Union groups supporting boom in gas-related jobs

• Marie Cusick
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  Marie Cusick was the Harrisburg reporter for StateImpact Pennsylvania.

Union groups are vocally supporting the jobs gains made by natural gas development, to the frustration of some environmental groups who continue to oppose it.
From the Associated Press:

“The shale became a lifesaver and a lifeline for a lot of working families,” said Dennis Martire, the mid-Atlantic regional manager for the Laborers’ International Union, or LIUNA, which represents workers in numerous construction trades.
Martire said that as huge quantities of natural gas were extracted from the vast shale reserves during the past five years, union work on large pipeline jobs in Pennsylvania and West Virginia has increased significantly. In 2008, LIUNA members worked about 400,000 hours on such jobs; by 2012, that had risen to 5.7 million hours.
Nationally, the Bureau of Labor Statistics says total employment in the nation’s oil and gas industry rose from about 120,000 in early 2004 to about 208,000 last month.
Less than 10 percent of full-time oil and gas industry workers are represented by unions.

According to the most recent figures from the state Department of Labor and Industry about 30,000 people are employed directly in oil and gas jobs in Pennsylvania.

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