More than 600 building and construction trades workers from the Seattle metropolitan area rallied downtown on St. Patrick's Day to demand the "green-lighting" of major job-creating public-works investments being delayed by political wrangling.
"We want jobs NOW!" chanted the workers the same day that new Washington State unemployment numbers showed construction payrolls fell by another 3,200 jobs in February and have dropped 32 percent in the past 20 months. The Seattle-area construction industry is suffering from unprecedented unemployment rates of 35 percent--even higher in some trades.
New Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn, an environmental advocate who has frustrated both business and labor interests with his proposals to change, review or otherwise delay major infrastructure projects, addressed the crowd. As he discussed his support for good family-wage jobs, union members repeatedly interrupted him by shouting:
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