Masonry Magazine April 1986 Page. 19
Estimating MCAA'S
Future
By W. C. DENTINGER, JR.
Immediate Past President, Mason Contractors
Association of America
This article represents the text of W. C. Dentinger. Jr.'s Annual Report of the President delivered at the March 3, 1986 Opening Session of MCAA's 36th Annual Educational Conference in St. Petersburg Beach, Florida, at the TradeWinds Hotel.
Introduction
As I draw close to the end of my term as President of the Mason Contractors Association of America, please spend a moment with me and let us take an account of just what has happened during this two-year period-and perhaps more important, where we might be headed in the next few years.
For one thing, many a "thank you!" is in order. My term as President was made easier because I received good support from the membership, from our officers and Executive Board, and from the staff. I have said it before, and I will say it again: We could not possibly afford to buy the effort and dedication that we receive from our Executive Vice President, George Miller. We get it for one reason because we have hired a father to watch over his child. His love for this association is far greater than our own.
I also want to thank you for having given me the opportunity to be the top officer of such a prestigious international organization as the Mason Contractors Association of America. It has been very exciting, and there is no question in my mind that I have received gestures of great respect and pats on the back that belong to the office that I hold and not really to me! But I can tell you, even if the compliments and respect were undeserved, they still gave me a great feeling. I am grateful to have had this opportunity.
What has happened during my term? Think back to 1984. Times were pretty tough for most of us then. You could not buy a job! By comparison, 1986 is much better! There is work out there again. But prosperity, like poverty, has its own special problems. In many areas of the United States and Canada, the same mason contractors, who two years ago, in New Orleans, were telling us they could not buy a job, today have jobs, and now cannot buy a brick- layer. It is certainly quite a bit easier today for us to accept the warning we have been hearing for the last decade or so, that masonry's next big problem will be a very serious manpower shortage. That was hard to believe when you could not buy a job. Well, welcome to 1986!
It seems to me that we, the mason contractors and our bricklayers and mason tenders, are like dancers. We know how to dance. We like to dance. We want to dance. But every so often, somebody turns off the music. High interest rates, strikes, lockouts, labor shortages, materials shortages these are all periods when the music stops. and so does our dancing!
A great deal of our time as mason contractors is spent estimating. I think that now is a good time for us to try to estimate our chances for future success and survival. Yes, I said survival. What can you, or I, do about things like high interest rates, strikes, lockouts, labor shortages. material shortages, and other events that turn off our dancing music?
By ourselves, we can do very little or nothing. But when we band together, as we do when we become members of the Mason Contractors Association of America, we can do many things. We can even try to buy the band. And even if we cannot afford to buy the band, at least if we work together, and perhaps get a banjo, or an accordion, we can do something to reduce the times when there is no music from the band.
We must maintain a correct perspective-a perspective that reminds us of what we have gone through in the past, and why. Many of today's problems could have been reduced with better planning yesterday. So, too, if we are going to solve tomorrow's problems, we would be wise to band together now and get cracking on some solutions
MASONRY-MARCH/APRIL, 1986 19