Construction boom on reservation offers jobs

[This story has been updated with more accurate numbers of workers that were made available.]

With a massive new headquarters under construction near Nespelem for the 12 Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation, plus their big new casino going up in Omak, contractors are in need of some good help locally.

A job fair at the Nespelem Community Center Nov. 6 was designed to help fill that need.

"It's going to get exciting and our need is going to go up quite a bit in the next three months," said George McLain of Lydig Construction, as he welcomed people to the job fair Thursday morning.

Lydig cooperated with the Tribal Employment Rights Office to organize the fair, attended by contractors currently on the tribal headquarters project, more who will be on the job soon, and industry trade unions eager to get recruits into apprenticeship programs they say will pay workers to be trained and educated for construction jobs.

McLain said there will be a need for a lot of qualified people in the next three to four years, and skills learned here will be marketable elsewhere.

"We're just trying to hook people up and point them in the right direction," Larry Jordan said. "Boost the local economy, that's our job."

Jordan is the director of the Tribal Employment Rights Office on the reservation. TERO code calls for Lydig to hire tribal members during the course of construction. If they hire more than 51 percent tribal members, it reduces a fee paid to the tribes under the TERO code.

Jordan said about 87 people are on the hired list so far.

Currently, about 50 a day are on the job, with roughly 30, or 58 percent of those tribal members, said Bohman Swanson, a Lydig assistant superintendent on the site given the task of showing a reporter around.

Jordan said tribal representation on the job flutcuates with the phase of construction.

Although the workers currently on site are about 50, the project will need up to 120 people in the next six months, said Lydig's Senior Project Manager Matthew Proehl.

One tribal member, Joel DeWinkler, was one of the first hired for the project. A carpenter apprentice, on Wednesday DeWinkler was hanging plastic on the open window spaces, preparing the site to hold heat as the weather turns colder.

With exterior walls filling in and roofs going on, most of the job will be enclosed for the winter. It's due to be finished Oct. 31, 2015.

The building is big. It's actually more like four buildings sharing a common atrium -155,000 square feet in three stories.

The $36 million project will not only replace those offices lost to a fire in the already-condemned tribal headquarters last year, but collect disparate offices inadequately housed in corners of the Colville Indian Agency Campus.

Eighty percent of the project is funded through a low-interest loan, with 20 percent coming through tax credits provided through a 14-year-old act of Congress to fund businesses and real estate ventures in low-income areas.

"Beautiful view," Swanson commented from third floor of the southwest wing, "I've never worked a job before where I could look out and see horses."

The rural location can present a problem for the contractors, but an opportunity for any young person looking for a career.

Construction trade unions offer training under various programs that include on-the-job and classroom training for apprentices who are paid to learn. An experienced journeyman carpenter in Spokane will earn around $60,000 a year, according to the website CarpenterSalary.org.

Apprenticeship programs that pay 60 percent of a journeyman wage can offer $17 an hour even while in the classroom. Apprenticeships can take four or five years to complete.

Jordan said a similar event last spring attracted about 100 workers. But at the job fair last week, about two dozen job seekers filled out a sign-in sheet as they milled through 14 exhibits by unions and contracting specialists who will be working the tribal headquarters job for the next 11 months.