The Hawai'i Carpenters Union hopes to attract new apprentices and lure away non-union carpenters on the Big Island to help build a flurry of new projects along the Kona Coast.

The need for carpenters and drywallers is so severe in Kona that contractors are prepared to offer jobs to journeymen workers on the spot Saturday at a union-organized "talk story" recruitment session, said Edmund Aczon, manpower specialist for the Hawai'i Carpenters Union.

"We've been getting a lot of calls from contractors saying that they need manpower," Aczon said. "They're saying the first quarter of the year will be real busy."

The union and the Pacific Resource Partnership, an advocacy group for union carpenters, don't have specific numbers on the worker shortage in Kona. But Kyle Chock, executive director of the Pacific Resource Partnership, has received statewide estimates that Hawai'i will need 182 carpenters every year through 2012, which he considers "a very conservative estimate."

"We have guys who live in Hilo who commute to Kona, stay there for the week and come back home to Hilo for the weekend," Chock said. "That's where the work is right now on the Big Island — in Kona."

Aczon expects a couple of hundred people to turn out Saturday to hear speakers talk about Kona's construction industry, which Aczon said will generate work for the next five to 10 years.

Journeymen union carpenters earn up to $50.80 per hour in wages and benefits; union drywallers earn up to $50.97 per hour in wages and benefits.

Gary Wiseman, president of the Hawai'i chapter of the Associated Builders and Contractors, a group of construction-related companies that say they support work based on merit, said he does not mind the carpenters' effort to recruit non-union, journeymen construction workers.

"That's definitely their right to do it, just as it's somebody's right to not join a union," Wiseman said. "More power to them. We do the same thing."

Wiseman visits the Kona Coast two to three times per year and often has been startled by all of the construction projects under way.

"You don't see the volume of commercial projects like we have on O'ahu, nor do you see the high-rise buildings," Wiseman said, "but considering the population and volume of people available to do work, there's definitely a shortage of workers — big time."

Wiseman estimates that the majority of new construction workers are coming in from California. "There's no problem for them finding work," he said.

But the Hawai'i Carpenters Union and Pacific Resource Partnership prefer to fill Kona construction jobs with local hires first, Aczon said.

"We're trying to generate interest from the Kona area," Aczon said. "We want to see how many people are out there before we start doing outside recruitment."

Reach Dan Nakaso at dnakaso@honoluluadvertiser.com.