By Doug Cunningham

The United Brotherhood of Carpenters is celebrating 125 years of building trades unionism this month. Gene Tenner of the Chicago Regional Council of Carpenters says the union got started in Chicago and there are still compelling reasons today to belong to the union.

[Gene Tenner 1]: ""They're more likely to have a safe workplace, they're more likely to get fair pay for what they're doing. They'll become the best trained tradesmen you can find find anywhere and they can retire in dignity."
Tenner says one of the biggest modern challenges for the Carpenters union is to figure out how to protects its members interests while also partnering with employers.

[Tenner 2]: "Working with our partners in business as a unified group,labor and management working side by side to the benefit of each is a relatively new concept. But contractors and developers don't have jobs without carpenters and carpenters don't have jobs without developers and contractors, so.."