Florida is a so-called “right-to-work” state, where unions consistently weather anti-worker attacks from corporate-beholden lawmakers seeking to weaken our collective bargaining power. But that hasn’t stopped SMART Local 435 (Jacksonville, Fla.) from organizing. And in June, Local 435 successfully signed PreCast Florida, a concrete manufacturing company that works alongside sheet metal shops, to a fabrication contract.
“All workers should have representation and benefits,” said Local 435 Business Manager Lance Fout when announcing the new signatory.
Local 435 Business Manager Lance Fout, standing, third from left, with PreCast Florida workers.
The signatory campaign at PreCast emerged from Local 435’s relationship with another one of its union contractors, Southern State Duct Masters, which signed with the local in 2022.
“Southern State has been very satisfied, and the company has been growing,” Fout explained. “Since they signed, they’ve got a new laser machine, a spiral machine, a new building; they’ve been thriving.”
Southern State owner Ashley Moore’s brother and sister-in-law purchased a concrete precast company shortly after, renaming it PreCast Florida. Despite the ownership and name change, PreCast had major problems with employee recruitment and retention, Fout explained, primarily due to a lack of benefits.
That’s when Moore suggested that PreCast contact Local 435.
“They weren’t sure what that would look like, but they were open to the idea,” Fout recalled.
Local 435 took the initiative, meeting with management and workers and explaining the benefits of working union. (The employees were shocked by what they stood to gain, Fout said.) From there, the process was simple: Local 435 wrote up a production agreement that included healthcare, a 401(k) plan, vacation and holiday pay, and the company gave all its employees a pay raise to cover the cost of union dues.
PreCast Florida officially signed with the local on June 1, and the union advantage is already making itself felt for workers at the shop.
“They’re ready to start making doctor’s appointments, I know that,” Fout said.
Local 435’s newest production members manufacture concrete light poles, picnic tables, construction castings and ornamental structures, displaying the same craftsmanship and artistry as their brothers and sisters working directly with sheet metal. Moreover, Fout said, the Local 435 members at Southern State Duct Masters are fabricating some of the metal forms that PreCast workers will use for their concrete molds, creating more work hours for members at both shops.
“It’s slightly outside the normal scope of work, but we’ve got a good relationship with the employer, a strong contract, and the employees are happy,” he concluded.
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.
An American flag flies over the shop floor as Local 480 members work at Daikin Applied.
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.”
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.’”
Florida is a so-called “right-to-work” state, where unions consistently weather anti-worker attacks from corporate-beholden lawmakers seeking to weaken our collective bargaining power. But that hasn’t stopped SMART Local 435 (Jacksonville, Fla.) from organizing. And in June, Local 435 successfully signed PreCast Florida, a concrete manufacturing company that works alongside sheet metal shops, to a fabrication contract.
“All workers should have representation and benefits,” said Local 435 Business Manager Lance Fout when announcing the new signatory.
Local 435 Business Manager Lance Fout, standing, third from left, with PreCast Florida workers.
The signatory campaign at PreCast emerged from Local 435’s relationship with another one of its union contractors, Southern State Duct Masters, which signed with the local in 2022.
“Southern State has been very satisfied, and the company has been growing,” Fout explained. “Since they signed, they’ve got a new laser machine, a spiral machine, a new building; they’ve been thriving.”
Southern State owner Ashley Moore’s brother and sister-in-law purchased a concrete precast company shortly after, renaming it PreCast Florida. Despite the ownership and name change, PreCast had major problems with employee recruitment and retention, Fout explained, primarily due to a lack of benefits.
That’s when Moore suggested that PreCast contact Local 435.
“They weren’t sure what that would look like, but they were open to the idea,” Fout recalled.
Local 435 took the initiative, meeting with management and workers and explaining the benefits of working union. (The employees were shocked by what they stood to gain, Fout said.) From there, the process was simple: Local 435 wrote up a production agreement that included healthcare, a 401(k) plan, vacation and holiday pay, and the company gave all its employees a pay raise to cover the cost of union dues.
PreCast Florida officially signed with the local on June 1, and the union advantage is already making itself felt for workers at the shop.
“They’re ready to start making doctor’s appointments, I know that,” Fout said.
Local 435’s newest production members manufacture concrete light poles, picnic tables, construction castings and ornamental structures, displaying the same craftsmanship and artistry as their brothers and sisters working directly with sheet metal. Moreover, Fout said, the Local 435 members at Southern State Duct Masters are fabricating some of the metal forms that PreCast workers will use for their concrete molds, creating more work hours for members at both shops.
“It’s slightly outside the normal scope of work, but we’ve got a good relationship with the employer, a strong contract, and the employees are happy,” he concluded.
