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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.”

“We’re seeing growth like we’ve never seen before,” said SMART Director of Organizing Jason Benson during a recent interview.  

In more than 25 years of union membership, Benson couldn’t have dreamed of experiencing anything quite like the last five years. Domestic infrastructure investments and an explosion of megaprojects — thanks in large part to the labor-friendly laws and policies proffered by the Biden administration, plus corresponding governance in Canada — brought tens of thousands of new members into our union, he explained. Strong labor standards tied to megaprojects, particularly those in areas without a readily available supply of sheet metal workers, spurred local unions to organize, recruit and blitz at a frenzied place; some unions, like Local 110 in Kentucky, nearly doubled in size.

Now, Benson said, we need to stick to our core principles to maintain our momentum.

“We’ve seen tremendous growth,” Benson said. “I mean, it’s been referred to as generational growth. Nobody knows when we’ll have this opportunity again. So we want to take advantage of every opportunity that’s out there right now.”

Our path through uncertainty

A great deal of SMART’s recent organizing growth in the United States can be traced to the pro-union — and pro-organizing — policymaking of the Biden administration. Three signature laws, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, Inflation Reduction Act and CHIPS Act, invested heavily in our industries, with strong labor standards putting SMART members on resulting projects. A pro-worker National Labor Relations Board took steps to help unions like SMART organize, including issuing a memo banning captive audience meetings. And a new emphasis on indoor air quality, both at the federal government and in the private sector, put SMART production and sheet metal workers in high demand.

But we are now entering a period of uncertainty, Benson noted. Already we’ve seen federal decisions that prevent the NLRB from functioning property; the Department of Defense has halted project labor agreements on its construction work; funding streams related to the Inflation Reduction Act have come under threat; and, outside of the governmental arena, the inevitable end of work on currently ongoing megaprojects means local unions will have dozens — if not hundreds — of members brought in for specific jobs who now need work.

All that means, Benson said, is that our focus on organizing members and contractors is more important than ever.

“That’s where the efforts of maintaining our core work and our local unions [come in], the work that we traditionally have done that has built our union throughout the years, and we want to make sure we’re still capturing every bit of that available,” he said.

“We just have to make sure that we maintain the membership, maintain the work, maintain our contractors to make sure we have all available work hours to put people to work.”

Everybody is an organizer

Crucially, both organizing and retention happens well beyond the local union officer level.

Oftentimes, Benson said, we think of organizing as a task reserved for those with a specific title: organizer, business representative, steward. That couldn’t be farther from the truth: The core of SMART’s identity throughout our history is the principle that every engaged member is an organizer.

“Organizing is the lifeblood of any local union,” he explained, “[and] everybody that’s involved in our organization is an organizer one way or the other. Everybody came to the union through some form of organizing, whether it was a member-to-member relationship, or they saw an advertisement, or they scanned a QR code — or anything like that.”

To that end, an enormous range of options exist for members looking to help organize at their local union. Members can volunteer with the SMART Army and local union committees to conduct outreach. We can volunteer to assist with job actions, whether leafletting, picketing or supporting workers on strike. We can consistently spread the word among family and friends, community groups and churches. Most of all, we can stay engaged at the local union level.

“There’s a lot of things that a rank-and-file member can do to support the organizing,” Benson concluded. “No one gets to the union hall on their own. There’s something that prompted them to do that. And all of that falls under organizing.”

Washington, DC, Attorney General Brian Schwalb filed a lawsuit against five companies in late June, alleging that they engaged in a “widespread misclassification scheme that deprived hundreds of District construction workers the wages and benefits they were entitled to under DC law.”

The companies — Whiting-Turner Contracting Company, W.G./Welch Mechanical Contractors, LLC and three labor brokers (Mechanical Plumbing Crew Co., Ramirez Plumbing Inc. and GINCO HVAC, LLC) — are accused of denying workers the proper minimum wage, overtime and paid sick leave they deserve.

A Washington Post article on the lawsuit reported that SMART Local 100 organizers and members played a role in helping workers fight for their rights.

Local 100 job action related to the DC OAG lawsuit.
Local 100 job action related to the DC OAG lawsuit.

“The construction industry is loaded with nonunion contractors who hire subcontractors called labor brokers to act as intermediaries between the workers and the construction companies,” said Chuck Sewell, marketing director for Local 100, in a press release from the DC Office of the Attorney General. “This leads to a diffusion of responsibility, where neither the broker nor the construction company takes full responsibility for the workers’ conditions, rights and welfare.”

Bad-faith, nonunion contractors and labor brokers often misclassify workers to avoid paying taxes, work compensation and other requirements, Sewell added, noting that labor brokers “often put their workers on projects without sufficient training, risking their safety and resulting in poor quality workmanship.”

At a mixed-use development in DC known as City Ridge, sheet metal worker Edwin Mayorga and approximately 370 of his fellow workers said that they weren’t paid in full.

“We worked 12 hours a day from Monday to Friday, and on Saturday we worked 10 hours, Sunday, 10 hours, practically,” he said in Spanish [to the Post], through an interpreter. “We weren’t resting.”

