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I would say we would be very hard up for work when we should be so

low as to attempt to steal what we consider another’s trade.

– Organizer Michael O’Sullivan, 1902

Chapter 8

Protecting Work Jurisdiction

Solidarity is an exhilarating concept. A term coined by the French in the mid-

19th century and embraced by activists ever since, it conveys the very essence of the

labor movement: that common interests and mutual obligations will unite working people

in a fight. But as the history of jurisdictional conflicts between the building trades shows,

it is much easier to sing about solidarity than it is to achieve it.

Consider the Sheet Metal Workers early history. In the early 1900s, there were

battles with the Painters (who organized glaziers) over skylight and metal sash glazing;

with the Metal Polishers over bar fixture work; with the Slate and Tile Roofers over sheet

metal roofing; and with the Structural Iron Workers over erecting sheet metal sash.

Worse, by 1909 the Sheet Metal Workers and the Carpenters were embroiled in a fight to

install metal trim and hollow metal doors – a fight that would last some 26 years!

Because these items had once been made of wood, the Carpenters claimed the work, and

they had no intention of giving it up, even after the AFL’s Building Trades Department

decided the question in the Sheet Metal Workers favor. “Hold what we have and get all

we can,” was the Carpenters’ motto in 1909, an attitude that still resonated a century

later.

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These conflicts would prove costly. “While we are fighting amongst ourselves

like a dog and a cat,” as one building trades leader put it, “the open shop contractor is

walking off with all the meat.” The point was not lost on the SMWIA’s Department of

Jurisdiction. By the 1980s, the leadership already knew that there were better ways to

protect the trade than to fight disputes in court – that is, to file a complaint with the

Building and Construction Trades Department’s National Joint Plan for the Settlement of

Jurisdictional Disputes. “No trade should rely on any Jurisdictional Board for establishing

or maintaining its trade jurisdiction,” noted James K. Crump, the Department’s Chief

International Representative, in 1982.

Four years later, his opinion had not changed. IA programs like the National

Training Fund and SASMI, he said, “have done more than any national plan for the

settlement of Jurisdictional Disputes has been able to do, past or present.” Thanks to the

NTF “we no longer have to turn work assigned to sheet metal workers over to other crafts

because of a lack of skilled welders,” he noted. And thanks to the travel benefits SASMI

provided, sheet metal workers manned jobs throughout the country “that could not have

been manned otherwise. Had we not been successful in manning these jobs,” Crump

added, “the work would have gone to another trade.” Had that happened, “we would not

have regained control of that work. We would have had a disaster trying to handle all the

jurisdictional disputes this would have caused.” Other work preservation programs like

Specialty Agreements, Industrial Addendums, and especially Resolution 78, he believed,

also boosted the SMWIA’s chances to retain and recover work.

The International Job Bank, launched in 1983, was another useful tool. At a time

of high unemployment in areas throughout the U.S. and Canada, and rising demand for

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certain skilled workers, like certified welders, the Job Bank functioned as a national

hiring hall: The idea was to compile a complete record of available jobs as well as a list

of local unions with members ready, able, and willing to travel for work – and if they did

not have the necessary skills, the NTF would see to their training. That way, the SMWIA

would be in a good position to insure that local unions and their contractors had the

trained personnel they needed to control their work.

By the 1990s maintaining a competitive edge in the job market by keeping

members employed had become a significant Department goal, according to Malcolm

“Mac” Hamilton, the Chief International rep. “At one time we handled mostly

jurisdictional disputes and pre-job and mark-up meetings,” he noted in 1990. “Now, we

handle not only assignments to International Representatives on disputes and meetings

and other miscellaneous problems, but also Project Agreements, the National

Construction Stabilization Agreement, the National Decking and Siding Agreement . . .

the COSMOS program [that is, the Construction Organizing Statistical Monitoring

System that tracked and monitored projects], letters of assignment, the Resolution 78 data

base . . . as well as various surveys, mergers, and other problems which occur daily.”

The Department also monitored International Agreements (which required national

contractors to subcontract sheet metal work to signatory contractors); the General

Presidents’ Project Maintenance Agreement (which was developed by the BCTD and the

Associated Maintenance Contractors Association) and the National Maintenance

Agreement (another BCTD agreement that could be utilized by contractors who

performed industrial maintenance work).

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A drop in the percentage of dispute-related work assignments confirmed this shift

in focus – the percentage dropped from 33 percent in the period from 1978 to 1982 to 13

percent in the period from 1986 to 1990. But that did not mean international reps weren’t

busy. On the contrary, they were on the road constantly trouble-shooting local problems,

attending council meetings, and serving as panelists under Article X, Section 8 of the

Standard Form of Union Agreement. They were also attending the usual pre-job

conferences and equipment mark-up meetings.

At the same time, the Department of Jurisdiction was also changing internal

procedures to keep up with changing times. A new computer system, with state-of-the-

art scanning capabilities, promised to improve record keeping and communications. And

a 1994 decision to merge the Jurisdiction and Organizing Departments also promised to

streamline operations. International reps became General President’s reps, organizers

became international reps, and both groups reported to Ronald “Moose” McCarthy, Chief

International Rep. Although the plan was conceived to conserve funds and centralize the

related missions of both Departments, it was never popular with organizers. And since

the responsibility of overseeing the merged Department proved too demanding for one

director, the experiment was ended in 1996.

