Sisters and Brothers, As I sit here and write this article for the Conduit, it is the first week in April, and finally we are coming out of the cold winter months. Employment is still strong and once again we are starting to get into Book 2 putting travelers out again. We should stay strong with employment for the rest of the year. The Calverton Solar Farm has been ramping up the last few weeks and should continue for a while. Some other projects ready to start soon are the 75,000 sq ft Welcome Center at Brookhaven Lab, Phase 2 of the Ronkonkoma Hub, the 250-million-dollar Good Samaritan Hospital job, Retail Village at UBS Arena, Avalon job in Amityville, the old Touro College job, more Amazon jobs, and the 2.5 million sq ft of industrial space at exit 66 Sills Road South Service Road, just to name a few.
At the February Union Meeting, the membership voted on a Bylaw change to lower the union dues by a half percent. This is the second time in two years that we have been fortunate to lower the dues. In the last two years, the union dues have been lowered by one full percent. Last year, for the year 2021, the Funds did very well. The Annuity did 9.4%, the 401k Fund did 9.6% and the Pension Fund did 15.9%. I am happy to report that the Pension is now fully funded for the first time at 109%.
As of today, we are in the middle of contract negotiations for both the “A” Construction contract and the CW/CE contract. I will have more details in the next Conduit article.
The past month has been very busy for the office. We had the New York City/Long Island Building Trades Conference, then the IBEW Construction Maintenance Conference, then the National BuildingTrades Legislative Conference - all the while still meeting with NECA twice a week to negotiate the contracts. In May we have the IBEW International Convention.
In the last Conduit I mentioned that we should be up over 3-million manhours for the year 2021. Well, we hit our mark and then some. Local 25 man-hours for 2021 were 3,526,306. These were the best hours in twenty years.
Brothers and Sisters, that ends my report for this issue of the Conduit. Remember to work safe, turn off energized circuits, and always stick together out there.