Local 100 Organizer Rolando Montoya connected with workers at the City Ridge jobsite after hearing complaints that they weren’t getting paid, helping them access resources to fight for the compensation they were owed.

“Our contractors that are being responsible, paying for training, paying good wages, benefits — when they bid on these projects, they can’t compete,” Montoya said in the Post article. “It’s affecting union workers, because it’s less work.”

Fighting wage theft and uncovering low-road contractors isn’t just the right thing to do for exploited workers and high-road contractors; it illuminates the difference provided by union representation, helping SMART locals recruit more workers. One example: the sheet metal worker from the City Ridge project, Edwin Mayorga, who has since joined Local 100.

“It’s a huge difference,” he told the Washington Post, “mainly because one is not fighting to get paid.”

The last Belonging and Excellence for All (BE4ALL) challenge of 2023 asks SMART members to share their stories in response to the question, “Why are you proud to be a SMART union member?” For Local 71 (Buffalo) sheet metal worker and organizer Andre Mayes, the answer to that question encompasses a lifelong journey – one that took him from working dead-end jobs and knowing nothing about unions, to helping fellow workers gain the life-changing benefits of SMART membership. Read more:

Buffalo sheet metal worker and organizer Andre Mayes (left) donates nose strips for face masks during the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic.

“If I had to sum up what being a SMART member means to me in one word, it would be ‘purpose.’

“I was a Black child of poverty who grew up in the post-Reagan 90s with few prospects for my future. A very small number of kids I went to school with planned on going to college after high school, despite the fact that we were in the beginning of the era where every child was told they’d be a failure without a four-year degree. I was fortunate to have my grandmother as a role model who introduced me to ways of living that others with my background didn’t get to see, as she was the public relations director for the CBS affiliate in Buffalo. It allowed me to aspire, but with no clear path on how to get there.

“Fast forward almost two decades and I was a waiter with no real plans other than to make cash tips and have fun with my friends. It wasn’t until I became a truck driver at a large mechanical contractor that I was introduced to what unions do for workers. I always believed unions were antiquated, a relic of a bygone era, and that they only got in the way of economic development. As a truck driver, I made $9.25 per hour with absolutely no benefits – no healthcare (this was pre-Obamacare), no paid time off, no retirement, and I was lucky when I got a lunch break – all while working 55-hour weeks. The UA (United Association) and SMART members I delivered to at the same contractor made as much as four times my wages, plus generous retirement and healthcare packages that dwarfed my hourly pay on their own. I began to question what I thought I knew about unions. I made the determination that I was going to belong to one of these trades no matter what.

“For two years, I kept working as a driver and biding my time until the day I was a member. After my interview to join SMART, I received my rank letter for the upcoming apprenticeship class. The amount of joy I felt to see I was #11 on the list, knowing the union would take up to 20 apprentices, was my first real sense of purpose as a member. I had spent two years working to achieve this goal – longer than I’d ever worked any other job by 15 months – and it was close to being achieved.

“I found purpose in learning the actual craft of sheet metal through an intensive combination of on-the-job and classroom training. I was finally being given a chance to hone a set of skills that I enjoyed. I felt like I wanted to share this pride and purpose with everyone. Any friend I had who would talk about their woes at work would get an earful from me about our trade: a real education where every single thing you learn is relevant for work; classmates who you’ll spend your career getting to know; the opportunity to build the physical infrastructure of our community; dignity in retirement at an age that allows you to still enjoy what life has to offer. This was more than a job — it was a calling.

“That purpose led me to learn everything I could in the field, from HVAC fabrication and installation, to TAB, surveying and CAD. This alone would’ve been a fine place to end as I talked about running work and counting the days to retirement, but SMART wasn’t done giving me purpose yet.

“After I turned over, I became the fourth-year HVAC instructor. I was excited just to get the opportunity to teach the next round of sheet metal workers, but at the end of the interview for that role, I was asked where I wanted to be in 10 years by our then-Business Agent Paul Crist. I told him that I’d always wanted to be an organizer and would hope to have a chance for that down the line. As it turned out, he was asking for precisely that reason. Our then-organizer, Joe DeCarlo, was retiring, and Paul encouraged me to apply. I followed suit, and as a result, I have been preaching the gospel of organized labor for four years.

“Even writing this, it’s hard to believe that in 36 years, my life has ended up at this point. I never could’ve dreamed I’d be here 20, even 10 years ago. Being a part of the social movement that is organized labor, being a SMART member and a local officer has given me a sense of purpose only surpassed by my wife and children, none of whom I’d have without this union. I will forever be grateful that I am a SMART member.”

For this episode of the Talking SMART podcast, we sat down with SMART Local 28 Business Agent Marvin Tavarez to discuss his journey going from working non-union to being organized into SMART. He breaks down some of the myths about organizing into our union versus taking a more traditional full apprenticeship route.

“Some people are like ‘Oh, that’s the backdoor, that’s the backdoor,’ ” says Tavarez. “But at the end of the day, it all comes down to educating the membership. You know, if you’re not organizing members in, you’re gonna be working against them and not with them.”

“If you’re not organizing members in, you’re gonna be working against them and not with them.”

