When Shell Chemicals starts construction on a
multibillion-dollar ethane cracker plant in 18 months, the project will put to
work more than 6,000 skilled laborers and union personnel, and local officials
are confident those positions can be filled locally.
Jason Fincke, executive director of the Builders Guild of
Western Pennsylvania, said the scope of the Shell project has never been seen
before in western Pennsylvania, and it will take a massive effort to train and
galvanize enough people to fill the jobs.
The project will require nearly 2,000 steamfitters, 1,000
electrical workers and 1,000 carpenters alone, Fincke said.
“Nothing is even remotely close, from a single-project
perspective, to how big this project is,” he said. “We can look back at Heinz
Field, PNC Park and the convention center that were all done at the same time,
and that was a challenge. But even those three combined aren’t comparable. In
terms of raw numbers, nothing has been this big.”
The Builders Guild, which comprises 17 local building
trades and 11 contractor groups, is already working stringently to prepare its
people for potential employment. That includes “beefing up” membership numbers
in the 17 apprentice schools for each trade in an effort to “put to work as
many people as we can.”
“Just about every trade is going to benefit from this,”
Fincke said. “The demands are going to be great, but we’re confident we can
meet them. It’s a great problem to have.”
Fincke said the biggest project in recent memory was the
construction of a new Allegheny Technologies plant in Brackenridge in Allegheny
County, which required more than 1,000 union workers.
“Basically (the cracker) is six times the size of the
manpower that was needed for one of the larger industrial projects in western
Pennsylvania,” Fincke said.
The cracker coming to Beaver County is a “blessing,”
Fincke said, especially given the decline of industry in western Pennsylvania.
Michael McDonald, president of the Beaver County Building
and Construction Trades Council and the business manager for the Laborers
District Council of Western Pennsylvania Local 833 in New Brighton, said Friday
the impact of Shell’s decision on labor can’t be overstated.
His local union only has about 200 active members, a
number he expects to swell to more than 1,000 once construction starts on the
plant.
He said there are more than 15,000 laborers in western
Pennsylvania alone, and all of those workers will get the first shot to work on
the Shell plant before work is outsourced to places such as Ohio and West
Virginia.
An agreement is already in place with Shell that local
workers will get the first crack at working on the plant, he said.
“There’s a potential for somewhere between 6,000 and
8,000 different workers on the project, but my guess is the most on site at the
same time will be between 3,000 to 5,000 workers,” McDonald said. “That number
is phenomenal, given what we’ve gone through in the last 30 years.”
The thousands of laborers working on the site won’t just
bring their skill sets to the area, he said, but also their wallets.
“We had one hotel in Beaver County for many years, and
now there’s seven out by the mall and they’re all booked seven days a week,”
McDonald said, noting that trend won’t change any time soon.
Looking even further down the line, Shell’s decision
could spur other companies to build more ethane cracker plants in the tri-state
area. Those plants would also likely use workers from western Pennsylvania for
construction.
“The potential of what this can do, it’s unbelievable,”
McDonald said.
Ken Broadbent, business manager with the Steamfitters
Local 449 in Pittsburgh, said there are only 1,700 active members in his union,
so the steamfitters have taken in three times the normal amount of apprentices
recently to prepare for the project
That number of new laborers in the workforce will
drastically impact the regional economy, he said.
“Those people will be making middle-class wages, health
coverage from day one with pensions,” he said. “It’s called the American Dream,
the middle-class way of life.”
Beaver County has required heavy labor in the past with
construction of the Beaver Valley Nuclear Power Station and the Bruce Mansfield
coal-fired plant. Because of that, Broadbent isn’t worried about labor’s
ability to rise to the challenge of building the cracker plant.
“There’s never been a better area of skilled labor from
the building trades,” he said. “We’re spoiled by the work ethic of the people
in this area who’ve always worked hard.”
Tony Tepsic, president of the United Steelworkers Local
1212, said Shell’s decision will have tremendous ramifications for steel
workers across the region.
Nearly all of his 200-plus members have been through
tough times in the last year, from failed contract negotiations to an eventual
lockout at Allegheny Technologies’ Midland plant.
Their loyalty still remains with ATI but, if they aren’t
back to work soon, he’s sure his members will look across the river to the
Shell site.
“They’re well-trained and their first priority will be
the ATI jobs, but from the way (ATI) has treated us over the past several
months, I’m sure there will probably be a tendency for them to find other
employment,” he said.
Either way, the Shell decision is “great for labor”
across western Pennsylvania, Tepsic said.
Larry Nelson, a business representative for the
International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local Union 712 in Vanport
Township, said he’s already started increasing apprentice numbers in
anticipation for the Shell plant.
The local IBEW has had a hand in building every major
industrial project in Beaver County for the last 100 years, Nelson said,
including both power plants along the Ohio River.
The Shell cracker won’t be any different, and Nelson
expects the benefits to last for many years.
“For IBEW this is fantastic,” he said. “It’s fantastic
for all labor.”
Source: The
Times Online
No comments:
Post a Comment