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As 2025 gets fully underway, bringing with it a new set of challenges across the United States and Canada, the SMART Education Department continues to offer classes to SMART members and officers — helping local unions better represent members, and strengthening our union.

Effective Communication I attendees
Effective Communication attendees

The Education Department held its Effective Communication I class in Phoenix, Arizona, during the week of January 13, 2025. Effective Communication I is focused on improving and applying public speaking skills by giving participants the opportunity to write, research and deliver speeches in front of the class. Participants worked individually and in groups to build informational and persuasive speeches on topics picked at random.

Effective communication is vital for activists of all kinds in our union — whether speaking at a union meeting, testifying to the importance of project labor agreements in front of a city council or speaking to organizing workers coming off the shop floor, communicating impactfully and persuasively can concretely benefit SMART members.  

“Over the course of the class, the participants made noticeable improvements in their public speaking comfort level and delivery,” SMART International Instructor Richard Mangelsdorf reported.

Organizing I participants

SMART members traveled to Dallas, Texas, approximately one month later to attend the Education Department’s Organizing I class during the week of February 10. The class, completely redesigned for 2025, focused on developing practical competency in the skills and process required to successfully facilitate “bottom-up” organizing campaigns: equipping organizers with the ability to help workers unionize their workplaces and join SMART.

Throughout the week, participants worked in small “local” teams in a comprehensive enactment that mimicked a bottom-up campaign. Each group worked as an organizing team and role-played the workers at two fictional companies — Alpha and Beta Sheet Metal — based on character backgrounds provided for the simulation.

Organizing will be crucial to our union in the months and years ahead, and attendees approached the class with an appropriate level of intensity.

“Participants were genuinely engaged in the simulation and were observed organizing each other after hours, on their own time,” Mangelsdorf remarked. “Everyone did a fantastic job working with their groups and playing their parts.”

Education Dept. hosts second annual Production Institute

The SMART Education Department held its second annual Production Institute in Indianapolis, Ind., during the week of September 9th — bringing SMART production members and leaders together to build knowledge, skills and camaraderie, and to strategize for the years ahead.

The Production Institute is a three-year, progressive-format class, with attendees from last year advancing to the second round of courses. A new first-year class attended this year, along with the returning 2023 group.

All classes included production-focused content in the core areas of collective bargaining, steward training, organizing and labor history. Attendees also learned about more timely issues in daily breakout sessions on topics such as labor/labour law updates, the open shop agenda and Project 2025, a MEMO focus group, bias and belonging, and the production salting program. Through interactive exercises, attendees were able to apply their knowledge and develop their skills while also getting to know their peers from across North America.

First-year class
Returning second-year class

New Representatives class helps latest crop of SMART leaders develop skills 

Newly elected and appointed SMART representatives traveled to Linthicum Heights, Md., during the week of September 16th, 2024, to build bonds and learn from one another in the SMART Education Department’s New Representatives I class. The new representatives worked in different groups on activities associated with topics like member misconduct, jurisdictional disputes, contract administration, pre-job meetings and crafting local union meeting reports. In addition, participants built a leadership growth plan to identify areas they would like to develop more as leaders and created specific goals around each item to help them grow throughout their careers.

Education Department hosts class on so-called “right to work” to boost member engagement, organizing

The SMART Education Department held its new “Right to Work and Member Retention” class in Detroit, Mich., during the week of September 30th. The class focused on the open shop movement, the impact of so-called right to work, strategies for improving membership retention, and the critical role that union leaders play in maintaining local union power.

Twenty-three participants from across our union worked together to problem solve and create action plans for their respective locals. The class also took time to celebrate the repeal of Michigan’s right-to-work law and the role that Michigan Locals 7 (Lansing), 80 and 292 (both Detroit) played in that process.

“Everyone’s hard work will help strengthen our union!” said SMART International Instructor Richard Mangelsdorf.

The SMART Education Department held its New Business Managers class in St. Louis, Mo., during the week of November 18, 2024. The new business and regional managers built comradery throughout the week as they worked on different group exercises focused on managing their local unions.

As part of the course, participants created strategic action plans that prioritized improvements in the areas of personal leadership, union representation, growth, resources, trust funds and community relationships. New business and regional managers also created a strategic action plan for their local and presented it to the class.

“The class will meet online in six months to see how everyone is proceeding with their plans,” said International Instructor Richard Mangelsdorf. “Well done, everyone!”

The SMART Education Department held its new “Right to Work and Member Retention” class in Detroit, Mich., during the week of September 30th. The class focused on the open shop movement, the impact of so-called right to work, strategies for improving membership retention, and the critical role that union leaders play in maintaining local union power.

