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Cleveland-Cliffs, a steel manufacturer, reportedly cancelled a $500 million project in Middletown, Ohio, in June 2025 — leading to a loss in work hours for union sheet metal workers in the area.

“This would have been a solid project for Local 24, especially our Dayton-area membership,” said Local 24 Business Manager Jeff Hunley.

Local radio station WYSO 91.3 reported: “The planned switch from a coal-based steel plant to hydrogen was expected to create 1,200 union construction jobs and protect 2,500 existing positions.”

WYSO noted that Cleveland-Cliffs had planned to replace its coal steel-making furnace with a hydrogen-powered system, supported in part by a $500 million grant from the Department of Energy. That grant came from the Inflation Reduction Act, signed into law under the Biden administration in 2022.

But Steel Industry News reported that the Trump administration’s shift away from clean energy and its focus on fossil fuels created uncertainty for the company, and rising tariffs on steel imports “forced Cleveland-Cliffs to prioritize short-term profitability.”

Now, at least for the time being, the project has been abandoned.

Changing clean energy policies impact SMART members

Union sheet metal workers play a key role in building and converting clean energy facilities, including hydrogen, nuclear and battery plants. That’s what makes federal grants, tax credits and funding so important to SMART sheet metal workers, and why the strong labor standards included in such policies under the Biden administration were also crucial for members.

“When we work to pass laws like the Inflation Reduction Act, we’re investing in our future,” explained SMART General President Michael Coleman. “The grants and tax credits we got passed in that law are the kinds of policies that create jobs for sheet metal workers five, ten, fifteen years down the line. Unfortunately, when those types of policies are thrown in jeopardy, we see companies become less willing to invest, and projects get paused or cancelled.”

“The Cleveland-Cliffs project cancellation means that the jobs Local 24 was expecting will no longer be available to members in Ohio. With the cuts to clean energy tax credits and programs in the spending bill passed by Congress, we can expect more disappointing stories like this, at least for the next few years,” he added.

SMART Local 24 in Dayton, Ohio, recently hosted the Sheet Metal Occupational Health Institute Trust (SMOHIT) for a three-day SMART MAP training led by Field Representative Ed Robison. The event focused on mental health awareness and peer training for union members and signatory contractors.

The SMART MAP (Member Assistance Program) is an innovative initiative designed to address mental health challenges within the industry, particularly related to drug and alcohol abuse, suicide and the importance of self-care. The program not only raises awareness but also empowers participants with peer training support and resources that extend to union members and their families.

The Local 24 training was divided into two parts. The first two days were dedicated to training union members, equipping them with the tools and knowledge to support each other and foster a healthier workplace environment. The final day focused on contractors, helping to ensure that management and leadership are equally prepared to support their teams.

“Thanks to the overwhelming success of this event, it will become an annual fixture, with the next one scheduled for the first week of October 2025,” said Business Representative Brawny Welch. “This is a significant step forward for Local 24 in addressing mental health in the workplace and ensuring long-term support for members and their families.”

While many teenagers were figuring out what classes to take the next school year, Emilee Och was making plans to be a union welder. As a student in the School to Apprenticeship Program, her aspirations were complemented with training while she was still in high school, and she earned apprentice wages throughout the process.

The School to Apprenticeship Program, known also as an apprentice readiness program, or ARP, provides a pathway for high school seniors to get a head start on their careers in the trades. Och was a student at Apollo Career Center when she was introduced to the program by Eugene Frazier, now-retired training coordinator for Local 24 (central Ohio).

Elements of the School to Apprenticeship Program have dated back to the late 1980’s, and high school seniors were added to the program around 2013. The program was officially formulized in the state of Ohio in 2021, said Tony Stephens, training coordinator for Local 24 in Dayton.

As a student in the program, Och became a pre-apprentice at age 16, between her junior and senior year of high school, and she was a first-year apprentice during her senior year.

This summer, Och, 22, graduated from the apprentice program in Dayton, Ohio, and received an award recognizing her as the highest achieving apprentice, the Eugene Frazier II Award — named for the coordinator who introduced her to the program — along with perfect attendance. Och is the first woman to receive this recognition.

The program is the equivalent of high school students taking college classes for dual credit, she said.

“I knew I wanted to go union, for sure, but what I really liked is I could join right then and there and go to school at the same time,” Och added. From her home in Lima, Ohio, it was nearly a 90-minute drive, and she still managed to be the first apprentice since 2016 to achieve perfect attendance. “I was definitely keeping track of that, for sure. It was hard to make sure I was there every week, but I was pretty dedicated to it. I knew it would be worth it in the end, and it would be a good career for me.”

The School to Apprenticeship Program, and ARPs in general, ease high school students into adulthood with a varied schedule. Students attend school for two weeks, then work in the field for two weeks during the day while attending apprenticeship courses at Local 24’s training center in the evenings. The program allows them to retain their high school identities — playing football, participating in band and choir, attending senior trips — while jumpstarting their careers.

