The SMART-TD Washington, DC, and Virginia State Legislative Boards (SLBs) met in Williamsburg, Va., on March 4th and 5th for their 2024 reorganization meeting. Ronnie Hobbs and Jarad Jackson were reelected as the Virginia and DC state legislative directors, respectively.
Tag: Members Journal
Preparing for the future of work isn’t new to SMART Local 33 in Cleveland. During the recession, contractors learned how HVAC Fire Life Safety skills could keep workers on the job while providing valuable services to commercial buildings in the area. With the pandemic in the rearview mirror, Local 33 hosted the National Energy Management Institute (NEMI) during a Ventilation Verification/Indoor Air Quality Awareness course on March 15.
The idea was to let contractors know they already have the skills to test the health of buildings in their area. It’s all about perspective.
With all the federal funding available — not just for schools, but for commercial and residential buildings too — Corey Beaubien, president and business manager of Local 33, and Lisa Davis, NEMI administrator, thought it was an opportune time to show the local’s sheet metal contractors that the work scope for Ventilation Verification/Indoor Air Quality isn’t just for TAB contractors.
“It’s a great way for people to continue their connection with their customers after the building is built by maintaining their contact through ongoing Ventilation Verification/Indoor Air Quality audits and monitoring,” Davis said. “In this way, the building owners not only get continuing increased indoor air quality throughout the life of the building, but the contractors are there to provide other services as well when other needs come up.”
NEMI, ITI and SMART contributed to the one-day course, which presented the scope of Ventilation Verification/Indoor Air Quality, challenged attendees to a hands-on portion and educated them on grant and funding opportunities as well as training and certification resources.
In addition to finding ways to keep workers on the job — just as educating contractors on fire life safety did in the 2010s — Ventilation Verification/Indoor Air Quality also opens doors for state and federal grants that fund renovations of a building’s HVAC system, Beaubien said.
“The class has generated interest. They had a better overall understanding about how it works, and that’s the beginning,” he added. “The class was meant to get the ball rolling.”
The skills needed to complete Ventilation Verification/Indoor Air Quality are typically taught during apprenticeship, and it doesn’t take TAB expertise to complete, which came as a surprise to some in attendance. Like fire life safety, this course showed contractors a different perspective — it’s a chance to get more work, but it’s also an opportunity to teach building owners of assisted living facilities, government and commercial buildings how to keep their buildings healthy and safe for their occupants, Beaubien said.
“Fire life safety was a big success. It was an idea to generate work opportunities but also to save lives,” he added. “This is another opportunity to educate contractors and the end users about what is going on above their ceilings.”
Davis added: “We are looking forward to assisting contractors and Local 33 with implementation of Ventilation Verification/Indoor Air Quality in their area, whether that looks like assisting them in helping their customers apply for grants or going after code or specification changes that would include a skilled, trained, certified workforce.”
SMART members across North America are living in extraordinary times. And nowhere are these extraordinary times, with all their challenges and opportunities, better exemplified than in Faribault, Minnesota, a town of approximately 25,000 people and the home of SMART Local 480.
In Faribault and nearby Owatonna, money from laws passed by the Biden administration has spurred a surge in demand at commercial HVAC manufacturer Daikin Applied, leading to an equivalent increase in workforce needs. Local 480, which represents production members, has responded by putting the pedal to the metal: organizing, recruiting and concocting innovative solutions to make sure they have the workers they need — both today, and for the long term.
“We’re growing way faster than anybody would’ve ever expected,” said Local 480 Business Manager Donavan Vierling.
Meeting the challenge
Approximately three years ago, Local 480 had 849 members across its signatory shops: Daikin Applied in Faribault and Owatonna, and Crown Cork and Seal in Faribault. Today, the local has around 1,250 members — and it’s expected to need 250 more at Daikin by the end of 2024.
“Our Daikin shops have really started to grow, especially with the money out there for COVID relief, from the CHIPS and Science Act, the infrastructure bill. The company has seen huge growth, and they’ve put a lot of money in their plants, technology, things like that,” said Local 480 Subsidized Organizer Billy Dyrdahl, a third-generation sheet metal worker.
With the need for workers showing no signs of stopping, Dyrdahl and Local 480 have pulled out all the organizing stops: hand billing during shift changes at nonunion production shops, visiting workers at manufacturing plants that are closing, flyering at gas stations and much more. They’ve also worked with the company on retention efforts, ensuring new hires know all the benefits provided by Daikin and by their union. Dyrdahl and the local even went so far as to contract with Strive Staffing, an agency that provides gateways to union jobs like those at the Minnesota Vikings and Twins stadiums, to reach potential new hires in the Twin Cities area.
