2024 IUPAT Flooring Industry Summit

Brothers and Sisters,

I hope this article finds you and yours doing well and counting down the days until Christmas. This year has flown by and it’s hard to believe that the year is almost over. On December 3^rd we will have the Annual Christmas Meeting, please plan on attending. For any new members we do very little business, adjourn the meeting and have a sit-down dinner with raffle prizes and a gift for just attending the meeting. The Executive Board has decided that the dinner this year will be Mexican food catered by La Esperanza.

This past Monday and Tuesday I attended the 2024 IUPAT Flooring Industry Summit in San Jose, CA. For the past 3 years the IUPAT has provided the union flooring contractors and District Council staff with a place to meet and discuss common problems, how to grow market share, reports from several IUPAT departments, and several third-party presenters. Those in attendance were contractors and District Council staff from DC5, (Washington State, Oregon, Alaska) DC81 (Iowa), DC36 (Southern CA, Arizona) DC50 (Hawaii) and DC16 (Northern CA, Nevada) IUPAT Western Region General Vice-President Mike Gutierrez, IUPAT General Secretary Treasurer Gregg Smith.

We had reports from the IFTI Training Department, IUPAT Helping Hand Program, LMCI Update, a report by our very own Director of Training (DOT) Alex Beltran. DOT Beltran gave an update on the DC16 Floor Covering Exit Exam. The Exit Exam has a written test, several mockups that have stretch in carpet, carpet seam sewing, carpet tile, VCT, coved sheet vinyl, stair treads, and several obstacles that must be addressed. All District Councils will be adopting this program and all mockups that will be used are built by DC16 and will be used by all other councils. DOT Beltran even brought 3 mockups for all to see and ask questions. We were also shown the written test. The apprentices who take the exam will have 5 days to complete it, several contractors said that 5 days seemed like too much time, DOT Beltran said that he is giving 5 days because a 95% apprentice is not expected be fast but they need to be good, speed comes with time but they need to be able to do a good job on any install.

Geoff Gordon with Fuse Alliance gave a presentation on leading people, organizations and teams to success. Matt Goerke gave a presentation on his program Memory Master. Geoff teaches people to increase their memory skills from remembering names and did several group exercises that help with mind muscle memory. Management gave a report on what they have been doing in 20244 to increase market share and promote union contractors and unions. We were given an update on AB 863 which is a carpet recycling bill that provides monies to our JATC in California for training purposes. On the last day management and labor were divided into two rooms for an hour to discuss what they felt were issues that needed to be addressed. When both groups reconvened, the common issue was the union flooring industry is still a secret to the public. Management asked the IUPAT to give more money to promote our industry and find different ways to expand our market. The group will attend Surfaces 2025 in January, and again in February at the Finishing Institute Forum to continue working on promoting our industry.

Fraternally,

Randy Rojas

Business Representative

DC16/LU1237