commissioner of the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission, an independent organization designed to decide workplace safety and health disputes between the Department of Labor and employers. 

According to a White House statement, Kaplan will serve for the remainder of a five-year term expiring August 27, 2020.

Additionally, the statement announced Trump’s nomination of several other key appointments throughout various departments, including Patrick Pizzella to be Deputy Secretary of Labor and Michael Platt, Jr., to be the Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Legislative and Intergovernmental Affairs.  

In April, the U.S. Senate confirmed Trump’s nominee for NLRB Chairman, Philip Miscimarra. However, President Obama’s NLRB appointees, Lauren McFerran and Mark Pearce , control the NLRB’s majority and agenda until the U.S. Senate confirms these nominees. 

ABC, along with the Coalition for a Democratic Workplace, submitted a letter to the Trump administration in June, asking for President Trump to nominate candidates and fill the two vacant seats on the NLRB.

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ABC applauded President Trump’s  executive action on apprenticeships, which is an important step toward building new career opportunities for all Americans. 

If fully implemented, the order will allow industries to build innovative workforce development systems that address glaring skills gaps in our workforce.  With the construction industry currently facing a workforce shortage of as many as 500,000 jobs, this order is an important first step to allow more entryways into becoming a construction professional.     

“Associated Builders and Contractors looks forward to working with the secretaries of labor, commerce and education to implement the executive order and develop new, innovative and effective models to train an expanding American workforce,” said ABC President and CEO Mike Bellaman.  “With our industry in need of half a million workers today and even more in the future, we need to expand upon current apprenticeship methods that have left us with a worker shortage and embrace an all-of-the-above training approach to meet the needs of a 21st century workforce. “

ABC and its 70 chapters are doing their part to train construction professionals using state-of-the-art and flexible learning models like “earn while you learn,” just-in-time task training, competency-based progression, work-based learning and government-registered apprenticeships to build a safe, skilled and productive workforce.

In addition to an annual investment of $1.1 billion into work-based training by ABC member companies, ABC local chapters and affiliated training centers offer more than 800 apprenticeship, craft, safety and management training programs around the country, including Department of Labor-approved apprenticeship programs.  In partnership with the industry-recognized curriculum and credentials developed by NCCER, a not-for-profit 501(c)(3) education foundation, ABC offers this training at over 1,400 locations across America. 

ABC is looking forward to working with President Trump and Secretaries Acosta, Ross and DeVos to craft industry programs that expand the U.S. Department of Labor’s definition of registered apprenticeship and offer all Americans the opportunity to achieve their dreams and build a fulfilling career.

Learn more about how ABC is building the people who build America at workforce.abc.org.

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In the waning days of the Obama Administration, the Treasury Department released proposed regulations under Section 2704 that could have a profound impact on the valuation and therefore taxation of family businesses. The regulations as written would institute back-door “family attribution,” a standard that has been rejected by the courts for decades, and that would jeopardize traditional discounts for minority ownership stakes, inflating tax bases by as much as 40 percent.  As the regulations were not finalized by the time President Obama left office, there is no effective date, but the rule remains pending.

Last week Associated Builders and Contractors along with several other trade groups released a new study on the impact these pending Section 2704 regulations would have on family businesses and their employees.

Titled “An Economic Analysis of Proposals to Limit the Recognition of Valuation Discounts for Transfers of Interests in Large Family Businesses,” the study by Dr. Robert Shapiro finds that the proposed rule would hinder the ability of these companies to grow and hire. According to the study:

• ·         Limiting valuation discounts under the proposed rule would increase estate taxes for large family businesses by $633.3 billion in present discounted dollars over the next 46 years.
• ·        To prepare for this additional burden, these businesses would divert resources, equivalent to the additional tax they will owe, from their normal business investments.
• ·         The projected reductions in their investments in equipment and machinery would reduce GDP growth, in 2016 dollars, by $2,476 billion from 2016 to 2062.
• ·         This slower growth also would reduce job creation over the next decade by 105,990 jobs. 