The effort to meet Daikin’s demand has been a union-wide one. SMART Local 10, based out of the Twin Cities metro, has collaborated with Local 480 on various canvassing and flyering operations, including to fill workforce needs at Daikin. Plus, by working with SMART International Organizer Dan Kortte, Local 10 Business Manager Matt Fairbanks, Organizer Paul Martin and others, Local 480 recently helped Daikin complete a time-sensitive welding job by bringing on several Local 10 sheet metal workers from greater Minneapolis/St. Paul.
“The company originally figured it was going to be about a three-month project,” Vierling recalled. “These guys showed their skill and basically were done in half the time [Daikin] expected.”
The collaboration between Local 10 and Local 480 shows the industry-spanning solidarity of our union. It’s also helped provide new career pathways for SMART members across the state: Dyrdahl said Local 480 has worked with Local 10 to welcome building trades sheet metal workers who were seeking to work in a production environment.
Welcoming all members
Bringing new workers into Daikin is one thing; ensuring that the latest Local 480 members stay there is something else entirely.
“How do you onboard people and not turn everything into a complete revolving door? … Our challenge, as a union, is to make [new] people feel welcome,” Vierling explained.
For years, the demographics of Local 480 and the Daikin workforce were largely white and male. In recent decades, though, Faribault and Owatonna have welcomed a growing number of Latino/ Hispanic people and immigrants from Somalia, and the sheet metal industry at large has made strides to bring more women into the trade. Local 480 has acted accordingly – and in the true spirit of unionism — to make sure those workers have a better life.
“I’m seeing it right now: Daikin is growing, diversity-wise,” said Mustafa Jama, a Somali immigrant and 21-year SMART member. “They’re hiring all kinds of people, it doesn’t matter who you are. My department barely had female workers [when I started] … now, all through shifts, you will see at least 50% women, which is a good thing.”
This growth can take many forms, Jama, Vierling and Dyrdahl explained. One example: The Islam-practicing Somali American workers at Daikin originally ran into obstacles with management around break times and scheduling that accommodated their religious practice, which includes daily prayers and fasting during the holy month of Ramadan. Local 480 stood up for their newest members the same way they would for workers of any faith — negotiating with the company to devise break time flexibility and shift-scheduling that gives Muslim members the ability to break their fast at sundown during Ramadan, and including contract provisions that allow those same members to use time off to observe their religion.
Vierling and Dyrdahl are also supporting Recording Secretary Stephanie Bottke’s nascent efforts to form a Local 480 Women’s Committee — a development that will help women across all signatory shops gain a stronger support network (and assist as the local recruits more women moving forward). Bottke, a member of the SMART Recruitment and Retention Council, was inspired to take action by conversations with fellow SMART sisters across the union and by her own experience in the trade. Her early years were somewhat isolated, she said, particularly when she was pregnant and a working mother.
“I personally started on the shop floor at 19 years old. I raised a family on the shop floor,” Bottke recalled. “There weren’t resources available, or at least none that I knew of … about what was available to me as I was raising a family. The basic needs of nursing, time off work, those types of things.”
She hopes the Local 480 Women’s Committee will help provide her union sisters with mentors to turn to — and strengthen overall solidarity at the local by helping with recruiting and retention.
“Women come into our buildings not knowing that there are other women that are going to be supportive, and through a women’s committee we can definitely establish that support system,” Bottke said. “And I think through the women’s committee and establishing those early connections, it will help our general membership see that we can be stronger when we’re connected as a whole.”
Such changes are not without challenges. Jama, now a team lead, faced unacceptable discrimination when he first started as a coil assembler back in 2000 — and similar incidents have been reported more recently. In the same vein, some of Bottke’s first attempts at spreading awareness about the newly formed women’s committee were met with confusion at best, derision at worst.
But support from local union representatives and leaders has helped both Jama and Bottke continue on their trailblazing paths — and Dyrdahl, Vierling, Jama and Bottke all say that overcoming those difficulties and pursuing inclusive growth can only help Local 480 win stronger protections for all members moving forward.
“There’s a change, but that change came with sacrifice. People spoke up, and there were policy changes,” Jama emphasized.
“Having our local grow helps in all types of ways — including financially,” Dyrdahl added. “We can spend on lawyers when we need them for certain things. We are able to spend money to support our negotiating committee to really build up our contracts.”
Moving forward, Daikin continues to grow and require more workers. Local 480 is organizing accordingly, spreading the word to anyone who will listen: The union life is a better one for you and your family.
