News
Latest news updates from MCA-KC.
Rewards for Participating in MCA-KC Educational Programs & Events
MCA-KC provides high quality educational programming and activities that help our contractors improve the productivity and profitability of their businesses.
Whether it’s for owners, principals, project managers, or others within your companies, the objective is to help you and your employees reach your organization’s goals and strengthen union contracting.
There’s a lot of value in these programs – the learning…the networking…the sharing of ideas. However, we’ve also sweetened the deal for you.
It’s called the MCA-KC Education Stipend program. It rewards contractor companies that actively participate in the local MCA-KC organization and activities by granting stipends that help them defer the costs of attending the national MCAA educational events.
With this Education Stipend program, companies earn participation points by attending MCA-KC events and activities throughout the year, and by doing so may receive up to two $2,500 stipends in a calendar year.
Each stipend, which is valid for a full year from the date that the award is issued, may be used to defer the costs (e.g., transportation, lodging, registration, etc.) for any single MCAA, MSCA, PCA, or NCPWB event.
For a complete description of the stipend program and to view your company’s point totals so far in 2012, as well as your outstanding stipend awards, please visit the MCA-KC website.
Important Safety Notice
DeWalt Power Tools has identified a potential safety hazard with certain large angle grinder side handles. The company is concerned that under certain circumstances a small number of side handles could exhibit a condition where the handle could break, causing the user to lose full control of the unit. Click here for a copy of the notice.
MCAA President Mark Rogers Visits with MCA-KC Contractors
MCAA President Mark Rogers Visits with MCA-KC Contractors
MCAA President Mark Rogers
Before MCA-KC’s Kansas City Night on January 20, MCAA President Mark Rogers spent the morning visiting with over a dozen MCA-KC contractor members at the January Service Managers Meeting.
In addition to conducting an “open discussion” with the contractors regarding the significant impact that mechanical service has delivered in sustaining contractors during this tough economy, Mark also provided an overview of MCAA’s educational program that is currently being presented across the country to UA Business Members titled, “The REAL Cost of an Hour of Labor”.
The purpose of the program is to acquaint our labor teammates with the real-life challenges and scenarios that our contractors face each day in trying to bid and win projects against non-union shops. Through hands-on exercises, UA members break into teams to bid a project and are given a time limit to submit their sealed bid in an effort to be the winning bidder.
Mark Rogers with MCA-KC contractors
In Mark’s words, “It’s an eye-opening experience for many of these participants to see how our contractors have to cost out unforeseen situations that impact a job with additional man-hours that were not part of their bid.” This exercise is all about education, understanding the realities of the business, and working together to get back market share.
The goal is to have this training delivered in all areas across the country.
The New Breslin Strategies Report…
A perfect “tie-in” to Mark Rogers’ “The REAL Cost of an Hour of Labor” (described in the above article) is the latest “Breslin Strategies Report”. Mark Breslin, who speaks to tens of thousands of field craftsmen and apprentices annually across the United States and Canada, surveyed these individuals for their response to the question, “How much money do you think a contractor makes on a one million dollar job?” You can read his report here.
Kansas City Night Remarks by MCAA President Mark Rogers
MCA of Kansas City “Kansas City Night”
January 20, 2012
MCAA President Mark Rogers
Good evening! I’m delighted to be here with you for Kansas City Night. Thank you to your President Bill Adams, and your exec Bob Looman, for your hospitality.
Before I go any further, I want to tell you how much I appreciate your strong support of MCAA – and of the MSCA, the PCA, and the Pipe Welding Bureau, too. It is my honor this evening to congratulate you on your local accomplishments and also to thank you for what you contribute to the MCAA.
We are successful largely due to the involvement of the volunteers who serve our industry. Only by working together has our association been able to develop new programs and services, new educational opportunities, new marketing ideas, new ways for us to provide value to owners, and new ideas to help us run our businesses more profitably.
I want to publicly recognize the members of the MCA of Kansas City who also serve the national industry with their time and expertise
Smitty Belcher served as MCAA president and did a fantastic job for the association. He continues to serve as the management co-chair on the UA National Pension Fund, and his wise counsel is most appreciated.
Mike Gossman is an esteemed MCAA past president as well, and Mike serves as a management trustee on the UA National Pension Fund as well.
Mike Kotubey is a past national Board member, past Chairman of the Plumbing Contractors of America, and has been a strong supporter of our career development program.
Tim Moormeier has my great respect for his able chairmanship of the Labor Estimating Manual Committee. Tim was the driving force behind the creation of the WebLEM, one of the most valuable resources MCAA provides its members – free of charge as a benefit of membership I might add!
Brian Muggy is a member of the Building Information Modeling Committee, Don Campbell serves on the Safety Committee, and Bruce Belcher is a long-standing member of the Education Committee.
Mike Belcher serves on the MSCA Board of Managers and the MSCA Labor Committee, and Phil Nehring is a member of MSCA’s Marketing Committee.
And, Scott Heun is a member of the Pipe Welding Bureau’s Technical Committee.
All I can say is awesome! Please join me in a round of applause to thank these fine gentlemen for all they are doing for our industry!
Now I’d like to take just a minute to talk about what MCAA’s done recently to help you and your companies continue to succeed.
On the advocacy front we had a very good year.
First, in July a coalition MCAA created and led was able to finally resolve in our favor a proposed accounting rule that was threatening our bonding capacity and ability to compete and get new business. As I hope you all know by now, the Financial Accounting Standards Board – affectionately known as FASB – proposed an accounting standard last year that would have had extremely serious financial repercussions for firms participating in multiemployer benefit plans, which happens to be every member of MCAA.
