Lead to Succeed - Mike Smith, Executive Director of the UP Construction Council, and Ryan Stern, U.P. Representative, Michigan Building and Construction Trades Council

In this episode of Lead to Succeed, host Steve Arwood sits down with Mike Smith, Executive Director of the UP Construction Council, and Ryan Stern, U.P. Representative, Michigan Building and Construction Trades Council, to talk about the workforce that’s building the future of the Upper Peninsula. The discussion covers major construction projects, the growing need for skilled trades, and the programs designed to keep young talent local. From summer camps and job drafts to new training centers and college articulation agreements, hear how the trades are investing in the next generation, and why that matters for the region’s long-term success.

Learn more about InvestUP at https://www.investupmi.com. Connect with us on social media at https://www.linkedin.com/company/invest-up-mi/.

Transcript

Lead to Succeed Podcast Interview with Ryan Stern and Mike

Welcome to another edition of Lead to Succeed sponsored by InvestUP, where we highlight UP leaders in business organizations, institutions, and talk about things that are happening in the UP that affect the economy and what people are thinking about. Today, it's a pleasure to have Mr. Mike Smith, the executive director of the UP Construction Council, and Mr. Ryan Stern, the UP representative from the Michigan Building and Construction Trades Council, both based in Marquette. Good morning, gentlemen. How are you?

 Mike Smith   14:55
 Good morning.

 Ryan Stern   14:56
 Morning, Steve.

 Steve Arwood   14:58
 Well, it’s a big organization. So maybe one of you or both of you might want to give our listeners an idea. How are you organized in the UP with all your affiliates and down to Lansing in the state, and then maybe the nationals? So if you want to lay that out for us, that'd be a good segue into what we want to talk about.

 Mike Smith   15:23
 Well, I think we're  very different organizations. Ryan represents the trades where I represent. We were created in the up by the trades and by our signatory contractors back in 1981. So we're a labor management group. We address ourselves to challenges facing the Union construction industry.

 Ryan Stern   15:50
 And as Mike said, Steve, you know I'm the UP representative for the Michigan Building Trades Council. I cover the UP. We're between 5 and 6000 members across the UP currently.
 It's growing daily. It's hard to believe, but it is slowly gaining, you know, slowly gaining. But we represent almost 100,000 members, I think, across the state of Michigan, and then millions when we go up to our national level.

 Ryan Stern   16:17
 There are a lot of people moving to try and make things go smoothly across the nation.

 Steve Arwood   16:26
 Yeah. How many signatory contractors do you have in the Upper Peninsula?

 Mike Smith   16:32
 At any one time, we've got about 90 contractors doing work in the UP and across the nation, quite honestly.

 Steve Arwood   16:42
 When we think about construction, we think about the UP.  Give us a sense of what some of your Members are working on. Like small, big, medium. What kind of significant projects are underway right now?

 Ryan Stern   16:59
 I think there's a very vast construction. The season is going on right now.
 I mean, there's everything going on right now from residential construction and housing units all the way through to, you know, to a large project such as the Soo locks, you know, that's got between 5 and 700 members on it working on that year round, now that's a huge project, so I mean it's very vast, but it's everything in between there. There's a lot going on right now around the housing. Industry trying to, you know, build houses for people to stay local, but also trying to, you know, bring industry that's got the family, you know, family jobs that can provide it for a family is what we're really after.

 Steve Arwood   17:33
 When you look at the UP you know from West to East and north to South, where do you see?
 I mean, what? What is the, you know, kind of hot area right now?
 I know Marquette's, you know, a lot of housing development going on up there, but how about some of the other communities like Iron Mountain and over to the West, what are you seeing? You know, going on over there, I mean it's been quiet the last couple of years, but what's happening over there?

 Mike Smith   18:24
 Eastern UP seems to be one of our hot areas. A lot of our contractors are spending time over in the Sault and St.Ignace doing construction work. Whether it's at a casino or a wastewater treatment plant or a school district. That seems to be the hot spot right now. We certainly hope as things develop in the western side of the UP right. Highland Copper. That's one of those projects. We're really focused on trying to get that over the finish line, so that we can redevelop and bring more industry back to the western side of the UP, which definitely needs it.