Twenty-three participants from across our union worked together to problem solve and create action plans for their respective locals. The class also took time to celebrate the repeal of Michigan’s right-to-work law and the role that Michigan Locals 7 (Lansing), 80 and 292 (both Detroit) played in that process.

“Everyone’s hard work will help strengthen our union!” said SMART International Instructor Richard Mangelsdorf.

The SMART Education Department held its new “Right to Work and Member Retention” class in Atlanta, Ga., during the week of April 8th. The three-day class introduced topics such as the evolution of the open-shop movement and so-called right to work, right-to-work messaging, the impact of right to work, union loyalty, internal organizing, and representation and implicit bias. Participants worked together to problem solve and to create their own action plans. Each of the 31 attendees completed exercises focused on how to improve member retention at their own locals. Great work, all!

The SMART Education Department held its Organizing II class in Chicago, Ill., during the week of May 13th. Organizing II focuses on strategic research and application and dives deeper into the strategies and tactics learned in Organizing I, such as salting, voluntary/internal organizing committees, and top-down, bottom-up and pressure campaigns.

Throughout the department’s three-class organizing sequence, participants develop, revise and initiate an organizing plan in consultation with their business managers. In Chicago, participants worked together to research their companies and began putting together detailed organizing plans focused specifically on their selected companies. Each of the 26 attendees presented the research they found on their companies and the organizing strategies they plan to implement. They were also the first group to receive the new Herrmann Whole Brain assessment and training to help them understand how the way people think can impact their success as organizers.

“A special thank you to the SMART Strategic Campaigns Department for supplying research materials for each participant for their selected companies,” said SMART International Instructor Richard Mangelsdorf.

Attendees will continue their work in December in Organizing III, where they will explore the final component for their organizing plans: how to effectively impact their selected companies through partnerships with community, political and economic organizations.

A group picture of attendees of the SMART Education Department's Effective Communication II class
Attendees of the SMART Education Department Effective Communication II class

The SMART Education Department held its Effective Communication II class in Pittsburgh, Pa., during the week of June 3rd. Effective Communication II focuses on improving and applying the public speaking skills learned by attendees in Effective Communication I, helping SMART members better represent members and advocate for union workers in a variety of spaces.

In Pittsburgh, participants worked in different groups to build a branding campaign for SMART, develop talking points for a news program, reframe statements to better support labor and debate controversial topics; they also engaged in a lobbying simulation, among other activities.

“The participants did a fantastic job working with their ever-changing groups throughout the week,” said SMART International Instructor Richard Mangelsdorf. “Congratulations to group two for coming out on top in the ‘Win as much as you can’ exercise!”

SMART’s Education Department has long offered training for newly elected local union business representatives and agents. But during unrelated efforts to better train union leadership, retired SMART General Vice President Tim Carter recently explained, “It occurred to us: The most critical position, the business manager, doesn’t have any formal training. All the training is learned by the seat of their pants.”

That changed last summer, when SMART hosted its first-ever business manager training in Nashville, Tennessee. The class, attended by local union business managers from across North America, is intended to ensure local leaders are as prepared as possible to represent SMART members to the best of their abilities.

“We essentially created a new program,” said SMART Director of Education Sam White. “It’s a little different than the new business agents class that they also have to take; it’s more about how to manage a local. And I think for our organization, you’re talking about a very important, strategic position that [had] no dedicated training.”

Experienced business managers and International staff came together to create a curriculum that will serve business managers for years to come. The training, which ran from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. for three days, included guidance on advocating for members from SMART House Counsel Luke Rebecchi, an overview of the business managers’ SMART Constitutional responsibilities, interactive sessions on how to run meetings and how to work with SMART International staff, trainings on organizing and collective bargaining, and much more.

Attendees left not only equipped with new knowledge and skills, but with a sense of camaraderie with fellow leaders from across North America, Carter noted. That can only bolster their ability to advocate for members in every corner of the United States and Canada — now, they have peers to turn to for advice and cooperation, whether organizing for a new megaproject or entering contract negotiations.

“This class is a part of investing in ourselves,” SMART General President Michael Coleman told business managers at the training. “That’s our responsibility to our locals, to our members and to this organization. That’s our obligation: that we are at the top of our game, that we are moving faster than others, and that comes with the education.”

Richard Mangelsdorf began his new position as SMART International instructor on November 1, 2023, taking the next step in his union career.

Mangelsdorf became a member of SMART Local 280 (Vancouver, B.C.) in 2001. He worked as a part-time instructor with the Sheet Metal Workers Training Centre from 2008 until 2015, mentoring sheet metal apprentices as he continued to work as a journeyperson. He was elected as a local union trustee in 2009 and a health benefit trustee in 2012. In 2015, Mangelsdorf became a business representative, serving in that position until he became Local 280 business manager/financial secretary-treasurer in 2021.