Acknowledgements

We are grateful for all the workers, union officers and staff, contractors, public officials and community activists who gave of their time to participate in our interviews. Without their insights this research would not have been possible. We would like to thank Olivia Geho from the UMass Amherst Labor Center who helped coordinate the interviews and transcripts as well as the faculty and staff of the Labor Center for their support.

We also wish to sincerely thank the representatives of the Department of Unemployment Assistance, Department of Revenue, Department of Industrial Accidents, Attorney General’s Office, and all others in the Massachusetts Executive Office of Labor and Workforce Development for their time, effort, and professionalism during the course of this project.

We would like to thank Julie Brockman and Scott Littlehale of the Institute for Construction Economic Research for their consultation on this project.

We are indebted to Joanne F. Goldstein, Director of Special Projects for the North Atlantic States Regional Council of Carpenters (NASRCC) who was the lead project liaison. From the proposal stage through the completion of the project she worked tirelessly to ensure that state officials, union officers and staff and contractors provided us the information we needed and coordinated our interviews with them. We would also like to thank Noel Xavier, Organizer, NASRCC who also worked as a project liaison for this project. He was instrumental in coordinating interviews with workers and acted as a translator for a number of them.