 Steve Arwood   19:07
 Yeah. When we look at the Upper Peninsula, investors do a lot of survey work, and we do a lot of studies about the economics of the Upper Peninsula. The one thing that is turning around a little bit. But the one thing that's just been kind of there forever is this. You know this population decline and not just a population decline, but an aging demographic. Is that affecting your trades? Are you following the trend line or are you beating the trend line? I guess that is what I'm asking.

 Mike Smith   19:51
 Well, we're running about as fast as we possibly can for recruitment. You know, we know in the next five to seven years, 40% of us currently working with the tools will be eligible to retire.
 That doesn't mean they're gonna just shut her off and retire, but we certainly are trying to do as much as we can to recruit, which is why we have developed the programs that we have to develop talent, right? So, like you said, our fastest-growing population is over the age of 65.
 
 Ryan Stern   20:22
 I guess Steve, to build on that a little bit, as you know, one of our fastest exporting populations is 18 to 25 year olds. But we have seen a change within the school districts and the students that are going to be graduating high school, that more of them want to stay local. Most of them want to go into the construction industry for a long time. The construction industry was always where you were. If you couldn't make it in life, you ended up in the construction industry. You know, you couldn't find a good job. Well, it's coming around now that the construction industry is some of the best jobs around it and being able to raise a family and live locally.

 Steve Arwood   20:58
 Yeah, I had a period in high school. I didn't quite know what I wanted to do, and my dad gave me a choice A couple of choices, but I participated in building trades in high school and we built a house and what I learned doing that and then working with my hands, it's just invaluable It was certainly a great experience. So, how are you exposing your strategy to get these young people into your trade programs? What does that look like, and what kind of programs do you have? If I'm in high school and I say, man, I really think electricity or plumbing? And how do I get involved? Give us a sense of that.

 Mike Smith   21:54
 Well, we've created multiple programs and pathways for high school students, primarily as simple as going in and doing presentations at school districts, to kind of our two premier programs, which is our building trade summer camp program, which will kick off July 7th this year and last for six weeks and that's our earn and learn everything that we do.
 We try to emulate our apprenticeship program so that students begin to understand.
 Their work has value, so you know all hours work. They're gonna get paid $13.00 an hour.
 They're gonna work with all the crafts over the course of six weeks and at the end, we really make graduation a big deal. The governor's been here twice to speak at graduation, and the first time I think both Ryan and I were super surprised, right? We're in Gladstone at the painters Hall doing graduation and all of a sudden we had more than 100 people there. Grandma. Grandpa. Mom. Dad. Dad. Sister. Brother. We didn't expect that, but it's turned out to be a really great program and very rewarding, and we're starting to see the students who participated in our first summer camp transform into our construction connect-up program as seniors in high school.

 Steve Arwood   23:19
 If you're a senior in high school and you're immersed in this, could you start?
 Apprentice work in high school? Or is that how it works if that's where you want to go? If I said OK, I want to be a journeyman electrician. How can I start that in high school? Or is that something that has to wait till after I graduate?

 Ryan Stern   23:42
 Primarily, it has to wait till you're after high school. You need to be 18 years old, have a high school diploma, a driver's license, that sort of thing, but with our construction connect up program, seniors in high school can come out and work in the field. But they come out and they work with a bunch of different crafts. We try to give them a vast variety so that they get exposed to each one of them. So that helps them pick what they want to be when they graduate. One thing we found, though, is that people going in that say they want to be a journeyman electrician, by the end of it, they want to be a Carpenter. They want to be an operator. But because they get exposed to it, to help them make that decision, because who knows when they're 18 years old what they want to be for the rest of their life.

 Steve Arwood   24:14
 Is there some type of credit they get for this or  is there some type of certification? Does it give them a leg up on an apprentice program? How does that work? If they do follow?

 Mike Smith   24:39
 It does, so on May 9th, we did our draft day. So we make a big deal out of the fact that these students have completed this program. They made the commitment, and now our trades and our contractors have the ability to draft those students directly into our apprenticeship programs, and one of the things that we managed for this year as we had applied for.
 A mark one certificate with the state. So, Michigan apprenticeship apprenticeship-ready.
 The certificate, so those students will not only be issued the certificate for completing the program with us, but they also get a statewide certificate that says, yes, they've accomplished something and yes, they are. Certified in the things that they have learned. So, pretty cool thing that the state has recognized, if we're on the state website, on the LEO website amongst a few others. So pretty cool that they're at the top of the heap.