The study was sponsored by Associated Builders and Contractors and several other groups, including the Real Estate Roundtable, the S-Corp Association and the Independent Community Bankers of America, with the aim of highlighting the threat the proposed regulations present to family businesses and their employees.

With the Trump Administration actively seeking ideas on how Treasury can reduce red tape and encourage investment and growth, withdrawing the Section 2704 rules should be job one.  ABC and its stakeholder allies will continue to work with the administration to rescind these regulations and protect family firms.

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On June 9, ABC joined more than 50 organizations to send a letter to the U.S. Senate in support of maintaining a stable employer-sponsored health care system as the body works on legislation to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act (ACA).

“Chief among the threats to employer-sponsored coverage are proposals to tax workers’ health coverage, whether by preserving the ACA’s 40 percent ‘Cadillac’ tax or imposing new taxes on employee health care benefits,” according to the letter.

Although Senate leadership has indicated the House-passed American Health Care Act (AHCA) (H.R. 1628) will undergo revision before its vote, the letter voices support for nearly all of the provisions in the House-passed bill that reduce and eliminate taxes.

ABC has advocated for provisions in the AHCA that:

• Zero out the penalties for the employer mandate (retroactive to Jan. 1, 2016);
• Repeal the flexible spending account (FSA) contribution limit;
• Increase the maximum contribution limit on health savings accounts (HSAs);
• Repeal the restriction on over-the-counter medications for FSAs and HSAs;
• Repeal the net investment income tax;
• Repeal the Health Insurance Tax, also known as the HIT (ABC is a member of the Stop the HIT Coalition); and
• Repeal the medical device tax.

On May 4, 2017, ABC sent a letter in support of H.R. 1628 to the U.S. House of Representatives, which passed the bill by a vote of 217-213.

ABC will continue to provide updates in Newsline on the status of the AHCA and other health care issues that impact ABC members.

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The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) has begun to take action on two Obama-era regulations that were consistently opposed by ABC.   

In a House Appropriations subcommittee hearing, U.S. Secretary of Labor Alexander Acosta announced he will issue a Request for Information (RFI) in order to collect information from the public on the overtime rule. The RFI will likely act as the first step in issuing a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, a process that would change or rescind the rule permanently.

The overtime rule, which was blocked in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District Court in of Texas in November, 2016, would have doubled the current minimum standard salary level for exemption from $23,660 to $47,476 annually and automatically increased it every three years.

On June 12, DOL issued a new notice of proposed rulemaking to rescind the “persuader” rule, officially named the “Interpretation of the ‘Advice’ Exemption in Section 203(c) of the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act.”

Comments on rescinding the persuader rule, which ABC and its members have opposed since it was first proposed in 2011, are due August 11.

The final persuader rule never went into effect. On Nov. 16, 2016, U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas permanently blocked the DOL’s persuader rule. In finding the rule unlawful, the court maintained employers’ right to obtain advice from labor relations experts.

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To celebrate Workforce Development Week, June 12-16, the Trump administration planned a full schedule of events as a backdrop to discuss the growing demand for skilled labor, address the need to fill six million jobs and expand apprenticeship programs across the country.

On June 12, U.S. Secretary of Labor Alexander Acosta released a memorandum asking other agencies to support President Trump’s apprenticeship initiative by reducing regulations on these programs.

“In the United States, apprenticeships have languished for decades (except in construction trades, where they have remained strong),” Acosta said in the memo. “The benefits of apprenticeships are significant and measurable.”

Secretary Acosta also said in a White House press briefing that the six million job openings in America will be filled through the expansion of apprenticeships and other “private-private partnerships.”  

On June 13, President Trump, Secretary Acosta, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, Trump’s daughter and adviser Ivanka Trump and several private-sector leaders visited Waukesha County Technical College (WCTC) to discuss increasing access to apprenticeships and providing more options for apprenticeships to students as early as high school. ABC Wisconsin sponsors three construction apprentices programs at WCTC with more than 150 participants.

“We want a future where every high school in America offers apprenticeship opportunities for young citizens,” Trump said at the WCTC event.