“It’s not full time. We have a much better retention with the School to Apprenticeship Program students than with any other program,” Stephens said. “We will retain 80%, if not more, in comparison to the 50% of apprentices we bring in by traditional means. It’s almost as constant as gravity. It’s been true since I was an apprentice.”

Och went from tinkering in the garage with her father as a child to working in the sheet metal shop at Smith-Boughan Mechanical in Lima. Her next goal is to become a foreperson.

“[The program] makes you feel more comfortable, helps you get the basics down so you know what you’re getting into,” she said. “It gives you a sense of responsibility. You have to be to work on time. You have to be prepared. It gives you a sense of commitment. I definitely think it was a good path for me, for sure.”

In Central Ohio, megaprojects are creating previously unheard-of amounts of work for SMART Local 24 members — putting sheet metal workers on jobsites, such as Intel’s chip factories, and creating urgent staffing needs. That’s a good problem to have, and it’s helping Local 24 recruit newly arrived migrant workers: giving them a pathway to the union-made American dream and strengthening SMART for the long haul.

“These projects are putting our members on the job, but they’re also giving us the chance to get out in our communities, bring people in and grow,” said Local 24 Business Manager/Financial Secretary- Treasurer Rodney French. “We’re proud to give our newest neighbors a shot at a career in our trade, and when we bring them onto the job, our members benefit. It’s been a great success.”

A Reuters article in May sent reporters to Columbus, Ohio, one of the fastest-growing cities in the United States, to chronicle how local unions are working to recruit and retain more and more members to build chip plants, EV battery factories and other megaprojects. Spurred by federal legislation like the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, CHIPS and Science Act and Inflation Reduction Act, huge jobs are popping up left and right — and producing more open positions than locals can fill right away. In response, unions like Local 24 are organizing like never before, offering opportunities to any and all Ohioans willing to do the work.

One of those new Ohioans, Local 24 apprentice Jorge Herrera, is an asylum seeker who fled political violence in Nicaragua. His wife and children still live there, he told Reuters, and he hopes to bring them stateside if he’s awarded asylum. While Herrera doesn’t speak much English — another Spanish-speaking Local 24 apprentice, Sofia Mattern Mondragon, is able to help a bit on the jobsite — he has welding experience and was able to pass the apprenticeship test by using a translation app. Now, with a livable wage and union-won benefits, he can focus on learning the trade and building our country’s future alongside his fellow members.

Another new Local 24 apprentice, 45-year-old Ronal Pinto, previously worked in a Venezuelan aluminum foil factory as a mechanical engineer, according to Reuters. He fled for Chile, then four years later left to seek asylum in the U.S., landing in Columbus.

“The first two years were difficult, he said, with a string of temporary, low-paid jobs. Now, he feels like he has made it,” Reuters reported. “… On Saturdays, Pinto attends English classes at a nearby college. He is far from fluent, he said, but is working hard to improve. A few of his coworkers are trying to learn some Spanish to communicate with him, too, he said.”

Anti-worker forces often try to divide unions and workers by spreading false information about our brothers and sisters who come from other countries, including the pernicious lie that migrant workers steal jobs from Americans. The facts say otherwise. According to the Brookings Institution’s Tara Watson, referenced in the Reuters article, new migrant workers are actually expanding the American workforce: helping our economy grow without increasing inflation.

Moreover, French said, the lived experience of union members in Ohio tells an entirely different story than the one spun by anti-union and anti-immigrant entities. Despite differences in backgrounds, places of origin and languages spoken, workers like Herrera and Pinto are on the job side-by-side with their union brothers and sisters, working just as hard to get things done (and putting valuable contributions into local pension funds). It speaks to the core value and purpose of our union: United we bargain, divided we beg.

By bringing workers like Herrera and Pinto into SMART, we can only grow stronger, and it is imperative that locals take the steps to do just that: producing multilingual recruiting materials, partnering with local immigrant assistance organizations and much more. Most importantly, we need to make sure all members feel welcomed at the jobsite and in the union hall.

As 60-year-old Local 24 journey-worker Tim Lyman told Reuters, “… while communication can be tricky, ‘if they want to learn, I’ll teach them.’”

WATCH: “I am very excited about the big jobs that are coming up. We have many opportunities that they offer for those who are willing to work, work hard and learn new skills.”

North America’s Building Trades Unions (NABTU) hosted an event titled “Meeting the Moment” on Thursday, March 30 in Columbus, Ohio. The event, part of NABTU’s Opportunity Pipeline series, featured NABTU President Sean McGarvey, SMART Local 24 (southern Ohio) member McKenzie Quinn, representatives from the Ohio governor’s office, state politicians from both sides of the aisle, local union workers and more, all talking about one thing: $200 billion worth of megaprojects breaking ground in Ohio.