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.
An American flag flies over the shop floor as Local 480 members work at Daikin Applied.
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.”
The SMART Transportation Division achieved an organizing win May 1 with the National Mediation Board’s (NMB) certification of a representation vote for the Louisville & Indiana Railroad, which operates 106 miles of track running between Louisville, Ky., and Indianapolis.
Andy Goeckner of Local 453, who led the effort, took some time to detail the process that brought new members and a new property to the union.
What initiated the process?
Contrary to what some have incorrectly claimed online, this was 100% unsolicited on SMART-TD’s part. Multiple L&I employees had been reaching out to people in the industry expressing their disappointment with the representation they’d been receiving on the property. This had been happening since the end of 2023, and it wasn’t just one disgruntled employee — it wasn’t until we heard from multiple people that we decided to sit down and talk to the group.
What were some of the issues cited by people that they wanted to have changed?
Substandard representation, wages and agreements. Feeling that their property lacked support at the local level. Rather than encouraging or assisting their local union leadership to stand against the carrier and fight in disciplinary matters, the previous organization’s general committee and international took the path of least resistance, encouraging members to fold and sign waivers. Almost as if they couldn’t be bothered by a smaller group to do what needed to be done.
They also stated that pay and penalty claim issues were ignored when assistance was requested at the general committee or international level. Phones calls and emails were not returned. With negotiations for a new contract starting soon, many of them felt like their property had been put in a corner or a box and that they were not getting anything out of the dues they had been paying. Enough was enough, so they decided it was time to make a change and come to SMART-TD.
Once we got the message across that SMART-TD provided a dedicated alternative that would listen to and serve them properly, regardless of if it was a small or large property, the energy increased and was very positive. This wasn’t a case where just one guy was mad or upset about what was going on — it was multiple people, and many of them took on leadership roles as the effort advanced and gained strength.
How long had the prior organization represented the property?
It’s been a month, what are some of the steps/improvements that our union is prioritizing?
The first thing SMART-TD did was to allow the new members to select what local they wanted to join. They chose Local 1518 in Indianapolis, and a new Local Committee of Adjustment (LCA) was created within. They were also placed into General Chairperson Rick Lee’s committee, as L&I was a prior B&O property before being short-lined.
The L&I members held an election and Zach Cochran is the new local chairperson. Brother Cochran has hit the ground running and is doing all he can to get great returns for people working at the L&I.
Our focus has been on improving communications and responsiveness, which were a weak point with the previous union. We are also in the process of training and assisting the local officers and addressing membership issues, including prepping for their next contract, which expires this fall.
Has there been any feedback so far?
I’ve been staying in touch with them to make sure the transition is smooth. A group of L&I members went to the 1518 meeting as soon as they were eligible to do so, and they were blown away by the reception that they got from Local 1518 officers and members. They welcomed them with open arms and gave them a standing ovation and applause at the local union meeting. They said they had not felt welcomed or included on any union level like that in a long, long time.
The SMART-TD rail union gets results
A total of 23 T&E workers for the short line — more than half of its total workforce — can now proudly call themselves members of SMART-TD after dealing with the frustration and dissatisfaction caused by inferior representation.
We welcome our new members from the Louisville & Indiana railroad and encourage others that are tired of subpar representation to join our SMART TD family. There is a reason we are the largest rail labor union in the United States, and we stand behind the winning record SMART-TD has produced for the people whom we proudly serve.
Train and engine service employees as well as yardmaster employees of Golden Isles Terminal Railroad recently voted yes to SMART TD representation. On May 12, the National Mediation Board (NMB) certified that SMART TD has been duly designated and authorized to represent train and engine service as well as yardmaster employees of the railroad. “These employees recognize what the strength and power that being part of the nation’s largest rail labor organization can do for them,” said SMART TD Director of Organizing rich Ross. “We would like to thank all those involved with the successful campaign on Golden Isles Terminal Railroad, specifically Vice President Jeremy Ferguson, GO 851 General Chairperson Joe Bennett and local officers of Local 1031, Local President James Robertroy, Local Legislative Rep. Isaac Gamble, Local Chairperson Darrin Brown and Local Chairperson Jeremy Sessions,” said Ross and Transportation Organizer Larry Grutzius. Golden Isles Terminal Railroad operates 33 miles of track in and around the port at Brunswick, Ga. The railroad has interchanges with both CSX and Norfolk Southern. Commodities carried by the short line are automobiles, chemicals, food and feed products, machinery, and pulp and paper. The Golden Isles Terminal Railroad was founded in 1998 by Genesee & Wyoming, Inc.
Train and engine service employees as well as yardmaster employees of Golden Isles Terminal Railroad recently voted yes to SMART TD representation.