“Sometimes, union’s a bad word until people come and see what our benefit packages are and our wages,” Dyrdahl said. “Once we get them in the local, they’re pretty happy with it.”
For decades, high school guidance counselors, media outlets and policymakers pushed the idea that four-year college is the only path to prosperity for working families. And for decades, huge swaths of the American population have suffered as a result — while college is a great option for some, many others put themselves in debt only to pursue work unrelated to their degree.
Now, the narrative is changing: Americans once again realize the value of a union apprenticeship. And in the Portland, Oregon, area — thanks to a new outreach training program — Local 16 members are stepping up to help recruit the next generation of sheet metal workers into SMART.
“Outreach is not new, but when I took on the role as the training coordinator, we thought we’d love to get more people in the union involved with the message that we share,” said Ben Wood, training coordinator at Local 16’s Sheet Metal Institute (JATC).
“We had members reach out and say, ‘Are you attending these career fairs? Are you recruiting people from this school district or that school district?’ And we found that there’s no way for us or the JATC to cover everything, and we needed members’ help,” added Local 16 Regional Manager Brian Noble. “So, we thought that we should put together a training to show members and train them on how to do outreach, and make sure that they know everything that they need to relay to new people being recruited in.”
The local held its first outreach training in 2023, gathering around 20 members to go over the basics of outreach; provide accurate and up-to-date information about the trade, the union advantage, pay and benefits, and more; and to help members tailor their outreach to specific audiences. That includes high schools, career and technical education (CTE) programs and career fair attendees, Wood explained. But it also expands into other core recruiting populations, such as parents, formerly incarcerated people, career counselors and the like. There’s one goal across the board: to recruit any and everyone willing to do the work.
“The reality is that our trade should be something that anybody could see themselves doing,” he said. “It’s whether or not you want to do, and have an aptitude towards doing, construction-type work. You shouldn’t see it as whether or not you look a certain way, you have a certain gender or you came from a certain background.”
With the first class conducted, members have since fanned out to help recruit in the Portland area. The local provides each member with recruitment kits, including informational flyers, sheet metal trinkets, stickers and a welding simulator, as well as funds to cover any lost wages from time off work used to attend outreach events. The end result: Potential new recruits hear about the union sheet metal industry from those who are most familiar with the subject matter, and rank-and-file members get the chance to demonstrate the principle that every one of us is an organizer.
“It creates the membership involvement that in turn creates good mentors and gets people involved,” Noble concluded.
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.’”
The Local 435 (Northern Fla.) JATC hosted the SMART Region III Apprenticeship Contest at its JATC on March 22–23, bringing together 27 contestants from nine local unions for a prestigious competition spanning two full days. The event showcased the talent and skills of apprentices from Locals 85 (Atlanta, Ga.), 435, 5 (East Tenn.), 441 (Mobile, Ala.), 177 (Nashville, Tenn.), 15 (Central Fla.), 32 (Southern Fla.), 4 (Memphis, Tenn.) and 399 (South Carolina), with a particular focus on core knowledge, reading plans and specifications using Procore, hand sketching and a shop project.
The apprentices were divided into different categories based on their level of training, with second-, third- and fourth-year participants representing their respective local unions. Each portion of the competition provided a unique challenge, testing the apprentices’ abilities in different aspects of sheet metal work.
The core knowledge test gauged the members’ understanding of fundamental principles and concepts in the field, ensuring they have a strong grasp of the basics. Reading plans and specifications using Procore required the apprentices to prove their proficiency in interpreting technical drawings and specifications — a crucial skill in the industry.
The hand sketch portion of the competition tested the apprentices’ creativity and ability to translate ideas onto paper, allowing them to display their design skills and attention to detail. Finally, the shop project segment challenged the apprentices to put their training into practice by completing a hands-on task, highlighting their practical skills and craftsmanship.
“Overall, the Region III Apprenticeship Contest was a valuable opportunity for apprentices to demonstrate their talents, learn from one another and gain recognition for their hard work and dedication to the sheet metal trade,” concluded Local 435 Business Manager Lance Fout.
The Spring 2024 SMART Members’ Journal is now online. Featuring messages from SMART International leadership, union and industry news, local union updates, service awards and much more, this edition of the journal puts a particular focus on our union’s recent policy victories — highlighting states, cities and federal government action that have created jobs and protected our members.
“Politics can feel like a chore, but when we work collectively to win pro-union politicians and policies, we materially benefit our jobs, our families and our futures.”
SMART General President Michael Coleman.
The spring issue’s cover story was a long time coming: After years of advocacy, organizing, lobbying and fighting against entities like the Association of American Railroads (AAR), the SMART Transportation Division finally won a federal two-person freight crew regulation. The rule, announced in April during an event at the United States Department of Transportation, is a huge step forward for union jobs and rail safety.