“Join us in rebuilding America and join us in establishing your place in the middle class,” McGarvey said at the event, addressing the union tradespeople of the future. “… We look forward to building this together as a team, as a community for the benefit of all in our country.”

As a result of massive investment and new megaprojects from companies like Intel, Honda and more – spurred in part by federal legislation like the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the CHIPS and Science Act and the Inflation Reduction Act – the Ohio State Building and Construction Trades Council estimates that more than 115,000 union workers will work full time from 2023 to 2025. That enormous number of jobs opens a huge window of opportunity for SMART sheet metal workers, both current and future members.

McKenzie Quinn (front row, second from right) with the leadership of Local 24.

“In Columbus right now, we have a lot of exciting upcoming projects,” Local 24 journeyperson Quinn said. “We have chip factories, data centers, electric vehicle battery plants, and this is going to bring hundreds of good-paying jobs in the next few years.”

That not only means family-sustaining jobs for Ohio SMART members – it creates a golden opportunity for local unions to recruit, organize and grow their market share.

“We need to do our best to continue recruiting people from every background,” Quinn noted. “This opportunity is available to everyone.”

Megaprojects, union apprenticeship programs create opportunity for all

Multiple speakers at Thursday’s event testified to the power of a union apprenticeship when it comes to lifting workers up, no matter their background or identity. Year after year, the statistics demonstrate that unions reduce economic disparity for women, people of color and other members of historically marginalized communities. By taking advantage of megaprojects and bringing more workers into the unionized trade, SMART locals can do more than fortify their strength – they can create real opportunity for all.

“Joining a union has given me safety and security in my job and safety from discrimination, not only with wages but also gender-based discrimination,” Quinn said. “This is a great chance for everybody, including women and minorities, to get into the trades and have a great career.”

Watch further coverage of the event here.

Megaprojects in the News

Local 24’s (Columbus, Ohio) Josh Williams knows the meaning of hard work. As a union sheet metal worker and a business representative for his local, he’s spent years waking up before the crack of dawn, toiling under the sun on the jobsite and spending long nights on the road. But in Williams’ case, the willingness to put long hours into a rewarding vocation — and help others reach their full potential — didn’t originate on the job. For nearly two decades, preceding his career in the trade, Williams has fought and coached mixed martial arts (MMA).

“I took my first fight back in 2001, fought from 2001–2003, then I took more into a coaching role, and I’ve been coaching for about the past 20 years,” Williams said. “I’ve been able to bring not only everything I learned in the cage to the union, I’ve brought actual fighters to the union as well.”

Watch Josh Williams talk MMA and sheet metal in episode five of SMART News.

MMA — also referred to as cage fighting, no holds barred and ultimate fighting — is a particularly thrilling combat sport, notable for incorporating techniques from a huge variety of international competitive fighting styles. Combatants can employ moves and methods from Greco-Roman wrestling, jiu-jitsu, kickboxing and more; during a given fight, they may punch, kick, grapple and perform hand-to-hand ground fighting in a wide range of combinations. The result: a kinetic, brutal full-contact sport.

Local 24 currently has at least four members fighting MMA. That includes Daniel Spohn, an internationally renowned fighter with stints in the Ultimate Fighter and UFC. Spohn famously achieved one of the fastest knockouts in the history of the Ultimate Fighter with a 10-second win against Tyler King. Now, he’s continued his fighting career while simultaneously enjoying the family-sustaining pay and solidarity of a union sheet metal career. To Williams, that’s unsurprising: Experience in the cage transitions well to working in the sheet metal industry.

“[MMA] is real-time problem solving. It’s real-time problem solving with dire consequences: If you don’t figure out [the problem] right away, you’ll get punched in the head,” he explained. “If you can problem solve fast, efficiently and remain cool under fire, there’s nothing that [will] rile you up on a jobsite.”

Business Representative Josh Williams, West Franklin Elementary Principal Dr. Dawn Lauridsen, Local 24 apprentice Katie Fertig, Business Representative Jeff Hunley.

The SM Local 24 (southern Ohio) SMART Army helped area kids and families stay healthy as summer began with a food drive benefiting elementary-aged students at West Franklin Elementary School in the Southwestern City School District; the fourth-largest school district in the state. Organized by Local 24 apprentice Katie Fertig, the food drive saw the SMART Army partner with West Franklin Elementary Communities in Schools Coordinator Brooklyn Brown to put together more than 50 food kits to send home to families in need over the summer months — a time when many children in the community lose access to school breakfast and lunch programs.

Local 24 members are currently at work helping build and remodel several new school buildings, as well as other projects, for the Southwestern City School District. The local hopes to further grow its relationship with the district and expand its food drive effort in future years to continue supporting the community and keep kids and families healthy.

Business Representative Jeff Hunley, Business Representative Josh Williams, Local 24 apprentice Katie Fertig