 Steve Arwood   25:27
 Great. Is there one trade or another where you need more of one and less of another? I mean that's probably not a very good way to say it, but is there a shortage of one particular trade, or is it kind of you know, is it a mixed bag?

 Ryan Stern   26:03
 Pretty even across the board, Steve, for some reason, everybody wants to be an electrician currently, but I think that has to do with the classes they're doing in high school and what they're seeing on TikTok and Instagram and all their social media stuff. But it's pretty even across the trades. There's room for everybody. Can't just pick one?

 Steve Arwood   26:27
 What do you see in the future with, you know, kind of the economics of the Upper Peninsula?
 I mean, you're really close to, you know, what's getting built and what's going on.
 A lot of them, as you said, are big public works projects.
 Then you have opportunities such as you know, extraction, copperwood, maybe potentially white pine down the road. But what's in between? We talk a lot about how we attract industry and what types of industry there are, you know, are you seeing any trends of things you're working on where you know if you were to say, boy, there's a bet right there? We need to really work to try to expand that particular type of industry.

 Ryan Stern   27:20
 Well, I think I would touch on that one, that there's some excitement going around the industry and that's the movement of line 5 being a push forward. It looks like it's going to come to fruition here shortly, and we'll be able to build that tunnel. And I think that's a key aspect for a lot of up industries as you know, sustainable energy and sustainable power is what they need.

 Ryan Stern   27:40
 You know they need that to come in and there's a lot of movement around that. I think there's some industry that's waiting to make sure it's gonna happen before they come, but that's gonna help secure a lot of industry coming to the area, if we can get that over the finish line.

Mike Smith   27:56
 I think utilities are a big deal, right? It is as simple as the Internet, right? You know, the industry needs fast, reliable Internet. They need to be able to treat water and run utilities and power. So that's incredibly important. And if we don't, if we're not investing in those industries in ways that we can move leadership around as much as moving somebody through the airport, right? It's been a challenge.

 Mike Smith   28:24
 Air travel to the UP. So, you know, we've got to be able to move as fast as business does, and we're trying to make sure that we're not standing in the way of that. We're doing everything that we can to facilitate that progress of building industry here in the U,P or we're never going to get our youth back, we're going to continue to grow the retiree population, right? I mean, who wouldn't want to live our retirement up? I want to. So you know, everybody wants to move here when they retire. We want them to stay here and raise families.

 Steve Arwood   28:56
 My neighbor of many, many years just retired down here in Lansing, 58 years old, and he and his wife moved to Iron River and built a brand new house. So if you're looking for a pipe fitter, he's a master Palmer, so.

 Ryan Stern   29:14
 I'll write that down.

 Steve Arwood   29:18
 Yeah, yeah.
 You know that's an interesting prospect too, because he said, you know what?
 He goes. I never will not be able to work if I need to, simply because I got all these certifications, all the skills, you know, he goes, I can go back to work tomorrow and do something, you know which is really important. If you want to retire at 50.
 Eight right or whatever it is you know, have that opportunity, when you think about it.

 Ryan Stern   29:48
 Steve, another thing. If I could touch on one more thing about, you know, industry in the up, one thing that's exciting to me is you know InvestUP, LSCP, all these organizations, getting together and lobbying statewide or federally wide to bring some money and act.

 Ryan Stern   30:03
 Seeing that some of that money statewide is from the feds, coming back to the up is something that we kind of lost for a little while, but it's exciting to see groups work together to try and get, you know, Bill Root, some money to secure that investment. No Eagle mine's going after a large Boe grant. That would be huge for the economy in the market area.

 Steve Arwood   30:20
 I do think, and I credit InvestUP,  Marty, for really having that collaborative vision because when we kind of started investing in those 15 counties and there was not really one coordinating effort if you look at the last few years and just state dollars that have been, you know, directed into the Upper Peninsula because a great case has been made. Made by a lot of people that this is important. We've really pushed away that whole notion that with 3% of the state's population, you know that the allocation is, you know, you know what I'm saying. But it's great to see everybody saying let's, let's fight for everything we can get. And you know, that's where I think, you know, your folks help on certain projects and others have been, you know. It's been different, and I thank you for that because it's made a lot of difference in a lot of communities where we've been able to get together and work on these projects, you know, in tandem. When you think about projects, and you think about
 What could we do to strengthen that collaboration to drive more of those dollars into the up working with labor and working with business and institutions? What are your thoughts on that? Are we on the right track or is there more that needs to be done somewhere?

