Author: paul

The North Florida Building Construction Trades held a sporting clay shoot to benefit the MD Anderson Cancer Hospital in Jacksonville. SMART Sheet Metal Workers Local 435 was well represented at the event.  Members at the event were the first to sport the new SMART Army t-shirts available to members who participate in ongoing SMART Army activities.
Click here to Join the SMART Army by filling out this online pledge form.
 

Apprentices from Tri-Counties Sheet Metal Workers JATC, along with labor and management representatives, spent the day helping a small community affected by the Thomas Fire.
Coordinator Brian Hill shared this about the community service project:
The fire cleanup work took place in a small, rural community near where the fire originated. The area lost six of its twelve homes. Primarily, we provided general community cleanup of downed trees to create better access for emergency vehicles, Southern California Edison electrical workers, and homeowners. We also worked on dirt roads that had collapsed where they crossed drainage. The plastic pipes melted, and the road collapsed. The community then built a temporary wooden support but that ended up burning a day or two later, so we made temporary repairs so they could access their water storage tanks.
On the same day, apprentices also volunteered at the Ventura Catholic Charities pantry nearby, distributing hygiene kits and meals to those in need.

As recently as last week, in Virginia, one vote determined the balance of power in that state’s legislature.
Remember that when the time comes to vote, especially in this year’s important midterm elections.
It’s never too early to update your voter registration status and make sure you are registered to vote.
SMART has partnered up with Rock the Vote to bring you a new easy to use voter registration tool. 
You can’t really have a say in things if you don’t vote.
 
 

SMART Mechanical Department General Committee 2 General Chairman John McCloskey announced Jan. 8 that a tentative agreement with Amtrak has been reached. SMART-MD and coalition partners Transportation Communications Union, National Conference of Firemen and Oilers/SEIU, International Association of Machinists, International Brotherhood of Boiler Makers, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers and the Transport Workers Union of America, which represents 57% of all Amtrak employees, reached this tentative agreement.
On Wednesday and Thursday, January 4^th and 5^th, the above-mentioned rail unions met in Washington, D.C., with Amtrak representatives and the coalition unanimously endorsing the tentative agreement. The tentative agreement will be rolled out to SMART-MD membership for ratification in the coming weeks. Upon ratification, the membership would receive an immediate 4.25% wage increase followed by an additional 2.75% on July 1, 2018. On July 1, 2019, membership shall receive another 3% increase followed by two further increases of 3.75% in July 2020 and 2021 for a compounded increase of 18.9%. Active employed members along with members who have subsequently retired or died are entitled to full retroactive pay.
If members ratify the tentative agreement, starting on Jan. 1, 2018, members’ Health and Welfare monthly premium would be frozen at $228 for the life of the contract that expires on December 31, 2021, with no retroactive H&W payments prior to January 2018.
General Chairman John McCloskey stated, “This agreement provides our members with real wage increases with full retroactive pay, and freezes the monthly Health and Welfare contributions for the entire term of the agreement. I want to thank my Local Chairmen and members for their support throughout this process.”

SMART has updated its Member Benefits section exclusively for SMART members with new offerings such as discounts for movie and theme park tickets along with other entertainment options.
As a member of SMART, you have access to one of the leading member benefit programs in the nation.  Sign up for or visit the Members’ Section at smart-union.org to tour some of the member benefits you can use.
From discounts on wireless phone service to exclusive rates on world-class amusement parks and entertainment options, your Union has you covered.
Keep the site bookmarked in the future as we continue to add to the value of your SMART Union membership with new member benefits and services.