Trump is also expected to sign an executive order concerning these programs, reportedly to change the certification process and relax government oversight of federally funded apprenticeship programs in order to meet the market-driven demands and workforce development needs of the private sector. Following a shooting at a Congressional baseball practice the morning of June 14, Trump cancelled an event at the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL), where he had planned to sign the executive order after delivering remarks to DOL staff and stakeholders.

It is unclear if the rest of the events for Workforce Development Week will be held.

To learn more about how ABC is building the people who build America, visit workforce.abc.org.

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Last week, President Trump, along with Vice President Pence and U.S. Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao, launched the White House’s Infrastructure Week and revealed several high-level details on the administration’s forthcoming infrastructure package.

On June 5, President Trump and Vice President Pence delivered speeches to introduce the administration’s Air Traffic Reform Initiative, an effort that aims to modernize and privatize the air traffic control sector.

On June 8, Trump and Pence hosted the administration’s first infrastructure summit. While Pence spoke at the summit’s working luncheon, Trump joined several governors and mayors from across the country in a roundtable discussion on infrastructure.

The President revealed the creation of a new council on construction permitting and approvals to “help project managers navigate the bureaucratic maze,” according to his speech at a Department of Transportation (DOT) rally on June 9.

“This council will also improve transparency by creating a new online dashboard allowing everyone to easily track major projects through every stage of the approval process,” Trump said. “This council will make sure that every federal agency that is consistently delaying projects by missing deadlines will face tough, new penalties…We will hold the bureaucracy accountable.”

Trump also said the administration’s efforts for “massive permit reform” has led to the creation of a new office in the Council of Environmental Quality, whose goal is to “root out inefficiency” and “streamline federal and state and local procedures.”

According to the White House website, President Trump included $200 billion in his budget proposal as part of a $1 trillion investment plan to rebuild infrastructure. A series of infographics on the plan to rebuild America’s infrastructure has been posted on the White House blog, including a goal to create one million registered apprentices across all industries in two years, which is double the current number of 500,000. 

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In the lead-up to Legislative Week, ABC is working with Washington, D.C.-based news radio powerhouse WTOP to help tell ABC’s story to Congress, the administration and federal agencies.  The Building America thought leadership series includes a mix of radio commercials, website ads, video features and digital content that highlight ABC’s commitment to workforce development, safety and the merit shop philosophy.

The campaign includes video and audio interviews featuring ABC National Chair Chuck Goodrich, CEO Mike Bellaman and Vice President of HSE and Workforce Development Greg Sizemore. This content is available to WTOP listeners in the ABC Resource Center as well.

The campaign will run through the end of the year. Look for podcasts, white papers and a legislative quarterly update in the coming weeks as additional content is produced, and please share it with your friends and your community!

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On June 7, Secretary of Labor Alexander Acosta announced the withdrawal of the U.S. Department of Labor’s (DOL) 2015 and 2016 joint employment and independent contractor informal guidance. According to a DOL press release, “removal of the administrator interpretations does not change the legal responsibilities of employers under the Fair Labor Standards Act and the Migrant and Seasonal Agricultural Worker Protection Act, as reflected in the department’s long-standing regulations and case law.”  

The announcement shortly preceded Secretary Acosta’s appearance before the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies for a hearing on the White House budget proposal.

For more information about DOL’s June 7 action, please read ABC general counsel’s, Littler Mendelson P.C. analysis titled, “DOL Withdraws Joint Employer and Independent Contractor Guidance” which provides additional important context to this action:

“The removal of the Wage and Hour Administrator’s Interpretations (AIs) does nothing to resolve the confusion surrounding joint employment in the labor law context. The National Labor Relations Board’s pivotal decision in Browning-Ferris Industries fundamentally changed the joint-employer standard under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). Although that decision has been appealed to the D.C. Circuit, its resolution is far from certain. During the last congressional session, lawmakers proposed legislation to clarify the joint-employer definition, but it did not advance.

“Moreover, the AIs’ rescission does not resolve the conflicting interpretations of joint employment and independent contractor status under various state laws, so employers are no closer to a bright-line standard on either issue. What the DOL’s move shows, however, is that the current administration is taking steps to rein in the expansive interpretation of ’employment’ that had evolved in recent years.” 

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