 Mike Smith   31:56
 I think we're, we're right on track and I think the relationships and the trust that's being built.

Ryan mentioned InvestUP and LSCP, I'm sure there was a time when we're not sure about these labor guys, right? What are they going to bring to the table? And now that we're all sitting around the same table talking about the same issues, right? Working together, that trust means a lot, right? Because we were too small, right? Population wise and too vast geographically to work in tandem. So we want what everybody else wants. We want the success of the UP.

 
 Ryan Stern   32:36
 That, and I think, Steve, another one is you know the workforce was never something that was really thought about at what you know for a while, it was all about how are we going to bring this business here. But it wasn't about how we were going to build it. How are we going to keep it? Employers keep employees and that's as we across the nation, we've seen that. That’s  been a hiccup in a lot of areas and it's nice to see that everybody's working together to to have to build a building and build a community around the project.

 Steve Arwood   33:02
 Well, you know, you guys know and you deal with young people, but you also deal with communities that are losing young people. We have to create opportunities, good, well paying jobs. That, you know, you can afford to build a house and have a mortgage and that type of thing in these communities. Are we gonna? We're gonna continue that trend line. So the things you're doing are great. I think just exposure exposure exposure. We noticed it over and over again. Some building trades programs, or the ISDs and the interest in these programs is kind of off the charts.
 Which was a little strange to me and I shouldn't say it that way.
 It's just when you put those opportunities in front of young people, you know, they grab them quickly. They want to learn these things.
 It's all great. Well, in closing, any thoughts, future thoughts about you know, what's on the horizon, what you know, opinions about the way things are?
 This is the editorial part of the program where you get to, you get to tell our viewers what's on your mind really.

 Mike Smith   34:24
 Well, one of the things I think both Ryan and I would really like to kind of herald is we've worked very hard since August of last year to build articulation agreements with colleges and universities across the UP, which didn't exist. And now we're about to celebrate. On June 25th, the signing of an articulation agreement with Bay College, and we fully anticipate that.
 That will continue with their other colleges and universities across the UP, which as we're bringing in all this youth, right, this next generation of skilled craftspeople, they do have a thirst for knowledge. You kind of mentioned everybody's excited about building houses, right? And CTE programs. But they want to continue their educational opportunities in an articulation agreement where Bay College and others will recognize 45 credit hours toward. A sixty-credit hour. Associate's degree and then build upon that for a bachelor's should they choose to do that. We've got a lot of talented individuals who. I would like to be that next general contractor or next plumbing pipe fitting HVAC contractor. But maybe they don't have the accounting or the business skills right. Then they can earn those. In correlation with their apprenticeship. So we're super excited about that.

 Steve Arwood   35:55
 You know, congratulations on that because those are hard things to do. You just gotta get up every day and keep working on it. So that's fantastic. Absolutely fantastic, Ryan, from your end.

 Ryan Stern   36:11
 I guess I would just like to highlight the investment in which the trades are putting in the UPI.
 Don't know if you've noticed, Steve, but you know we got a lot of new training centers going on across the Upper Peninsula.

 Ryan Stern   36:20
 You know the carpenters mill rates built. A couple years back the ironworkers just built a new training facility in Harvey, the plumbers and pipe fitters are putting a three and a half $1,000,000 expansion on their building. The sheet metal workers. Just not a new building. You know, we have 7 training centers right here in the UP. And providing those educational opportunities to train that next generation, you know, it's kind of the build up of trying to get ready for every project and try and level out the curve of people leaving to people coming in and making sure we have that talent.

 Steve Arwood   36:46
 Do you have seven training centers in the Upper Peninsula? Wow, I did not know that, huh?

 Ryan Stern   36:55
 Yep. A lot of people don't know that.

 Steve Arwood   37:00
 As a function of population, that's got to be kind of high, isn't it? I mean that's amazing. Yeah, Congrats on that. Well, gentlemen, thank you very much for your time. Thank you very much for what you do, and thank you for supporting the Upper Peninsula.

 Mike Smith   37:19
 Thank you for the opportunity.

 Ryan Stern   37:20
 Thank you for having us, Steve.