NYC carpenters to make $200,000 a year

The Big Apple is a pretty good place to be a carpenter. At least, if you’re a member of the New York City District Council of Carpenters union. After a year without a contract, last week the union hammered out a five-year agreement with one of its major employers, the Association of Wall-Ceiling and Carpentry Industries. Under the terms of the deal, union carpenters will make nearly $100 per hour and over $200,000 in wages and benefits by 2017.

Currently the carpenters in the union are making $85.03 per hour: about $46 per hour in wages and $39 in benefits, including medical coverage and pensions. The new agreement will see their compensation increase by almost 17 per cent over the next five years, to $99.16 per hour.

The union, which has some 25,000 members, also obtained a guarantee that a union member would be hired for every non-member carpenter put on a job. The union says that will create 1,000 new union jobs a year.