Local 49 won a huge victory for New Mexico sheet metal workers in April 2025, when Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham signed a law that expanded prevailing wage to include custom offsite fabrication on public works projects. With the law’s definition of “off-site fabricators” — “those earning wages to fabricate heating, cooling, ventilation, or exhaust systems, or any prefabricated components or structures used in public works projects” — the law promises to benefit SMART members and signatory contractors statewide.
“The way this type of bill helps us grow our membership is, it increases our volume of market share by having equal wages across fabrication shops,” said Local 49 Business Manager and Financial Secretary-Treasurer Isaiah Zemke. “Everyone’s having to pay that same state prevailing wage for these public works projects.”
SMART members know better than anybody the problems that arise when bad-faith contractors bid on custom offsite fabrication work. In many places, even if a public works project pays prevailing wage or is covered by a project labor agreement, non-signatory contractors can submit low bids on the fabrication work that takes place offsite, even if the ductwork being fabricated is for that prevailing wage job. That means union sheet metal fabricators and signatory contractors get undercut and lose out on work hours.
Local 49 members faced that exact issue in New Mexico, where the custom offsite fabrication loophole in the state’s Public Works Minimum Wage Act allowed out-of-state companies to secure fabrication work on public projects. Coming into the 2025 legislative session, Zemke and the local decided to take matters into their own hands.
“We started early on with developing an endorsement questionnaire process that was bipartisan,” Zemke explained. “It was sent out to all state reps, all state senators — Republican, Independent, Democrat, whatever party affiliation. Following that, we had an open house with everybody that we endorsed. We brought them into the house of labor, of sheet metal workers; we educated them on fabrication, educated them on what sheet metal workers do in the industry.”
From there, the local found their sponsors for the bill, securing commitments from leadership in the state House, Senate and the governor’s office.
“From there, we strapped our boots on and went and did the work of not only being expert witnesses, but also lobbying the bill in the state legislature here in 2025,” Zemke siad.
The early groundwork and constant advocacy paid off when Governor Lujuan Grisham signed the bill into law. While not a headline-making piece of legislation in the national media, it will help change the lives of SMART members and working families in New Mexico for the long term: ensuring SMART signatory contractors and sheet metal workers win more work, provide for their families and invest in their pensions.
From the jobsite to the capitol building, organizing is how we win!