Iron Workers’ win at J.D. Steel reaches Latino workers with key protections and could strengthen rights for 10,000 construction workers--AFL-CIO

From ILCA

In March 2003, workers spearheaded a campaign to form a union with the Iron Workers at JD Steel, a reinforcing iron subcontractor for such projects as water treatment plants, sports stadiums, performing arts centers and parking lots.

As a subcontractor, the company often received public funds. To draw attention to the campaign, the union activists focused on educating elected officials across Arizona about JD Steel and the workers’ issues.

In September, the JD Steel workers won a watershed victory that has the potential to reinforce the workplace rights of as many as 10,000 construction workers nationwide. The Iron Workers signed a union contract with JD Steel, covering 600 workers in 21 states. The agreement provides for improved wages, health insurance, pensions, a grievance procedure and a training program. The pact also creates a unique multistate organization, Iron Workers Local 846, giving the union and the employer the flexibility and mobility to reach out to more workers. This wide geographic scope is attracting interest from other companies, say union leaders. As construction companies expand nationally and increasingly do business in many states, unions have to change their own structures to better enable workers to have a voice on the job, Iron Workers leaders say. Creating a multistate local is one example of how unions are changing to help the workers and employers in their industries build strength.

U.S. workers face massive obstacles to forming unions

With its recent victory at JD Steel, the Iron Workers—like many other building and construction trades unions—are accelerating their commitment to helping Latino workers, especially immigrant workers, win justice on the job. These unions are using innovative strategies such as hiring bilingual organizers, forming alliances with community groups and providing outreach services to Latino workers. In 2002, for instance, the Iron Workers launched a partnership with a social service and advocacy agency in Silver Spring, Md., to provide legal help to immigrant workers (see America@work, October 2002).

Workers in the United States—regardless of their job or country of origin—face harassment and intimidation when they try to form unions. Fully 92 percent of private-sector employers, when faced with employees who want to join a union, force workers to attend closed-door meetings to hear anti-union propaganda, according to Cornell University scholar Kate Bronfenbrenner. And during 25 percent of organizing campaigns in the private sector, employers illegally fire workers just because they want to form a union.

But immigrant workers face additional obstacles. For those who are undocumented, employers’ threats of deportation literally can be a matter of life and death. Top officials at the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) say the question of resident status hampers the agency’s investigations. “In responding to immigrant worker deaths, the agency encounters a difficult situation because sometimes workers are afraid to speak out about unsafe or unhealthful conditions for fear of being deported” John Henshaw, OSHA administrator, told a Senate subcommittee in 2002.

Latino workers need the freedom to speak out because they suffer disproportionately from job hazards. The rate of work-related fatalities among Latino workers is 25 percent higher than for workers overall, and foreign-born Latinos are more likely to die than Latinos born in the United States, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). Even though private-industry injury and illness rates overall dropped 35 percent between 1992 and 2001, fatalities among Latino workers in the United States increased by 67 percent in the same period and have dropped only slightly since then, according to BLS statistics from November 2003. The construction industry is one of the most dangerous industries, and while Latinos make up about 11 percent of the US workforce, they make up 15 percent of all workers in the construction industry.

The new contract with JD Steel gives workers the tools to address workplace safety issues, including a union—management committee and a grievance procedure.

Engaging local elected leaders

In seeking support for their efforts to form a union, workers and union activists reached out to local lawmakers, meeting with mayors, city council members and staff in Arizona in the year and six months before the union reached agreement with the company. The engagement of elected officials who recognize that supporting working families benefits the communities they represent helps create an environment in which employers feel less emboldened to wage aggressive anti-worker campaigns.

Elected officials make decisions about how to spend hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars every day on public projects as water treatment plants. Typically, they choose the general contractors for such projects, and the primary contractor in turn selects subcontractors such as JD Steel. Workers met not only with general contractors but also other decision makers in charge of large projects, including the owners of the Arizona Cardinals football and Phoenix Coyotes hockey teams to discuss their issues.

Ensuring workers remain front and center

Leaders of the Arizona AFL-CIO and the Maricopa Area Labor Federation tapped into their relationships with affiliate unions and elected officials, nurtured over years of political campaigns and legislative battles, to aid the Iron Workers’ organizing campaign. “We take the workers—not the organizers, not the leader—to the politicians” says Rebekah Friend, president of the Arizona AFL-CIO. “The politicians have to listen to the workers.'

Meeting with elected officials was a new—and sometimes daunting—experience. Worker Felipe Hernandez says before talking with the Glendale, Ariz., city manager, he had never been inside a city hall. When TV cameras showed up to film the workers testifying at a Glendale city council meeting, worker Roberto Duran says, “We were nervous.” But Duran says he stayed focused on his goal of justice on the job.

“We understood that's what we had to do” he says. “The key is we were telling the truth and insisted they do something.” Now that the workers have a contract with JD Steel, they are visiting elected officials again—this time to tell them about their newly won contract.

“We are very happy and proud” says worker Martin Ramirez. “People never thought we’d win” he says, but the Iron Workers’ victory “sets an example that we can.”

“I believe the agreement with J.D. Steel…sends a clear message to the construction community that this organization is willing to do whatever it takes to make being union a good business decision” says Iron Workers President Joseph Hunt.



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