AGC FLORIDA: Advocating for the industry as local chapters help local businesses build relationships and develop their own businesses Florida Construction News special feature he Associated General Con- tractors (AGC)’s three Florida chapters have reported impres- sive state-wide advocacy success, as they develop programs and events to serve their own communities. “AGC in Florida, through the AGC Florida Council, leads the legislative fight for Florida’s general contractors by standing behind the position of the Florida general contractor 100 percent of the time,” said Michelle Anaya De- Potter, executive director of the Florida East Coast chapter in West Palm Beach. “We encourage sound busi- ness methods tending to raise the general standing of contractors in the business community and promote better relations between private or- ganizations and public bodies, their ar- chitects or engineers and the general contractors.” There is also a South Florida chap- ter based in Sunrise, and a central chapter, The AGC of Greater Florida T 18 – SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2015 — Florida Construction News (a division of AGC of America), in Or- lando. Members of the three chapters pool resources for a Tallahassee lob- byist and benefit from the national AGC advocacy initiatives in the Wash- ington, DC area. Brian Turmail, AGC’s national sen- ior executive director of public affairs, said Florida contractors have reported serious labor shortage challenges as the state has transitioned in the past two years from the recession-bust to a boom economy. “There’s a lot of demand for con- struction work in Florida now,” he said. However, “after things con- tracted quite a bit (during the reces- sion) there weren’t as many unemployed construction workers waiting for the phone to ring. There’s a significant shortage of qualified workers to meet the demand.” Turmail says the association has been coordinating a “workforce devel- opment plan” – a series of measures at the federal, state and local level to create resources to set up technical education programs and make it eas- ier to establish and coordinate local training programs. There are chal- lenges under existing laws in coordi- nating these programs, as “unless you bring in the union and collective bar- gaining process, it is illegal for you and other firms to join together to cre- ate a single training program.” Certainly some AGC members are unionized, but many others are not, and the association believes that unionization decisions are matters for individual employers and workers. The solution to providing non-union training may be revising the anti-trust laws, or encouraging the establish- ment of construction-focus charter schools, Turmail said. He also said there is a need for im- migration reform, “to address the im- mediate (labor) shortage and revitalize the pipeline for recruiting domestic workers.” At the state level, Ron Wrobel, membership director of the AGC of