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Delegates to the Third SMART General Convention in August 2024 left Las Vegas with an array of union apparel, including a SMART laptop bag, SMART-branded hats and SMART polo shirts.

What convention attendees may not have realized is that those items — along with a growing range of SMART merchandise — were designed, assembled, fabricated and embroidered by their union brothers and sisters in Ontario, Canada.

“I’m super proud of that, and we’ve been continuing to have more locals as well as our International purchasing more products,” said Local 540 (Mississauga, Ontario) Business Manager and Financial Secretary-Treasurer Derek Evans. “It makes me feel good to know that our members made these products, and our other locals are proud to know that these products are made by our members instead of another union or nonunion.”

Local 540 is the only SMART local in Canada that strictly represents production workers. Members work in a variety of industries (HVAC, automotive, fire life safety, etc.) and with a broad range of materials — including, as of approximately 10 years ago, two shops in the garment and apparel sector. That was when Sonny Wu, the owner of an apparel company called Season Group, approached the local (as well as other unions) to inquire about transitioning to signatory status.

“He wanted to get into making union-made apparel that he could sell to other unions throughout Canada and the United States,” Evans explained. “Ultimately, he made the decision to select SMART Local 540.”

Local 540 Business Manager Derek Evans (left) with Wilson Wu of Union Made Apparel

That decision has proven fruitful, even as things have changed in the years since. Sonny Wu retired, splitting his business into two separate shops — Season Group and Union Made Apparel — headed by Vincent Hu and Sonny’s son, Wilson, respectively. (Sonny remains very much involved.) And Local 540 members at both shops are now producing pieces for a huge number of their fellow union workers: SMART Local 30 and Local 285 in Toronto, the SMART Transportation Division, the Amalgamated Transit Union and many others, as well as workplace uniforms and gear.

For Wilson Wu, it’s important that labor movement merchandise is made by union members in North America.  

“A lot of goods nowadays, they’re bought from somewhere overseas — but we make everything in-house,” he explained.

“We’re end-to-end manufacturing, from sourcing the raw materials — locally made cotton — to dying the fabric, to cutting and sewing, trimming, design consultations, as well as decorating the garments, whether it’s embroidery or screen printing.”

Plus, Wu said, the union advantage pays off in the shop’s bottom line.

“We’ve gotten a lot more work ever since we’ve unionized; our workers are a lot happier,” he explained. “No regrets. It’s probably the best decision we’ve ever made.”

Wilson and Sonny Wu

The Ontario garment industry’s workforce is extraordinarily diverse, Evans said: Many employees are of Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese and Indian descent, along with other countries throughout Asia (and Europe). The same goes for Local 540 sheet metal production shops, particularly in the automotive industry.

As a result, Local 540 has worked to ensure that these members — no matter who they are, where they come from or what language they speak most comfortably — receive the support they deserve. Contracts and workplace communications are translated into a variety of languages, and Local 540 has worked with companies to provide assistance to members navigating the immigration process and applying for Canadian citizenship.

“It has been a learning experience, but the members tend to be welcoming,” Evans said. “The opportunities we have are going to come through diversity and inclusion of different races and cultures. The workforce is changing.”

What’s most important, he added, is that all members — regardless of their ancestry or first language — continue to reap the benefits of union representation. Local 540 member Chris Ferreira, a longtime garment industry worker, indicated that the union difference is certainly being felt.

“It’s been great working at Union Made Apparel,” he said. “There’s been quite a bit more work, it’s a lot more reliable. I’ve been in embroidery for quite a few years, and it’s not too easy to get reliable orders. So yeah, it’s been great, real great being part of Local 540.”

Vincent Hu of Season Group

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.”

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 Georgia, so-called “right-to-work” laws make it hard for unions to organize and retain members, particularly when language barriers in the workplace already present challenges. Despite such obstacles, though, SMART Local 85 (Atlanta, Ga.) has made big inroads at Price Industries, where approximately 70% of the workforce speaks Vietnamese as a first language.

“A new approach to internal organizing has been key to this success,” said SMART Director of Production Workers Dave Goodspeed.

“We were able to hire — from our own ranks — a Vietnamese speaker, Donson Ha,” Goodspeed explained, “and he’s a firecracker.”

Anti-union right-to-work laws allow members to opt out of paying union dues, making the inability to communicate effectively to an entire workforce potentially devastating to both workers and local unions. That was especially true at Price in Georgia: Local 85 was unable to convey the union difference and best represent its members, and workers were cautious about seeking representation from those they literally couldn’t understand.