By that time, jurisdictional disputes were on the rise again. Some trades now

offered “wall-to-wall” agreements, performing all the work they could handle regardless

of jurisdictional claims – a practice that was also known as raiding. “What I am seeing,”

one building trades leader noted, “is cannibalism . . . beyond imagination.” And the

SMWIA did not intend to sit by idly: Business Agents conferences in 1997 and 1998

featured workshops on how to understand and use the procedures and rules of the

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Building and Construction Trades Departments’ Plan for the Settlement of Jurisdictional

Disputes.” The Jurisdiction Department put it this way: “As representatives of our

membership and of this union, if we do not pursue jurisdictional claims, in essence we

are unconditionally surrendering our work to other unions.”

The Mechanical and Allied Crafts

Aiming to take control of the situation IA president Mike Sullivan called on his

fellow building trades leaders in 1999 to meet and attempt to resolve craft issues. “This

is smart business,” the Jurisdiction Department reported. “Construction users,

contractors, and our respective memberships look to national unions to take a leadership

role in resolving jurisdictional issues that impact the construction job site. As unions, we

can . . . act in solidarity and honor each other’s trade practices, or we can take the hostile

approach in a business relationship as cutthroat competitors.”

But in the early years of the 21st century, as in the early years of 20

th, the

Carpenters had their own ideas about solidarity and jurisdiction. Their idea, according to

Sullivan was to get what they can and to hell with everybody else. It was no secret that

the Carpenters wanted to restructure the labor movement into five industrial unions –

with the Carpenters representing construction workers. And it was no secret that, with

half a million members, the Carpenters had clout at the bargaining table.

In Kansas City, for instance, the Carpenters District Council claimed metal

roofing, decking, and siding as part of its craft jurisdiction and member unions employed

their subcontracting clause to enforce that claim: Unless their contractors wanted trouble

on the job site, carpenters, not sheet metal workers, performed the work. Tensions were

also rising in New England. The Lymo Construction Co., an architectural wall panel

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subcontractor that had worked with Local 17 in the past, was now using employees

represented by the Carpenters. The fact that sheet metal rates were almost always higher

than carpenter rates complicated the issue. “We will not tolerate the theft of our work,”

President Sullivan told the 2004 convention. “This International will not . . . allow the

carpenter or anyone to take the work from our hands and the food from our members’

mouths. We just will not allow that.”

The General President wasn’t interested in compromise, either. For instance,

when the Carpenters left the AFL-CIO and were then forced out of the BCTD in 2005,

AFL-CIO leaders devised “solidarity charters” so that local carpenters unions could

remain part of local building trades councils. Although the goal was to protect local

project labor agreements, the SMWIA would not go along with the plan. After all, what

did “solidarity” mean, if one union could raid another’s work and still sit on a building

trades council? As far as Sullivan was concerned the building trades would be much

better off when the AFL-CIO chartered a new Carpenters union.

He wasn’t alone. James A. Williams, president of the Painters union “vehemently

opposed” solidarity charters – his members were also losing work to the Carpenters. And

so were ironworkers, plasterers, insulators, and roofers. Even electrical workers weren’t

immune, as IBEW President Edward Hill pointed out. The handwriting was on the wall:

If specialty trades intended to keep their work and their organizations, the dynamics of

the fight would have to change. Separately, these unions were no match for the

Carpenters “who think there is no such thing as jurisdiction,” as Sullivan put it. But

together, they at least had a fighting chance.

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“We had a job in Boston on siding,” President Sullivan explained. “We had the

assignment, but the carpenter went to the general contractor and . . . used their sub-

contracting clause to get that contractor to reassign the work.” But this time the

Carpenters lost the fight – when the case went to arbitration the Ironworkers backed up

the SMWIA and that support made the difference. “Even though they wanted to do

siding also,” Sullivan pointed out (since the Ironworkers claimed jurisdiction, too), “they

said that it’s not the work of the carpenter. It is either the work of the sheet metal worker

or the ironworker and the carpenter has no business doing that kind of work.” Since then

the two unions had been cooperating more than usual, a move in the right direction.

The Painters union had a similar experience. After the Carpenters forced an

NLRB election to displace painters on a job in Des Moines, Iowa, the other building

trades helped the Painters win by a large majority. “We banded together as building

trades,” explained sheet metal worker Ron Masters, business manager of Local 45. “We

wrote letters. . . . We wore the painters’ shirts. . . . We worked with delegations from

across the country and Canada. . . . We were very successful,” he added. “This is what it

takes . . . us standing shoulder to shoulder with the painters or whoever the hell it is.”

Painters’ president Williams agreed. “When we stand together, nobody can beat us.”

Williams made that comment to the SMWIA’s 2004 convention in Chicago,

although he was attending his own convention in Washington, D.C., at the time. But with

the help of a satellite hook-up that brought the two groups together – the first meeting of

its kind in building trades history – Williams and the Painters and Mike Sullivan and the

Sheet Metal Workers endorsed what they called a Unity Resolution. The resolution

renewed the BCTD Solidarity Compact that both unions had signed back in 1996. Now

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they reaffirmed their pledge to respect each other’s basic craft jurisdiction, reject wall-to-

wall agreements (that the Carpenters and Laborers used to great effect), and refrain from

raiding affiliated unions. For Williams, the resolution was “the first step on a road to

revitalize the labor movement in the building trades,” a sentiment that Sullivan shared.

“More of this has to happen,” he said, “if we are going to survive.

