Mentors enlisted to bolster Hawaii’s construction workforce

Statistically speaking, 27-year-old Jayson Tumaneng is defying heavy odds working as a unionized Hawaii apprentice carpenter over the past 18 months.

Only 25% of people on average in the same job become journey-level workers after what can be a tough, mostly on-the-job training program typically lasting four to six years, during which apprentices earn 40% of what they will if they make the step up.

About half drop out during the first two months of usually hot, dusty and physically demanding work that is also tinged with an uncertainty of future employment if the building industry has a downturn.

Such detractors are offset to a degree by pay that starts at $20.80 a hour, or 40% of the $52 hourly wage at the journey level. Apprentices work full time and also put in five hours of weekly classwork.

The Hawai‘i Regional Council of Carpenters union aims to improve its 1-in-4 apprentice graduation statistic with a new mentorship program set to begin today.

The union plans to enlist 85 journey-
level carpenters to provide off-the-job guidance for up to five apprentices at a time in return for a $100 monthly stipend.

“We’re providing the apprentices with big brothers and big sisters,” said Ron Taketa, the union’s executive secretary-
treasurer. “It’s a good investment upfront instead of recycling apprentices as they drop out.”

To start, the union plans to assign 137 apprentices a mentor in September and grow the program from there.

The union, which has close to 6,000 members including about 1,600 apprentices, is rolling out its mentorship program at a time when many industries in Hawaii are having difficulty finding enough workers amid low unemployment and high competition among employers.

Tumaneng, whose previous job was as a parking valet at the International Market Place in Waikiki, is helping build single-family houses at Ho‘opili in Ewa for Coastal Construction Co.

On Thursday he helped roof a home and said physical work in the hot sun makes it hard for a lot people to stick with such a job.

“That really takes a toll on most people,” Tumaneng said, adding that he’s highly confident about reaching the journey level.

Mifra Carvalho, another “40-percenter” helping build homes at Ho‘opili, said her incoming group of apprentices 15 months ago was warned that most of them wouldn’t reach full pay at the journey level.

Carvalho, who previously worked as a visual merchandiser at a military retail exchange, said the biggest challenge she has faced is keeping up with her more experienced co-workers.

“I’m a hands-on person and I like the physical work,” the 34-year-old said between driving nails into a wall from a low scaffolding.

Kyle Chock, interim executive director of Pacific Resource Partnership, a nonprofit alliance between the local carpenters union and around 240 contractors, said another factor behind the need to improve retention in the trade is a relatively old workforce in Hawaii’s broader construction industry.

“We have an aging workforce,” he said.

PRP cited Census Bureau data putting the average Hawaii construction worker at 44 years of age, or sixth oldest among states.

Chock also said demand for workers in the industry is high given that construction locally has been consistently strong since 2011 and isn’t expected to slow in the near future, in part because big public-works jobs are on the horizon that include a new dry dock at Pearl Harbor and the Red Hill fuel facility deconstruction.

Taketa, however, noted that every time there is a cyclical downturn in local construction that forces carpenters off jobs and often out of the industry, it is followed by a replenishing of carpenters below the prior peak, even if the amount of work fully rebounds.

For instance, there were about 9,000 Hawaii carpenters union members in the 1980s, but after 60% of the workforce was lost during an early-1990s recession, membership reached only 7,800 despite a building boom in the mid-2000s that lasted until a recession hit in 2008.

Today, unionized carpenter labor is in relatively tight supply with about 6,000 union members.

Construction employment overall, however, is close to record-high levels in Hawaii, according to the University of Hawaii Economic Research Organization.

UHERO reported in May that the industry employed about 39,700 people earlier this year, up from 37,600 in 2019, and expects this workforce will grow to 41,200 in 2025.

“Construction activity will remain high,” the report said. “And construction workers are in heavy demand.”