MCAA fully realized the incredibly serious threat this posed to our members’ competitiveness and immediately got out front on this issue. We formed a “swat team” of experts that was eventually able to convince FASB to adopt a win-win solution. They got the transparency they were looking for, but – and this is the key – we will now provide information on our exposure to the pension plans we contribute to using an approach that we came up with.
As a result, this accounting change will be easy to comply with and more importantly, won’t impact the competitive position of our companies versus the open shop.
This was a huge win for MCAA, and the fact that the coalition we also formed on this issue grew to include all the other specialty trade associations, the surety and banking industries, and even the AGC showed that MCAA’s growing reputation as an industry leader is well deserved.
To further serve our members on this matter, we then created a white paper “FASB Frequently Asked Questions and Guidance,” which is available on our web site, along with an excel spreadsheet that you can use to comply with the FASB rules in most instances.
This is a perfect example of the threats to our livelihood that none of us can counteract, either as individual contractors or as local associations. I like to point out that the accounting costs that our FASB “swat” team saved each of us, on this one item alone, are more than a maximum dues paying company pays MCAA in a single year. That’s a great return on our dues investment!
We’ve had success on other advocacy efforts in Washington.
In November a bill to repeal an impending 3 percent withholding tax on contractors was passed by Congress and signed into law — a big win for us as we had been working toward its repeal since it was first passed in 2006. We were able to repeal it before it ever went into effect. In case you’re not familiar with this, it was a mandate that would require all federal, state and many local governments to withhold 3 percent from every payment to a contractor as a way to make sure everyone pays their taxes. We argued there were far better ways to ensure tax compliance than to penalize the very businesses, such as our members, who are already tax compliant!
And now, we are beginning a major push to prepare for upcoming pension plan reforms that will be considered by Congress in 2014. We’re already meeting with NECA and SMACNA, and will be laying the groundwork to protect the interests of our contractors in this upcoming debate.
Of course, in this and other efforts we will continue to work side by side with our labor partners at the United Association to shape our industry’s future.
In August I was honored to address over 3,500 UA members at the UA Convention in Las Vegas at the invitation of General President Hite, and had the chance to congratulate the UA on our ongoing strategic planning partnership at the national level.
As part of this effort, several of us from MCAA came up with an educational program to acquaint our labor partners on the real cost of an hour of labor and on the contractor’s business model.
Adam Snaveley from Poole and Kent, John Koontz and I presented this for the first time last February to new business managers. We were asked to teach four classes in Ann Arbor in August and then in October we gave two additional seminars in San Diego to 160 of the UA’s most senior business managers
In addition, I’ve been invited to make this presentation to several UA locals around the country, such as St. Louis, Chicago and Denver.
Here’s what we do in this presentation – we begin by building the rate. There is a misunderstanding by many UA members that we are making 50 or 60 dollars an hour for each person we employ. We show them the envelope pay and then add in fringes, taxes, insurance, office expenses, trucks, fuel etc. Then comes the fun part.
We have the UA folks split into teams and bid a job we have developed for them. We give them a bid package and give them a time limit to turn in a sealed bid. Then, of course, we award it to the low bidder!! Why???? Because we can !!! We walk through some real life scenarios like a foreman calling in sick, or a delivery showing up late and then overtime is needed to offload it, a picket line by another trade costing 2 hours show up and so on‚ … and we cost out how that situation impacts the job in additional man-hours that were NOT part of their bid.
For many, if not all, these exercises have been eye-opening and I think they understand a bit better the challenges you and I as contractors face on a daily basis
As you are doing here in Kansas City, MCAA is doing everything it can to communicate and partner with the UA to keep our industry heading in the right direction to gain back market share and secure more profitable jobs for MCAA members. I can assure you that this continues to be a top priority of your national association.
Of course, MCAA’s core mission continues to be to serve as an educational resource for our contractors. We are, after all, known within the construction industry as the “Education Association.”
I think it shows how forward-thinking our MCAA contractors are that even in this economy our recent educational programs have been filled to capacity.
This past year a lot of hard work went into updating the core case study for MCAA’s Advanced Leadership Institute and our eleventh ALI class was oversubscribed with 38 graduates – an all time high! The MSCA Annual Educational Conference in Colorado Springs also had its highest attendance ever, and the Safety Directors Conference this week on New Orleans was standing room only. I could go on, but obviously most of our members are smart enough to be taking advantage of what MCAA has to offer
Therefore, I expect you all are smart enough to know that this March the place to be is at our national Convention at Disneyworld in Orlando!
We are honored that former U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates will be our keynote speaker.
Former Cowboys coach Jimmie Johnson will speak at our Awards of Excellence breakfast.
And long-time CBS Face the Nation host and Washington political icon Bob Schieffer will speak at our Closing session.
We’re also going to have many great workshops and seminars aimed at delivering bottom-line results and, since it is my convention, I can promise you some awesome parties!
I hope to see you there, as this will indeed be a family event! Colleen and I are psyched and will have our entire extended family in attendance. I’m not kidding. Between work and family there will be 37 of us there
In closing, let me once again thank you for your involvement in your industry.
It is impossible to put a dollar figure on what I have gained by getting involved in this association. What MCAA has done for me, my family, my employees and their families simply can’t be measured. If you are not involved you should be. If you are involved, get MORE involved.
If you have any doubt or questions or concerns, you can call me direct. I will take your call 24/7. I am not kidding. That is how much I believe in what we do. It has been amazing the number of people who have reached out to me this year so far and I sincerely hope that will continue.
Thank you again for inviting me to be with you, and for your time and attention.
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