These ideas were soon put to the test. In 2001, the SMWIA, IBEW, UA,

Boilermakers, Insulators, and Ironworkers joined forces in the Mechanical and Allied

Crafts, or MAC. The idea was to work together to defend their jurisdiction. But putting

that idea into action was another story: MAC was an organization in name only until

2004 and it only started to gain traction in 2005 when it was launched as a division of the

BCTD. By that time, competition among the trades had grown fierce: Both the Laborers

and Operating Engineers (unions that represented more than a million workers between

them) had left the BCTD to join the Carpenters in a new operation – The National

Construction Alliance, a basic-trades federation with ties to the Associated General

Contractors. With construction users and contractors fearful of trouble to come, MAC’s

united front promised to calm industrial nerves.

Eliminating jurisdictional disputes was first on the agenda: MAC union

presidents were working together to resolve conflicting claims before they disrupted a

project. The plan was to define jurisdiction on a local level so that regional past practices

would prevail. Any problems that still remained would be ironed out at pre-job meetings

so that work would run smoothly.

Member unions also intended to share training and organizing responsibilities, to

cut down on costs, and to set new standards of professionalism. Absenteeism and

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tardiness would not be tolerated, and neither would alcohol or substance abuse. “Eight

for eight,” the key to a productive, profitable work force, would be the rule on MAC jobs.

Finally, MAC unions were taking a new look at an old industry problem: the

shortage of qualified skilled workers. Plans to share manpower among the crafts, and to

make it easier for workers to travel outside home jurisdictions were under discussion.

The fact that MAC unions were willing to negotiate tripartite arrangements with

contractors and project owners nationally, regionally, or locally, also seemed promising

at the time.

“We’re going to be progressive and innovative,” the leadership pledged. “MAC

is [going] to show industry that we can work together to get their projects completed on

time and within budget.” And it was about time, according to Joe Nigro, the SMWIA’s

new secretary-treasurer. “Operating under 20th

century guidelines for a 21st century

union is no way of securing a stronger future for our union nor is it an adequate way to

represent the interests of union Sheet Metal Workers.”

MAC would also remind the Carpenters that the mechanical trades still had clout.

With a combined membership of 1.4 million, MAC unions accounted for 80 percent of

the work on large industrial projects. The alliance also offered member unions an

excellent opportunity “to go out in unison to organize companies,” Mike Sullivan noted,

“and build strength on job sites.”

Whether craft jurisdiction could be defended on 21st century jobs sites, and

whether the Mechanical and Allied Crafts would succeed where other multi-trade efforts

had failed, remained to be seen. Solidarity was the theory that launched the alliance, but

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solidarity in practice would be the measure of success – whether MAC survived as an

organization or not.

Back to the Future

By the time Richard McClees took over as Chief International Rep in 2004, he

was firmly committed to the idea that work assignments, not inter-union fights, were the

key to protecting and expanding jurisdiction. He knew that approach was politically

risky: For better or worse, rank-and-file workers expected local leaders to show up on

the jobsite on a regular basis and to take on any other trade that tried to do their work. As

long as the business managers were willing to shout down their opponents and file the

claim with the Department of Jurisdiction, the member believed that their dues money

was well-spent.

But the whole process was backwards, as far as McClees could see. Unless the

sheet metal workers got the assignment in the first place, they would not do the work –

even if the union fought the case all the way up to the Building and Construction Trade’s

jurisdictional board – and won. In an industry where time was money, it did not matter

which trade historically “owned” the work once a job was underway – whoever started it

would finish it, an economic fact of life that arguing would not change.

Taking a more strategic approach to control current and future work, Department

staff worked with NEMI and the ITI to identify ways and means of protecting and

growing work opportunities. International reps served on a number of task forces, from

High Tech, TABB, and Project Management, to Welding, Service and Residential. This

approach made good sense, they believed, because working together, the Funds and the

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Department could identify and strengthen the skills sheet metal workers needed to

maintain work jurisdiction and expand market share.

Department staff was also working with contractors to see what new projects were

on the horizon and what contractors would need to effectively bid that work and

ultimately increase man-hours. This “proactive” approach made practical sense given the

structure of the industry: Once signatory contractors had the work in hand, the SMWIA

would not have to worry about jurisdiction. Instead of reacting to “unfair” work

assignments, the Jurisdiction Department would be looking ahead and making good use

of IA resources to identify emerging industries, strengthen necessary skills, and position

the unionized sheet metal industry to take advantage of new work opportunities.

To make this plan a reality, the IA was working with SMACNA, the American

Institute of Architects, and the Construction Specification Institute to develop a new

Construction Specification Master Format, to help sheet metal contractors secure the

entire HVAC scope when bidding a project. And to take advantage of promising new

targets like coal-fired and nuclear electrical energy plants, the Department had developed

training aids and educational material, including a new DVD that would include files

describing every process and system, components and pieces of equipment, and relevant

job site decisions, photographs, and minutes from other pre-job meetings, information

designed to help local unions secure their work.

At the same time, the Department was increasing its role as the liaison between

the General Office and the local unions. International representatives played a crucial

role: They not only helped local unions establish relationships with construction users

(including school boards and county and state governments), public and private utilities,

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and general contractors, but they maintained regular contact with Business Managers and

Representatives to help keep the lines of communication open. In the process, they

helped local unions understand their options under the National Pension Funds

rehabilitation plans; they helped local unions understand how many new apprentices they

needed to balance the number of retirees and meet future demands; and they helped

provide leadership and financial training for new local officers and trustees;

“We can let things happen to us, or we can make things happen for us. This is our

challenge,” Chief International Representative Charles Mulcahy reported in 2009. “The

path of least resistance may be inviting for some,” he added, “but rarely will it deliver . . .

the opportunity for a better life,” a realization that continues to shape the Department of

Jurisdiction’s policies.