Months earlier, sheet metal workers also achieved a federal regulatory victory when United States Acting Labor Secretary Julie Su announced regulations that will officially implement President Biden’s executive order requiring project labor agreements (PLAs) on federal jobs that cost more than $35 million. SMART members joined Su at an announcement event in Cleveland, celebrating a policy that will create work for union sheet metal workers nationwide.
SM Local 206 and fellow building trades unions worked tirelessly in the electoral arena to accomplish something similar in San Diego — first by repealing the city’s ban on project labor agreements in 2022, and then with the unanimous passage of a citywide PLA in 2024, a titanic political shift that’s helping turn San Diego into a union town.
And the Transportation Division’s tireless pursuit of safety for railroad workers paid off when Norfolk Southern agreed to pilot the Confidential Close Call Reporting System (C3RS), an anonymous safety reporting tool that protects SMART-TD railroaders who share safety concerns with the Federal Railroad Administration.
Those are only a few of the stories told in the Spring Members’ Journal, which also showcases organizing victories in Indiana and Georgia, local union news across North America and information on new funds appointees. View an index of individual articles here, and read the full digital version of the printed journal here.
If you’re like me, then the arrival of another election year is no cause for excitement.
Politics can feel divisive and tedious, particularly in recent years. That’s why many of us choose to exercise our power through the labor movement, where we can band together with fellow workers and take action. We show up at union meetings to win strong contracts and worker protections; we walk the picket line to support our union brothers and sisters; we make collective decisions to fund our pensions and keep our local unions healthy.
Unfortunately, the fact of the matter is this: Anti-worker corporations and the ultra-wealthy will always be involved in the political process, funding politicians who oppose workers’ rights and union jobs. If we leave the playing field, we will forfeit every gain we made to them and their agenda. They will be the only voices heard by those empowered to write the laws that govern your workplace.
One thing we have learned is that their money is no match for our solidarity, and recent victories have shown how crucial it is that we show up in the electoral arena.
SMART members leapt into political action in the last several years, electing pro-union politicians in 2020 and mobilizing for laws that benefit our families. The results speak for themselves: a recently passed federal two-person crew regulation that protects our railroaders’ safety and job security; federal funding for high-speed rail projects that create jobs for SMART sheet metal workers and railroaders; a surge of megaprojects putting members to work across the United States and Canada; funding that saved SMART members’ pensions; massive investments in public transit and Amtrak; updates to prevailing wage regulations that lift pay for construction workers; and so much more.
“Politics can feel like a chore, but when we work collectively to win pro-union politicians and policies, we materially benefit our jobs, our families and our futures.”
That’s just at the federal level. We know that even more impactful change happens locally. For example, SMART members in Oregon and Connecticut gained enormous amounts of indoor air quality work by partnering with pro-union state legislators and education officials.
Compare those wins with the anti-worker policies of the past. It wasn’t too long ago that we were fighting a Federal Railroad Administration that withdrew a proposed two-person crew rule, and a Department of Labor that tried to replace our apprenticeships with Industry Recognized Apprenticeship Programs (IRAPs). We were constantly on defense.
I prefer offense — winning real gains, not trying to hold on to what we already have.
Brothers and sisters, this isn’t about party affiliation or who says the right thing when they stump for our votes at the union hall. This is about acting for us: the working people who power our nations. Politics can feel like a chore, but when we work collectively to win pro-union politicians and policies, we materially benefit our jobs, our families and our futures.
So I urge you to do just that. Whether it’s a phone bank, a labor walk or simply telling your friends and family to show up to the ballot box, join me in getting involved in the political process this year.
In solidarity,
SMART General President Michael Coleman
It is an honor to represent you, the more than 203,000 SMART members who keep North America moving through thick and thin. We at the International in Washington, DC, strive daily to grow our union and win more opportunities for SMART members, from lobbying the federal government for rail safety policy to implementing innovative new strategies to help sheet metal workers travel to megaprojects.
And at the core of everything we do is the founding principle of SMART: We, the members, are the union.
As your general secretary-treasurer, I am committed to working with all of you to secure our collective future. Here are just a few highlights of what we have achieved:
- In Southern California — with the help of the SMART International Political Action League (PAL), SM Local 104 (Northern California) and fellow building trades unions — SM Local 206 members helped secure San Diego’s first citywide project labor agreement (PLA) after electing pro-union city councilmembers and repealing the city’s PLA ban.