U.S. Secretary of Labor Alexander Acosta last week toured the Sheet Metal Workers’ Local Union 100’s Apprenticeship Training Center in Suitland, Maryland.
Earlier in the week, SMART’s General President Joseph Sellers, Jr., participated in a meeting of the President’s Task Force on Apprenticeship Expansion at the Department of Labor. The Task Force – which includes business, labor, educational institutions, trade groups, workforce advocates, and public officials – discussed best practices regarding how to expand apprenticeships across industries.
“Apprenticeships are a pathway for many Americans to learn the skills they need to secure the freedom o provide for their family’s future, said SMART General President Joseph Sellers, Jr.
Secretary Acosta commented on his appreciation for the opportunity to tour the Local 100 Training Center. He added that “seeing apprentices in action and learning more about how the program works provide helpful insight as the Administration works to expand apprenticeships nationwide.”
 

Thomas Company got its start in Egg Harbor Township, N.J., in 1920 in the years following World War I and less than a decade before the Great Depression. Despite that beginning, the economic collapse in 2008 and subsequent fallout in Atlantic City left the then 94-year-old company, a member of the Sheet Metal Contractors Association of Philadelphia and Vicinity, on the verge of closing its doors.
Meanwhile, SMART Local 19, based in Philadelphia, was fighting its own battle—carpenters attempting to take over all of the architectural sheet metal work, which had been a staple for the local since 1887.
Working together, Local 19 they staved off the raiding attempt.
George Thomas, the third-generation owner of Thomas Company, decided to take the risk to expand beyond HVAC work, into the architectural metal market. He and Local 19 Assistant Business Manager Bryan Bush visited a dozen general contractors and developers in the area to talk about Thomas Company’s capability to perform architectural projects.
“We were sitting down with whoever we possibly could to get him the work,” Bush said. “Before you knew it, he started landing every other job. It wasn’t an overnight thing. We just kept working on it.”
“I give the guy a lot of credit,” added Gary Masino, Local 19 business manager. “He leaves no stone unturned. We learned a lot from each other. He taught us we can do the work again.”
Once the risk proved to be a success, other contractors followed suit.
In less than a year, Thomas Company was keeping 100 craftsmen busy. Today, Thomas Company and Local 19 continue to work together to increase market share. “It’s a true partnership. We depend on them as much as they depend on us,” Thomas said.
 
“When all parties agree and care, anything is possible,” Masino said.
 