“We still think locally, but we need to think nationally. It’s a different world we’re

fighting now.” – Organizer Michael Small

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Chapter 9:

Organizing New Work and New Workers

The mandate to “Organize the unorganized” has deep roots in IA history. After

all, when the Tin, Sheet Iron, and Cornice Workers first joined forces in 1888, their goal

was to organize “thoroughly.” In those early days, every officer was an organizer,

aiming to charter new locals “in every town or city where there are seven or more

journeymen.” And in those days, employers didn’t make the job easy and neither did the

state. In the United States, workers had no right to organize before 1935; in Canada, the

federal Trade Union Act had passed in 1872, but it was not until the 1940s that a system

of union certification and collective bargaining took off.

By that time, though, the building tradesmen who dominated the Sheet Metal

Workers were not inclined to grow. The boom-and-bust cycles of construction work (and

particularly the lean years of the Great Depression) made local unions wary of opening

their doors too wide even after the industry took off in the 1950s and ‘60s. As far as

these members could see, organizing when work was plentiful led to unemployment

when times were tough. So when the market demanded more manpower, instead of

organizing the unorganized or expanding apprenticeship training, these “country club”

unions issued permits to temporary workers (often relatives, college students, or

unemployed members of other trades) or hired “preapprentices” who never got a chance

to move up.

In theory, this process would preserve union work for union members. In

practice, however, it had the opposite effect. The permit-workers and preapprentices who

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had trained on the job – but were barred from membership – became the trained

manpower nonunion contractors needed grow their share of the market.

Why Organize?

As nonunion competition grew more viable in the 1980s, the idea of organizing

the construction work force from the bottom up began to gain traction. A short-lived

campaign to organize residential work in Los Angeles, in the late 1970s, had

demonstrated that the task was not impossible. Working together in a multi-trade

campaign, local building-trades unions welcomed ten thousand new members in eighteen

months’ time. But considering that the SMWIA was almost alone in providing the

organizers every union had promised, the short-lived campaign also demonstrated that

“organizing the unorganized” was honored more as a slogan than an action plan. By the

1980s “construction locals were in horrendous shape,” as one union leader put it, “and

organizing was a word that was foreign to their vocabularies.”

But that attitude was slowly beginning to change, thanks in part to organizers like

Mike Lucas, a member of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, who

strongly believed in the economic power of bottom-up organizing. Employers first

signed union agreements, he explained, because the unions controlled something they

needed – skilled manpower. “When we regain control of that manpower . . . we will be

able to regain those concessions we have already made, and not until.”

That message made a powerful impression on Michael Small, then a member of

SMWIA Local 17. In 1985 he had heard Lucas speak about a “foreign subject,” as Small

put it: The critical need for construction unions to open their doors and organize their

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industry. “Everything he said, I bought,” Small remembered. “I think he could have sold

a bible to an atheist.”

Energized by the talk, Small paid his own way to one of the first organizing

classes sponsored by the AFL-CIO’s Building and Construction Trades Department. And

in 1986 he signed on as Local 17's organizer. “Everyone thought I was crazy,” he

admitted. “But organizing got in my blood, and even though it was only a one year

appointment and nobody at the time would take people into the local union, I had to do it.

It was the right thing to do.”

In fact, Mike Small never stopped organizing, even after he was elected business

agent in 1988, a job he held for three terms. “I just saw no sense in going on to a job site

unannounced and uninvited to look for problems,” Small said, “when at the same time I

could go to a nonunion job site where the people were getting ripped off and I could

create some problems to hopefully get the contractors to sit down with us.” He knew

what he was doing. When Local 297 in Manchester, N. H., was merged into Local 17 in

1989 it counted only 65 members – and 33 of these were unemployed. Small’s brand of

organizing turned the situation around. As the membership grew to 275, the New

Hampshire local increased its market share and, consequently, its bargaining strength.

It’s very simple,” Small noted. “If you have the people, you have the gold, you rule.

Now you can bring the wages and benefits back up to where they need to be.”

How to spread that message was another question. Up until the mid-1980s, the

SMWIA’s Organizing Department had concentrated on organizing building trades shops

and manufacturing workers. But organizing the nonunion construction work force was a

local union’s responsibility, one that many business managers still preferred to avoid. In

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an effort to change their minds, and open their eyes to the economic reality of nonunion

competition, IA organizers adopted a plan in the 1990s that promised to make a

difference: Construction Organizing Membership Education Training, or COMET, a

motivational program designed to answer the question “Why organize?”

Over an intensive four-day “Train the Trainer” course, COMET participants

analyzed the rise of nonunion construction, the connection between union density,

bargaining strength, and wage standards, and the reasons why members feared

broadening their ranks. Once back home, these COMET-trained participants passed that

knowledge on to local members, demonstrating why organizing was the key to long-term

success for the unionized sheet metal industry and why “country-club” unionism was

doomed. An additional program, COMET II, took the next step, training members how

to organize by salting nonunion jobs and encouraging them to volunteer for local

organizing committees.

Around the same time, the IA launched a new Education Department that

researched, developed, and presented specialized curriculum for organizing classes, as

well as COMET I and COMET II classes. Basic Organizing, for instance, covered issues

like the National Labor Relations Board, Strategic Planning, and Organizing and the

Law, while Advanced Organizing concentrated on building and arguing strong NLRB

cases. The IA also launched a new subsidized organizing program in the mid-1990s that

seemed promising at the time: By paying part of an organizer’s salary, the IA

encouraged local unions to hire full-time organizers and grow their membership.