Tavarez also discussed his efforts to help build a rank-and-file building trades movement, including organizing rallies attended by thousands in New York City.

“As soon as I got into the union,” says Tavarez, “I felt like I needed to give back, someway, somehow. I was getting so much from the union… what can I do to contribute? So, I started a rank-and-file movement on Facebook. Started with like five members. Within a year, year and a half, it grew to over 10,000 members on social media.”

At the end of this episode, in his last open mic segment before he retired at the end of May 2023, former SMART General President Joseph Sellers discusses the road ahead for SMART, as we work to train a new generation of members and staff up scores of large “megaprojects” across the United States and Canada.

Return to the Talking SMART index page.

Talking SMART is a member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network — working people’s voices, broadcasting worldwide 24 hours a day.

Previsich

The SMART TD annual Regional Meeting in San Antonio is coming up soon – reserve your spot now! Click here to reserve online and for additional information.

Educate—Organize—Mobilize! This is the theme for SMART Transportation Division’s upcoming regional meetings, to be held in San Antonio, Texas, on June 12-14 and New York City, New York, on July 10-12.

This theme was selected in order to continue our renewed emphasis on education and training and also to build awareness of the many tools that are offered to take that training to the next level.

Educate – This year’s workshops will build on the positive feedback received from last year’s meetings, offering improved course studies for members and officers. The courses are offered with multiple tracks to enhance the skills of every member, including full schedules designed for legislative matters, local officer training, bus issues and treasurer workshops.

Reinstating a well-received initiative, this year the meetings will again offer a certification program for those who wish to participate. Members may record attendance by scanning their badge at the conclusion of each workshop. Those who participate at the higher levels will receive a certificate and a lapel pin in recognition of their achievement.

Organize – The meetings this year will offer guidance on strategies and techniques to implement the lessons learned during the workshops. Whether it be organizing to improve the conduct of a local meeting or forming a group to get out the vote come election time, the goal is to assist all attendees in developing the skills necessary to apply at the local level and incorporate the lessons learned during the meetings.

Mobilize!  This is a critical part of this year’s theme. Now, more than ever before, we are in a political environment that is unfriendly to organized labor.  There are efforts underway at the local, state and federal levels to dismantle many of the protections and benefits that labor has earned during the 150-year history of the American labor movement.

From taxing workers on their employer-provided health care, to implementing right-to-work at the national level, many people not favorable to organized labor view this time as a window of opportunity to advance their anti-labor initiatives.

The threats are real and it will take an educated, organized and mobilized strategy by all of labor to counteract the efforts of those who are attempting to turn back the clock.

Accordingly, this year’s regional meetings will have a special focus on mobilization at the local level. From lobbying first responders in support of our two-person crew bills, to speaking out in Washington through utilization of the SMART TD Legislative Action Center, success in this environment will depend on an informed and mobilized membership.

We ask all members to sign up for SMART Action Alerts, download the SMART TD free app (search SMART-TD in app store) and utilize the Legislative Action Center on the SMART TD website.

All members need to be informed and prepared to offer support and assistance when called upon. It is through our collective efforts that we will be able to withstand attacks on the benefits, wages, retirement, regulations and transit funding that provide a safe working environment and a good living for our members and their families.

I look forward to seeing you at the regional meetings in San Antonio and New York!

In Solidarity,

John Previsich
President,
SMART Transportation Division

By Calvin Studivant
Alternate vice president — Bus Department

A tragic bus accident in New York City in March, which killed 15 passengers, has put an unfriendly spotlight on low-fare tour bus drivers.

The driver of the ill-fated low-fare tour bus reportedly had previously been charged with driving on a suspended license, and it will be up to investigators to determine the facts of this accident.

What we do know is that many low-fare tour bus companies that are non-union force their drivers to work under horrendous conditions at low pay — and often with little sleep.

It is common for non-union drivers employed by low-fare tour bus firms to sleep in their coaches between driving assignments. Many of these bus companies have been cited for safety violations

The New York Times reports that low-fare tour buses transport millions of passengers annually and regulators rely on handwritten logbooks to determine if drivers are working with insufficient rest.

An official of Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety called the logs “comic books” and alleged they are often falsified or not filled in at all.

In fact, reported The New York Times, the owner of the low-fare tour bus involved in the New York City accident had been cited previously by regulators for “several logbook violations.”

As proud union members, we must continue to organize the unorganized because the entire transit industry takes a hit when something goes terribly wrong.

As union drivers, we cannot be forced to violate federal hours-of-service regulations. And we can refuse to operate a bus that is unsafe without fear of losing our jobs.

It our duty as union brothers and sisters to educate fellow drivers who may think it okay when pressured to work multiple shifts without proper rest, or to operate an unsafe vehicle.

Above all, we must inform non-union drivers that the UTU negotiates good contracts with competitive wages, health care and working conditions, allowing drivers to operate within the law.

If we don’t, their faults become our faults, as we are all viewed the same by the public. We cannot afford to be looked upon that way.

The UTU has set the standards for the transit industry. We will continue to raise the bar because we represent the finest transit and school bus operators in America.