Via Press Associates Union News
For decades, the South has been the Achilles heel of the labor movement. While unions took root and thrived in places like the industrial Midwest and Northeast, or in the ports and plants of West Coast states in the 1930s, ’40s, and ’50s, Dixie remained a tough slog.
This is the place where right to work was born over 70 years ago. Where reactionary politics have often been the only kind of politics. And where the “color line” dividing Black workers from white ones long defined all aspects of life, including in the workplace. It too many ways, it still does.
There were major organizing campaigns and big strikes in the South over the years, of course, and they shouldn’t be forgotten. From the battles of Harlan County and the Great Textile Strike of 1934 to Dr. King and the Memphis sanitation workers and the lesser-known fights of more recent decades, Southern workers have never shied away from a fight when backed into a corner. They haven’t always come out on top, but it wasn’t for lack of trying.
But eventually, many of the mines closed, the textile and furniture factories shut down, and lower-wage, non-union companies like Walmart came to dominate the regional economy. Even the South’s relative lack of strong unions and its abundance of right-wing politicians servile to business couldn’t save it from de-industrialization.
But it’s a new era for the Southern economy. Things are beginning to change, and the labor movement as a whole would do well to pay closer attention.
The South, already home to 35 percent of the country’s population, is growing rapidly. Of the ten U.S. metropolitan areas experiencing the fastest job creation rates in 2016, six of them were in the South. A third of Electoral College votes are here. In 2010, the region got eight new seats in Congress, with another six likely coming in 2020. More than half the U.S.’ African-American population resides here, and counties in the South account for the biggest share of the country’s Latino population growth.
Labor regularly takes note of the importance of organizing in the South, but has yet to develop a coordinated approach to tackling the special challenges and rapidly shifting economy there. At its last convention in 2013, the national AFL-CIO pledged itself to developing a Southern organizing strategy. As of 2017, it’s not clear that there’s much progress to point to.
That’s something the Arkansas AFL-CIO sought to remind delegates of at this year’s national labor confab in St. Louis. In a resolution that again appealed to the country’s biggest gathering of unions to devote itself to organizing the South, workers from the Natural State were blunt in their assessment:
“…[T]he American labor movement has never developed a long-term, successful, coordinated effort to organize working people in the states comprising the Southern region, which has allowed anti-worker political forces to operate in the South without being effectively challenged by an organized working people’s movement….”
There have been some successful organizing campaigns over the last four years, but workers from Arkansas and other Southern states are looking for more than just support in particular workplace sign-up drives. They envision concerted efforts to elect labor-friendly candidates and pass pro-worker legislation.
Organizing the South is important not just for unions and workers there, but nationwide. Consider the fact that 45 percent of congressional Republicans are sent by Southern states. As the resolution makes clear, the possibility of passing any pro-labor legislation at the national level depends on changing the political and legislative climate below the Mason-Dixon Line.
Though they tried to grab more attention during the debate in St. Louis, organized labor in the South isn’t waiting around for the national AFL-CIO. In Arkansas, they’re preparing for a possible avalanche of investment heading their way.
State labor federation president Alan Hughes, a Steelworker, says “There’s never enough organizing going on.” Labor, he argues, has got to go South because that’s where the people and the money are moving. In a discussion on the sidelines of the convention, he checked off a list of new industrial investments already in the works for his state.
In Pine Bluff, a mostly African-American town in south-central Arkansas, America’s first-ever natural gas liquefaction plant, a $3.5-billion-dollar alternative energy super project, will be built over the next several years. It is being billed as the biggest economic development endeavor in state history. Only six of the operations exist in the world, and Hughes estimates the Pine Bluff plant could create as many as 5,000 construction jobs up front, and around 500 permanent jobs after that.
Similar stories are playing out in other towns, too. A Chinese company, Sun Paper, chose Arkadelphia for its first U.S. investment, of more than $1 billion into a new pulp mill. In Forrest City, another Chinese giant, the Shandong Ruyi Technology Group, announced plans to spend $410 million to convert an old Sanyo TV factory into a new spinning yarn mill big enough to consume all the annual cotton harvest of the Arkansas Delta region. Another 800 permanent jobs. None of them union.
Those are the projects announced in just one state over the past year or so. But it’s happening all over the South. Jessica Akers, Secretary-Treasurer of the Arkansas AFL-CIO, says unions must get ready now.
“There should be community organizing efforts going on right now so that there is already buy-in to the union on day 1 when the plant opens its gates for the first time,” she argues. The state fed and the local Building Trades Council are exploring pre-apprenticeship models tried in other places to see what might be replicated in Arkansas.
The idea of having a union has to be a positive in people’s minds before the company comes to town, not just associated with negative things on the job later on. In a right to work state like Arkansas, Akers says the way you sell the union to workers is by focusing on the concept of a contract.
“Where we live, people are supposed to stand behind their words. If there is an agreement, and we’ve shaken hands on it, then it gives people confidence in each other. That’s how we have to pitch it.”
That also draws Republicans and the union members who vote for them, she added. “Economics is what we can move together with. Like charter schools, right to work isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. So we can say it’s bad all we want, but it’s the world we live in. So we have to maneuver around this reality to benefit our people as much as possible.”
It’s a pragmatic, real-world approach to advancing labor’s issues. Surveying the South’s fast-changing political economy, the Arkansas delegation and other unions in the region spent considerable time at the convention making the case for a specially tailored organizing strategy.
And their resolution? Passed over, essentially. By the time it made it to the convention floor, it had been chopped down to a single “Whereas” in a longer, more generic promise to organize everywhere and realize the promise of collective bargaining.
It was a lost opportunity. Special challenges call for special strategies. If labor doesn’t give sustained attention to the particularities of organizing workers in the most anti-labor atmosphere in the United States, they warned, someday – and maybe not long from now – it will wake up to realize that the whole country has gone South.