However by 1999 it was painfully clear that these efforts were not paying off.

Although the IA was spending over $200,000 a month to subsidize local organizers,

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membership totaled around 140,000, no higher than it had been in 1990 and 7 percent

lower than it had been in 1982. Worse, nonunion competition was still going strong.

Construction employment had almost doubled since 1960, but over the same time period

union construction’s market share had dropped from around 90 percent to less than 20

percent. In 1999, the unionized sheet metal industry controlled around 38 percent of the

market – the same percentage it had controlled in 1986. “We must face the fact that we

have basically been holding our own,” General President Mike Sullivan reported.

“That’s not acceptable.”

Centralization and Comprehensive Strategies

Although local unions were still reluctant to increase their ranks, that was not the

only challenge the SMWIA faced at the turn of the 21st century: The industry was

growing more centralized every day, a dangerous trend as far as industrial relations were

concerned. For much of the 20th

century, the unionized sheet metal industry had been

almost a family affair. But those days were fading fast: Mergers and acquisitions were

changing the face of the sheet metal industry, and so were national consolidators who

were buying out local HVAC contractors and undermining local union bargaining power

in the process.

New times called for new tactics and new, comprehensive strategies to mobilize

the membership, organize the work force, and sell the next generation of sheet metal

contractors on the value of union construction. “We have the workers, we have the skills

. . . we have the commitment to quality, we have the productivity,” President Sullivan

noted. But if that was not enough to bring contractors to the bargaining table, the

SMWIA also had the energy to try and change their minds. “We will move to out-

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organize [and] out-maneuver them in ways that make sure that . . . work goes to union

sheet metal workers,” the general president promised, whether these new, more

centralized contractors “like it or not.”

As consolidations, mergers, and the rise of multinational corporations nullified

local bargaining power, comprehensive campaigns played a larger role in the SMWIA’s

organizing strategy. Now instead of focusing on NLRB elections in organizer training

courses, participants learned how to use corporate research, member mobilization, and

public education to win organizing campaigns. With organizing classes geared to

running strategic campaigns, participants learned how to use the Internet for research,

how to think strategically, and how to put together game plans that could change an

employers’ mind. They also learned how to target an employer’s key constituencies and

run successful – and legal – secondary boycotts. With the help of attorney Richard

McCracken, who had pioneered the strategy, participants explored the legal limits of free

speech and constitutional rights and learned some useful, attention-grabbing tactics, like

how to alter corporate logos legally, from Cracker Barrel to Crapper Barrel, for instance.

The Eisenmann Campaign

Employers like the Eisenmann Corporation were prime corporate targets.

Privately owned and headquartered in Germany, Eisenmann manufactured and installed

paint-line and other manufacturing equipment for auto industry plants. And it had been

battling Local 24 in court over the question of unionizing its production facility in Crystal

Lake, Ill. Local 24's contractors had the installation work for a major GM plant

renovation. But union members had no intention of installing nonunion sheet metal

products, especially since Eisenmann paid its fabricators less than the prevailing wage.

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The situation was tailor-made for an all-out corporate campaign. “It’s time to make it

clear, the days when companies could play both sides are gone,” President Sullivan

announced in 1999. “It’s time to separate our friends from our enemies and . . . act

accordingly.”

The plan was straightforward: First researchers thoroughly investigated

Eisenmann’s corporate practices and its behavior in the market place. Then they used

that information to publicize on-going problems. For instance, brochures distributed at a

trade show in Cleveland alerted potential customers to Eisenmann’s failure to pay

vendors on time and its substandard wage policy. “Within a day their lawyers were on

the phone with our staff in Washington,” the SMWIA Journal reported. “We listened and

when we didn’t hear anything positive to resolve the issue, we decided to take the next

step – moving aggressively against this anti-union firm.” Now the union contacted

Eisenmann’s customers, requesting them to return pledge cards supporting the SMWIA’s

right to organize. The union also contacted vendors, requesting reports of any problems

they might have encountered. And both were asked to complete surveys about their

experiences with Eisenmann. Those who failed to comply but continued to do business

with the company would be counted as opponents.

Key customers like BWM and Freightliner Trucks were also targeted: Local

unions from Albuquerque to St. Louis, from Southeastern Pennsylvania, to Northern New

Jersey and Canada spread the word against Eisenmann at BMW and Freightliner

dealerships. The SMWIA also let investors know that trouble was brewing: The GEC

approved a motion to purchase stock in companies that did business with Eisenmann in

order to raise the subject at shareholder meetings. Finally, the union took every

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opportunity to spotlight corporate mishaps involving Eisenmann’s business partners. For

instance, when BMW America recalled some 17,000 M3 cars in 1999 (due to faulty

airbags), the SMWIA took out an ad in the Wall Street Journal to publicize the recall.

“This dispute has nothing to do with us,” a BMW spokesman complained. But because

Eisenmann produced factory robots for BMW plants in the U. S. and Germany, the

SMWIA believed that it did.

The fight was not easy. As a private, family-owned company, Eisenmann was

used to “ruling absolutely,” according to George Slater, business manager for Local 265

(and a general vice president). “They are not used to anyone telling them anything.” But

the SMWIA’s varied, creative, and strategic campaign eventually brought results: By

2002, Eisenmann had signed a national construction agreement (for installation work)

and recognized the SMWIA as exclusive bargaining agent at its Crystal Lake fabrication

plant –an outcome that not only protected building trades and industrial rates, but brought

in new members and new work in an important industry for sheet metal workers.

