DC 35 TEAMWORK IN ACTION BY ROGER BRUNELLE

Recently DC 35’s Department Directors sat down with General Vice President Bill Candelori and General Vice President Paul Canning. BMST Jeff Sullivan told us to prepare to report on our activities and projects both past and present. After the six-hour meeting, what was abundantly clear was that DC 35 is a Council that works very well inter-departmentally. GVP Candelori complimented us on being a council that fires on all eight cylinders. I take a point of pride with that distinction because of the incredible teamwork that goes into any major task that the Council undertakes. However, the real MVP of the team is the membership. You are the real power of this Union. You are our driving force and the backbone of the organization.

The participation of the rank-and-file member is what gave us the power to beat back Right To Work in New Hampshire. Bill Legrand, Phil Leary, Rob Jelley, Joe Nardelli, and I helped spearhead an eight-month campaign to have our New Hampshire members give testimony, write letters, record videos and TV ads, and call their elected officials over and over to ask them to vote down the union-busting Right to Work bill. This culminated with a huge rally on the day of the vote in early June, where hundreds of Union members from all trades gathered outside the complex where the legislative session was taking place to show the State Reps that we were watching. It was that power, unity, and show of force that defeated the RTW bill again, when the odds were stacked against us.

It is that power that enabled DC 35 to host a number of tours of our Brentwood training facility such as with the New Hampshire Department of Education. Organizer Rob Jelley and Director of Training Eric Reading have been working on an initiative to possibly get a pre-apprenticeship pipeline for the jobs at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard and other industrial projects that could be funded through the PRO Act. The next visit was with U.S. Congressman Chris Pappas, of New Hampshire, so we could demonstrate the CAS certification process. I worked with Director Redding and Industrial Painting Instructor Jeremy Allen so that we could demonstrate the equipment at the Brentwood facility and the sophistication that it now takes to be a certified application specialist. The most recent visit was by U.S. Senator Maggie Hassan from New Hampshire. The Senator was able to tour our facility while our first-year glazing apprentices were in the building. Again, I worked alongside Director Redding, Glazing Instructor Sean Love, Industrial Instructor Jeremy Allen, and Assistant to the BMST Bill Legrand to be able to show off our facility and training techniques for our glazing and industrial painting program.

It was the power of the membership and working with the AFL-CIO in Maine that allowed us to secure a pledge from U.S. Senator Angus King, to vote for the PRO Act when it comes to the floor in the U.S. Senate. The PRO Act is the largest piece of Labor legislation in two generations, and will instantly improve the lives of union workers and nonunion workers alike. It is the power of you and other union members that is enabling us to get commitments from our federally elected officials.

The power of the membership also enabled Director of Organizing Jorge Rivera and me to contact our State Senators and State Representatives and urge them to override Governor Baker’s veto of the PLA language for a $400 million project to rebuild the Soldiers’ Home In Holyoke. This will ensure a 100% union job site and thousands of hours for DC 35 members living in western Massachusetts. The legislation that funded this $400 million project was passed unanimously in the House and the Senate, but Governor Baker chose to use his veto only on the project labor agreement language. Director Rivera and I reached out to the membership and asked them to call their state representatives and state senators to override this veto. This is also a reminder that Baker is no friend to labor.

In the coming months, we will need to use our collective power to beat back the attacks of the app-based giants of Uber, Lyft, and Doordash to weaken our employment standards for workers here in Massachusetts. The ballot question that they are working to get approved for the November 2022 ballot would completely gut our independent contractor laws. Although this is aimed at the app-based employees, it would open the floodgates and have serious consequences for our industries. Any erosion of the strong independent contractor language that we have fought so hard to protect will be detrimental to our abilities to compete against the unscrupulous contractors exploiting our industry. It would make it harder to expose the misclassification in construction.

Our power as a membership is always evident when we have a picket line or a rally, but it is most effective when we vote as one and speak as one voice. Electing the right people into office allows us to develop allies and champions for you and your family. The attacks against our working families are never going to stop. Corporate interests have unlimited resources and unlimited time to wage their war on workers. Those who work against us also work to elect people to enact their anti-worker agenda. So as was said in the beginning, our staff is firing on all eight cylinders and the interdepartmental support is top-notch, but our real power comes from you, the member. Our real power comes from your participation in the day-to-day battles that we fight on your behalf. So be the MVP of the DC 35 team. When we fight, when we vote, we WIN.