Most people are quick to sympathize with those who have suffered from the BP oil spill. We long to help them with generous donations and rightfully so. But there is another group of workers and their families who have been hit just a hard by financial ruin and have gone virtually unnoticed. They are probably the largest group of unemployed private sector workers in America. The auto industry would be hard pressed to compete with their numbers of layoffs. I am referring to our nation’s residential carpenters and those associated with the residential carpentry industry.
Like those who make their livelihood from the sea, many carpenters are self employed. Thousands have no unemployment benefits and no job prospects in sight. Who knows if they are even counted in the government unemployment numbers since many do not qualify for unemployment and other government programs such as job retraining. Our past Congress believed that everyone should be able to own a home and therefore allowed banks to artificially inflate values and give frivolous loans. Since the housing crash, the government has bailed out banks, helped home owners, and yet they have totally ignored the craftsmen and women who built the homes. Other recent bailouts have only supported construction on government projects, often on large projects like roads and bridges and union projects; not projects for the residential carpenters. The economic downturn has drained the worker’s emergency reserves, life savings and many retirement programs. Some have lost everything. Carpenters who are fortunate to find piece work here and there, work at a wage that is often 50 percent below what they were making before the recession.
We constantly hear on the news about the “housing crisis” meaning, the inability to buy and sell houses and about the poor folks losing their homes. We rarely hear about the other “housing crisis,” the “carpenter crisis.”
The next time you are sitting in your home, look around. From the people who built the foundation that is supporting the chair you are sitting on, to the folks who polished your door knobs; each item represents a worker who has a family. Walk or drive through your neighbourhood and notice one house after another. Envision the number of carpenters and suppliers behind the scenes of each house, then multiply the families effected by the other housing crisis; the “carpenter crisis,” the family crisis.
Some private construction companies can still survive whether it is on new construction or remodels. Like other small businesses they can take a slow down but they need help with lower taxes, accountable, limited government spending, and if they have good credit they need to be able to get bank loans for company growth. They cannot incur new government fees.
Residents, when you go to vote this November, please remember our thousands of residential Washington state carpenters, their suppliers and families. Carpenters, let your voice be heard!
Lynda Cords
Enumclaw