Organize, Organize, Organize

Strategic planning was the key to success in the Eisenmann campaign. But could

it also be applied to the SMWIA as whole? The leadership intended to find out:

In January 2000, the General Executive Council hosted a “mini-think-tank” designed to

mobilize the SMWIA’s resources in a concerted effort to organize the unorganized.

Organizing Director Mike Small proposed an ambitious plan: To make every Business

Agent an organizer and add 25,000 new members in four years’ time. If every local

union organized just 25 new members a year, he pointed out, that plan could become a

reality.

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Given the SMWIA’s organizing resources, that expectation seemed reasonable.

Thanks to a 1999 convention resolution, the IA had a mandate to organize, and for the

first time since 1994, the Organizing Department’s regional offices were fully staffed

with six full-time representatives – one in service, two in production organizing, two in

organizing and education, and one regional director to work with local union organizers.

Newly appointed Assistant Director Chris Carlough was coordinating an expanded

Youth-to-Youth apprentice-organizer program designed to put more organizers on the

street, and the IA continued to subsidize more than 70 local organizers.

“We have everything in place to accomplish this important mission,” President

Sullivan said. But something was still missing – rank-and-file commitment to the cause.

Convention delegates may have cheered the 1999 organizing resolution. But when it

came to taking in new members, the cheering often stopped short. “We are in trouble,”

Sullivan admitted. “There’s more work going on in the United States than has gone on in

the history of the country and our market share has not increased. From 1979 on . . . I’ve

seen us diminish our position.” No wonder collective bargaining had become collective

begging, he said. And no wonder Mike Small was inclined to be blunt. “If we can’t

recognize that if we keep shrinking then nobody needs us, and we become less powerful,

we’re stupid,” he said. “We’re going to go out of business if we don’t fix these things.”

Some of the “fixes” began at the top: The general president approved policies

that, to some extent, eased “country club” restrictions: Initiation fees were capped at $500

(a figure still five times too high according to some), testing was dropped for workers

with more than six years’ experience, and local unions that refused to organize faced the

threat (but not the reality, some complained) of being merged.

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Others began at the bottom: The Organizing and Education Departments offered

rank and file members a crash course in labor economics. Any COMET-trained member

knew that market share equaled bargaining strength and that organizing was crucial to

increasing market share. What they didn’t know was whether their locals were making

progress or not. Local organizers were usually satisfied as long as membership numbers

went up; they rarely considered industry growth, although they should have: A local

union that grew by 10 percent at the same time that a labor market grew by 30 percent

had lost – not gained – market share, a crucial consideration in the early years of the 21st

century when construction was booming.

“That was the real dilemma,” as one staff member put it, “explaining to people

that just because everybody’s working and your membership is growing, that does not

mean you’re growing stronger.” To make the case crystal clear, the Education

Department hired a strategic researcher to measure union density and market share, local

by local. That way the members could see for themselves whether they were gaining

bargaining strength, treading water, or falling behind. “When we go into a local . . . and

show them . . . what has happened in their local, with graphics,” an IA leader noted, “they

immediately get it.”

“Who Moved My Cheese?” a Power Point presentation designed to educate

members on the issue of market share proved to be especially effective. Based on a best-

selling book by the same name, it demonstrated what happened to workers who refused

to adapt to change. There were maps and graphics to illustrate how unionized

construction had declined despite a decade of industry growth. There were also lessons

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on how to calculate a local’s union density, so members could answer an important

question: Did your local grow enough to increase market share?

If the answer was “No,” the meaning was clear. Any local that failed to recognize

and adapt to industry changes – like the rise of nonunion competition – would not

survive. And just to make sure that members got the point, “Who Moved My Cheese?”

offered a startling statistic: Because local unions refused to bring in new members, there

were only 71 apprentices for every 100 journeymen over age 50, a ratio that did not bode

well for future retirees. What would happen to their pensions? How could they expect a

secure retirement without enough members to pay for it? The plain fact was sheet metal

workers could not afford not to organize.

“I went around the country presenting ‘Who Moved My Cheese,’ at local union

meetings” Mike Small remembered. “And I said, ‘In your particular local area, here are

the facts. The construction industry gained 10,000 jobs. For every hundred people on a

job site, three of them are sheet metal workers. So we should have had 300 members

gained by your local over the last ten years. And you actually lost 20 members. So who

did the work? Three hundred people in the non-union sector,” he said.

“I did this at every union meeting,” Small added. “I never had one person get up

and dispute the facts. Not one. As a matter of fact, I had people get up and make

motions like ‘Let’s put another organizer on. Let’s put some more money into

organizing. Let’s form an organizing committee.’”

Eager to learn how to adapt and change, once they understood what was going on,

members signed up for the Education Department’s 3-day organizing course and then

volunteered as organizers. The results were encouraging. In fact, despite a significant

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loss of production members in 2001 and 2002 (due to plant closings, for the most part),

the SMWIA’s membership totaled around 150,000 in 2002 – the highest it had been in 20

years. And by 2003 some 51 building trades locals had increased market share. The

number of apprentices had also increased, although only by a very small percentage. But

that number was expected to grow now that local JATCs were required to accept

applications year round, a significant change in union tradition.

Targeting New Workers

No one was claiming victory. The rise in membership fell far short of the IA’s

original goal of 25,000 new members by 2004. But there was still good reason to believe

that country-club unionism was on the decline. For instance, more locals were funding

Youth-to-Youth organizing programs, and that alone promised long-term results.