- At Price Industries in Georgia, a rank-and-file member turned subsidized organizer, Donson Ha, has helped Local 85 achieve stellar growth among a largely Vietnamese-speaking workforce, with two Vietnamese shop stewards helping the local successfully organize in a so-called “right-to-work” state.
- In Delaware, Local 19 was on the forefront of passing a custom fabrication bill that will protect sheet metal members by ensuring the jobsite standards we built and enforce are not undermined by nonunion competitors.
We’ve seen similar success in the Transportation Division — again, thanks to the active involvement of rank-and-file members and strong trade unionism at the local and state level:
- Tireless advocacy by state legislative boards in Colorado and Virginia led to the advancement of rail safety legislation. In Colorado, legislation is being considered in the state House and Senate at the time of writing, while in Virginia — thanks in large part to the activism of SMART-TD railroaders who contacted their legislators — rail safety passed through both chambers of the state government before being vetoed by anti-union Governor Glenn Youngkin.
- That follows the passage of two-person crew bills in Ohio, Kansas, Minnesota and New York in 2023, all of which were signed into law by those states’ respective governors — again, a direct result of the work put in by TD legislative boards and members in each state.
- Members and local union officers across the country have attended Transportation Division regional training seminars in their areas in record numbers. This emphasis on targeted local education has paid off, with SMART-TD winning appeals at an elevated rate.
This is how we win. By getting active in our local unions; by mobilizing and voting for pro-union candidates; by standing in solidarity with our fellow SMART members, no matter who or where they are. I am proud to stand with every one of you as your union brother, and I hope we will all continue to fight for one another as we take on the challenges in the years to come.
In solidarity,
Joseph Powell
SMART General Secretary Treasurer
Brothers and sisters,
We’re building something great here.
In May 2019, months before I took office, the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) under Donald Trump appointee Ron Batory tried to toss out more than two decades of our members’ and officers’ work to preserve two-person freight crews.
Just days after my administration took office in October, the big rail carriers sued in an attempt to challenge our crew-consist agreements to further open the gates for railroads to get what they wanted — cutting workers in the cab so they could make more money at the expense of safety and common sense.
When both these challenges emerged, we rose up as one union, and we engaged.
The carriers’ lawsuit was resolved in court, and through on-property contract negotiations, our general chairpersons dug in on crew-consist matters. Since that attack in October 2019, we’ve not only preserved the current state of crew consist in the cab, but we have opened, for the first time, paid sick leave and attendance to negotiations so we can make the lives of our members better.
On April 2, United States Department of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and FRA Administrator Amit Bose announced a rule cementing freight train crew size in the country. As a result, carriers will need to carry a very heavy burden of proof in the future if they want the federal government to permit them to cross the line we have drawn on rail safety and crew size. Predictably, the railroads have gone to court to challenge the rule because they can’t leave well enough alone.
The final piece of our puzzle will be getting federal legislation passed to preserve the current safe level of staffing inside the cabs of the freight locomotives we operate. The Rail Safety Act of 2023 (RSA) has been long stationary in Congress. Together, we can get it moving. We will need to work for it, but we can do it. When the two-person crew rule was up for public comment, this union rallied together and created enough pressure in Washington, DC, that we could not be ignored. SMART-TD can and must do the same for the bipartisan RSA.
We also must work with equal focus to resolve the current state of danger that our bus and transit members have faced for far too long. Employers have made safety a low priority when solutions are staring the bosses right in the face. Things in Washington are moving in the right direction, but not fast enough.
The Federal Transit Administration (FTA) heard and heeded our comments in April when it ruled on the creation of on-property safety plans and on overall national safety plans for public transportation. Our practical solutions — protective barriers for operators, not making them deal with money matters, adding security on buses and transit, tougher punishments for attacks on the members we represent and all other bus and transit workers — can be done. There’s no rational reason for these public transit agencies not to join forces with us on protecting our members.
Most importantly, FTA’s rule states that our men and women will have seats at the table to make decisions on safety measures being taken at their respective workplaces. They will have a level playing field. Employers or managers will not be able to dominate on matters of safety, and if their bosses don’t follow through on the plans our members help form, FTA will step in and enforce them or take away their federal funding.
We in this union refuse to shy away from challenging injustice. It is an energy that we have worked to reignite and stoke the past five years. The results we’ve achieved on the two-person crew, elsewhere in the halls of power on the national and state levels, in negotiations and all around our union speak for themselves.
The same positive outcomes won’t be long in coming to enhance the safety of our bus and transit members. The FTA rule moves us forward. Together we can face all that is ahead for our organization with confidence.
In solidarity,
Jeremy R. Ferguson
President, Transportation Division