“For a long time, Price Industries has been a hard nut to crack in terms of signing new members, primarily because Price has made a practice of hiring so many different nationalities,” Goodspeed said.

“They have people who speak English, Spanish, Vietnamese, Burmese, Cambodian, and the largest population of workers down there — probably 50% — are Vietnamese,” added SMART International Production Organizer Sharon Walker.

Local 85 Shop Steward Rich Manh Bui (left)
Local 85 Shop Steward Hai Ngo (sitting)

Until recently, only around 20–25% of Price workers had signed up with the union, Walker said, and the lack of representation had material consequences. One example: The company would post mandatory overtime notices to its bulletin boards in English exclusively, making it difficult for non-English-speaking workers who may have missed the announcement from their shop lead to know what was required of them. And in the event that a worker who didn’t speak English faced discipline, they often didn’t know how to go to their union for help.

“I didn’t know about unions until I met Sharon, and she explained to me … what a union is,” said Vietnamese-speaking Shop Steward Rich Manh Bui.

“Before, nobody represented them, and that’s why Vietnamese [workers] didn’t know anything about a union,” added fellow Shop Steward Hai Ngo. “Even when they joined a union, and they had a problem, they don’t know where they’re going — they don’t know who they’ve got to ask.”

Donson Ha

That’s where Ha and shop stewards like Bui and Ngo entered the equation. Local 85 and SMART International representatives realized they had to do more to gain the trust of the Price workforce, and in the spirit of true trade unionism, they looked to the rank-and-file for leadership. Ha, a 10-year Local 85 member, came from the building trades side of the industry — but after seeing the number of Vietnamese workers in production, especially older workers, he was motivated to change job titles.

Since Local 85 hired Ha as a subsidized production organizer, the percentage of organized workers has approximately doubled.

“I’m very happy to organize, to stand up for Vietnamese people, because they didn’t understand the union; they don’t speak English, and they didn’t know how strong it is to be a union member,” said Ha. “My job is to help them understand how it works, how the union helps people.”

SMART Production Department leaders from across the United States and Canada met in Indianapolis at the end of August for the first-ever Production Institute training. The week-long class, part of a three-year program tailored to production locals, featured sessions on bargaining, labor law, grievance handling, labor history and more — all geared towards helping local union leaders become the best advocates they can be for SMART members.

“The class is really an orientation to why we do what we do, and why they do what they do, and how it fits into this larger picture,” said SMART Director of Education Sam White. “[For example], production leaders need specific types of grievance handling or steward training for the kind of representation work that they do.”

“Things work differently in production shops,” added SMART International Organizer Sharon Walker. “Each one of our production shops has a separate contract, unlike the building trades side, where you might have one contract in the entire local. We file grievances more than they do — it’s just a totally different world.”

A key goal of the Production Institute training was to bring leaders from disparate areas and contexts into the same room, demonstrating both commonalities and differences — and illustrating lessons that can be learned from one another.

“What we’re finding out is that a lot of us are dealing with the same issues in different places, but we also are finding out that some of our situations are isolated based on area, demographics or the workforce as a whole,” said Local 85 (Atlanta, Georgia) Business Agent Schuyler Worthey.

One example: Local unions in states and provinces that are relatively labor-friendly can go on offense, organizing new shops in order to strengthen our union. But for locals in right-to-work states, explained Local 110 (Louisville, Kentucky) Organizer and Recording Secretary Jeremy Waugh, the calculus changes.

“We need to internally organize our production shops so that we can retain the membership and get people to sign up,” he said.

International Organizer Sharon Walker
SMART Director of Production Workers Dave Goodspeed

While the differences between locals, areas and countries are important and noteworthy, White said, the training also focused on local unions’ role in the shared history of the labor movement. We can learn from the victories and setbacks of the past — and take comfort in the fact that we are all part of a long struggle for workers’ rights.

Production leaders left the training ready to continue that movement.

“There’s an old adage about taking time to sit down once in awhile and sharpen your axe to be effective, and I think that’s what we’re doing: We’re honing our skills, and we’re going to bring that back to our home locals and really put them into action,” said Local 30 (Toronto, Ontario) Business Representative Joseph Popadynetz. “When you put all those leaders in the same room and you start to share ideas and stories, that’s a bonus effect. It’s just incredible.”