Apprentice-organizers had a different outlook from their elders. They were COMET-

trained from the start, so they expected their locals to organize and grow. They were

skilled in strategic research and brought a new creativity to the job. And they did not

scorn nonunion workers as “scabs,” as their fathers might have; they saw them as

exploited workers who deserved much more than they were getting from employers.

Their outlook and their training made them triple threats in nonunion shops.

Apprentice-organizers knew how to do quality work, they knew their legal rights on the

job, and they were enthusiastic ambassadors for union construction. Some alerted

customers when employers forced them to cut corners on a job, a strategy that moved

plenty of work to union shops. Others ran full-scale strategic campaigns, retrieving

corporate information, pressuring secondary targets, doing background checks on

employees, and even tipping off local tax collectors when the occasion arose.

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A female apprentice-organizer from Local 66 took a novel approach. Her

nonunion employer had asked her to testify at a project labor agreement hearing,

presuming that her youth, her skill, and her gender would be a strong advertisement for

the nonunion cause. His plan might have worked except for one thing: Once on the

stand she pulled off her company tee-shirt to reveal a “Union Now” tee-shirt. Then she

explained how union workers and project labor agreements benefited the construction

industry.

Organizers were also reaching out to new immigrant workers, a significant change

that boded well for the future. Once shunned as unfair competitors, Mexican,

Vietnamese, Cuban, and Russian workers were now recognized as potential union

brothers and sisters – a change that reflected industry realities as much as social justice

concerns: At a time when the number of unionized construction workers was at an all-

time low, the number of immigrant construction workers was rising rapidly. If nothing

else, practicality demanded a shift in attitude, a change that some local unions continued

to resist but others embraced – especially if they were eager to grow.

“We will not succeed if we don’t go after them,” said Luther Medina, an

organizer for Local 105 in Corona, Ca. With 6,000 members, Local 105 had been

recruiting immigrant and minority workers since 1999 with good results. “Sheet metal is

sheet metal,” he noted. “Some of the technologies may be different in some parts of the

world, but the trade is basically the same.”

Communication, however, proved difficult. Local organizers did what they could

to learn different languages and customs. They also offered free English lessons to recent

immigrants. At the same time, the International Training Institute worked to bridge

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language gaps. “We have Spanish subtitles on our safety DVDs. And we have printed

our safety handbook in Spanish,” administrator Ted Kuczynski reported. There were also

Spanish-language brochures promoting apprenticeship training, and a new CD – The

English-Spanish Game – to help English-speaking supervisors communicate with

Hispanic workers.

Organizers were also looking beyond North America shores. Thanks to a chance

meeting with representatives of the Collegio des los Trabajdores des Servicios, a Puerto

Rican trade association for air-conditioning and refrigeration technicians, IA staff was

working hard to unionize its members – some 3,000 workers who had no experience with

trade unionism. “They are hungry for training,” Mike Small reported. “We told them

training is not enough. They need training and collective bargaining to get better wages

and benefits.”

To show them what the SMWIA could do, the Organizing Department distributed

booklets that explained how the union operated and what kind of wages and benefits

members enjoyed. The effort was well worth it. “These are very sharp people. This

could be the biggest local in the IA,” Small noted – Collegio members were allowed two

helpers each, which meant they represented some 10,000 potential members. And that

number did not include sheet metal workers, or fitters and asbestos workers (who could

join SMWIA ranks since other international unions were not interested in organizing

them). So a Puerto Rican local union might bring in thousands of new members, if all

went right.

And if it didn’t, it would not be for lack of trying. There were meetings with

representatives in Ponce, Arecibo, and Mayaguez. There were lobbying efforts to gain

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funding from Congress to turn existing warehouses into training facilities. ITI director

Marty Martinez, who spoke Spanish, was developing a training program. And IA staffers

were ready to teach contractors how to bid jobs, a new experience for Collegio members

who were usually employed by large pharmaceutical companies. That work ultimately

paid off in 2004 when the IA chartered Puerto Rico’s Local 41. “The dues over there are

different than the mainland because they can’t afford the building trades’ dues, so we

gave them a lower rate,” Mike Small noted, “and it’s going strong.”

“We have put a lot of work into organizing,” President Sullivan acknowledged,

but there was still a long way to go. Over five years’ time, the “organize, organize,

organize” mandate had produced about a 2 percent rise in membership – not nearly

enough to move the union forward. But the mandate and the programs that resulted –

like Who Moved My Cheese – had encouraged a positive shift in attitudes, at least:

According to a membership survey, a strong majority now endorsed the IA’s organizing

policy and understood, at long last, why union construction had to grow to survive.

Achieving that growth was another question, one that could not be answered by

the SMWIA alone. Bottom-up organizing was essential to growing the union, but it

would not deliver the expected results unless the industry expanded, too. Newly

organized members had to be placed in union jobs, which meant that union contractors

and their customers were also vital parts of the industrial equation. Unless all three

sectors of the industry – labor, management, and owners – balanced their interests and

worked together to expand the market for union construction, there would be no moving

forward.

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Top-Down Organizing

“Successfully rebuilding market share is not a matter of simply devoting enough

resources to organizing,” economist David Weil argues. It also requires “a careful effort

to use limited resources to organize new contractors that can become the sustainable core

of a larger union sector in the long run,” a position the SMWIA endorsed in the first

decade of the 21st century. “We know the value we bring to the bottom line,” President

Mike Sullivan noted and so did signatory contractors. Now it was time to let nonunion

companies know why well-trained union workers were good for business. The union had

never done a good job of marketing outside the unionized sector of the industry. But

with economists forecasting a healthy demand for high-tech construction workers over

the next few years, the time seemed right to try.

