Accelerate your grading

Missouri’s state nickname, “The Show-Me State,” infers that Missourians take little at face value, needing, instead, to have things proven to them. While Springfield, Missouri-based excavation specialist, Still Excavating, does not take business matters to that extreme, the company recently had its own “show me” experience when it was looking to improve efficiency on its excavation projects.

As the state of this post-pandemic employment market is proving, people are not afraid to make serious career changes. Gone is the apprehension and fear of the unknown — replaced instead by a boldness and sense of excitement in the new chapter unfolding before them. Although his actions predated the pandemic by more than a decade, Matt Eischeid also made some gutsy changes to his livelihood, changes that took him from a professional carpenter framing homes to becoming one of the leading screeding and grading companies in Iowa.

Given job seekers’ penchant for dot com websites such as Indeed, Monster, Glassdoor, etc., the idea of skilled workers operating out of a union hall — in fact, the very concept of unions themselves — might seem archaic. The truth is, however, unionism is experiencing a real resurgence, with formerly non-union workplaces organizing and many unions themselves boasting memberships in the hundreds of thousands.