Organizing director Mike Small had paved the way with a campaign to organize

the coated pipe industry – a specialized industry essential to the construction of

microchip facilities. Beginning with one small contractor in Vermont (who employed

five or six workers at minimum wage, and paid no benefits), the SMWIA had gone “right

down the chain” signing the other four companies that constituted this small but

strategically important industry.

When James White succeeded Small as department director, he encouraged

organizers to take the same approach – and was particularly pleased with one “good

young organizer” who was talking to all five nonunion contractors who did HVAC work

in a particular town. “He’s told them they have a lot of work coming up and they’ll need

skilled people and we have them. He’s doing it as an industry because if contractor A

signs and he’s got to up his cost by a dollar and everybody else is still at the old price, it

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makes it tougher to get work. But if they all sign and they all go up a dollar, everybody

can get their work.”

But why would they sign? What kind of arguments would persuade an employer

to work union? What kind of skills did union representatives need to “sell” their locals to

contractors? The Education Department took up these questions in the summer of 2007

with a new course entitled “Marketing Your Local Union.” The idea was to teach

business agents and organizers how – and why – to approach contractors with a “we’re

here to help you grow” attitude.

Designed around what was called “SWOT” analysis, participants debated the

strengths and weaknesses of working union, as well as the opportunities and threats a

contractor might face. The goal was to present the best possible case to nonunion

employers – and to make that presentation as professional as possible. “We’re trying to

develop the communication skills you need to go into that contractor’s office and say

‘We’ve got something that you’re going to want. We have something that’s going to help

you make more money and we’d like to talk to you about it,” director Chris Carlough

explained. “We play lots of these scenario games . . . with the idea of giving

[participants] real life situations that they’re going to be in so they can learn how . . . to

handle it for the local union.”

“We’ve taken up different approaches,” he added – including one that nonunion

contractors rarely refused: Instead of relying on salting and stripping to demonstrate the

value of skill, some locals were letting nonunion contractors “test drive” journeymen or

apprentices to see what they could do. “He’s already paid for, use him as you’d like, and

let us know what you think about it,” a business agent might offer, a strategy that usually

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paid off because “we were knocking at the door, not knocking it down,” as Mike Small

put it. Once these journeymen and apprentices had their foot in the door, they were

usually running the work in record time – evidence that left a stronger (and better)

impression than picket signs or inflatable rats.

Toronto’s Local 30 was getting good results through one-on-one meetings that

usually began with a phone call. “Do you want to come and hear what we have to offer?

Come and sit down, have a coffee, and let me go through it,” Lea West might say. “I

explain who we are and explain our association with the International so that the

contractor understands the big picture.” Then she might discuss the licensing rules and

regulations that govern sheet metal work in Ontario and how Local 30's already-licensed

journeymen and apprentices could help meet those requirements.

“We talk about different markets that we ask our contractors to explore,” she said,

encouraging them to “think outside the box” so that when work dried up in one area, they

could move into another. “We talk about the procedures, how to hire people here, and

spend a great deal of time telling them how to do payroll and how to do remittances for

their benefits, and I offer to go to their office and assist them if need be.” Then West

usually explained the value of Local 30's stabilization plan, a targeted job fund to create

work for contractors that had generated 2.3 million hours of work since its launch in

1999. Finally she left the contractor with a book that documented her presentation and a

copy of the union’s agreement – to take home and study, not sign right away. She

wanted the contractor to come back with “eyes wide open because this is a permanent

deal,” she would say. “You need to know what you’re doing and that it’s right for you,”

an attitude that helped Local 30 lead the way in signing new contractors.

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Calculating the true cost of working nonunion was another effective top-down

approach because, as Mike Small noted, “Unless you can save [the contractors] money,

you are wasting their time.” The cost of recruiting a work force was a case in point. For

instance James White liked to remind prospective contractors that just advertising a job

could cost a few thousand dollars. The interview process could prove expensive, too,

depending on how employers valued their time and how many hours the process

consumed. Then there was mandatory safety training, once a candidate was chosen, and

that also cost money. “‘So now you’ve got a couple of thousand dollars wrapped up in

this person . . . and he gets out on the job and what happens?” White would ask. “Your

neighbor down the street offers him a dollar more and he leaves, right?’” a scenario that

employers often admitted was true. “And then I say, ‘Our average cost is actually very

cheap because we’ve done all that for you. . . . [And] we make sure there’s no safety

issues,’” he added, “’because the last thing you want is for somebody to get hurt on the

job because that could cost your workmen’s comp and you could be paying the higher

insurance premium for the next ten years.’” Because the union functioned as the

contractor’s Human Resources Department, White made clear, those savings should also

be factored into the cost of working union.

The Sheet Metal Workers website, the latest tool to advertise the value of a union

contract, says it all: IT PAYS TO PARTNER WITH THE SMWIA. But with market

density rates still hovering around 20 percent, it will take more than advertisements to

bring nonunion contractors in busy, suburban regions, to the table, a key consideration if

the unionized sheet metal industry expects to survive. Until local leaders confront that

problem head on, and face the fact that the “downtown” core of union strength cannot be

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sustained under present conditions, the industry’s future is far from assured. “When

market share is less than 50 percent, we are not part of the market anymore,” as an IA

leader puts it, a sobering thought given the SMWIA’s industrial and economic potential.