Courtesy of Iron Workers International
Employees of G&D Integrated in Illinois attempting to unionize with the Iron Workers union have been thwarted by the company’s management.
Five months ago, the International Association of Bridge, Structural, Ornamental and Reinforcing Iron Workers successfully filed and passed a union election at the logistics, warehousing, and manufacturing giant G&D Integrated. But the battle still has yet to reach its conclusion.
On September 7, 16 workers marched into G&D Integrated’s management offices and sought formal union recognition. After months of unheeded demands, their grievances focused on asking the company to improve safety standards, and proper training for workers. They were promptly dismissed, and shortly thereafter filed for a union election, which passed 16-to-4 and was certified by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) on October 21.
But management retaliated by stalling contract negotiations. By January 10, G&D Integrated was telling its workers that the company would be losing orders from its largest customer Komatsu, a multinational corporation that provides equipment for mining, forest, energy, and manufacturing industries. It was likely, the company said, that the plant would soon close shop.
Don Reed, a worker at G&D Integrated, told the Prospect that he was approached by management and told that the company would shut down.
The purpose behind management’s tactics, as one worker explained, was to stomp the union out by pushing them to quit before contract negotiations could finish.
On March 1, the company announced that Komatsu was terminating its orders, and production at G&D Integrated shuttered. The majority of the bargaining unit is now unemployed. Only two workers were allowed to continue working in laser cutting, and another as a saw operator. Workers at G&D told the Prospect that the letter read by management that announced Komatsu’s order termination was not even printed on Komatsu letterhead.
Currently, the ironworkers are in a bind. Union representative Vince Di Donato told the Prospect that what happened at G&D Integrated is exactly why the “Joy Silk doctrine” must be reinstated. That refers to the Joy Silk Mills case, a 1949 NLRB decision stating that, in instances where a majority of workers had expressed their intent to join a union and employers had used unfair labor practices to block those efforts, the company would be ordered to recognize the union and enter into collective bargaining.
This doctrine was watered down in a 1969 Supreme Court ruling, its Gissel Packing decision. But last year, the Prospect reported that NLRB General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo issued a memo signaling staff attorneys to go by “the standards of Joy Silk.” This would put teeth back into U.S. labor law, and G&D Integrated could provide an initial test case.
But at the same time, such a battle likely means prolonging this period before workers can return to work. As Di Donato said, “Why should [workers] have to endure all of this if it’s clear a majority wants a union?”
WORKERS AT G&D INTEGRATED, located two and a half hours southwest of Chicago in Morton, Illinois, weld and fabricate frames for giant earthmovers. The tires of the machines they build frames for are the size of a semitruck. The sheets they weld to frame the beds of mining trucks can be as large as 20 feet long by nine feet wide, weighing upwards of 2,500 pounds.
Though some of the workers who spoke to the Prospect downplayed the significance of their jobs, ironworkers are at the forefront of infrastructure construction, whether it’s directly laying beams for bridges or building the machines used for development. Without the labor of ironworkers, the modern world’s infrastructure would not exist.
Sean Dowdall, who started working at G&D Integrated last July, told the Prospect that he’s been a welder for over 20 years, but that G&D Integrated was one of the worst companies he’s ever worked at. “If OSHA went into that place, it would’ve been closed down,” he said. “None of us were properly crane trained.” Dowdall mentioned that according to OSHA, workers must be tethered if they’re suspended more than four feet from the ground, which several were because they worked on the massive decks for Komatsu’s giant earthmovers. But no workers were properly tethered.
Dowdall said the fabrication plant was littered with pallets on the floor blocking exits and chains wrapped around poles and fence-like structures that workers used to walk around the shop floor. “If we had a fire, everybody would have burned up. There was no free way of [exiting] the building.”
Several of the workers told the Prospect that prior to the union drive, management often praised their production. But after the union drive began, the atmosphere shifted overnight. One worker told the Prospect, “[Management] pretty much became assholes.”
Opportunities for overtime hours were severely cut. Reed said that with his overtime, he was making $31 an hour. But after the switch, Reed made $21 an hour, translating to $200 to $300 less each week.
Other workers said that it was common for management to resort to bribery in exchange for a no vote. For example, welding requires wires to operate. Ronnie Rhoades, who’s worked for G&D Integrated since November 2017, told the Prospect that after the union drive began, management phased out its high-quality Lincoln wires for inferior ones that drastically cut the quality of their builds, but that if the union left the shop, they could return to Lincoln wires. Reed recalled an instance where a clamp that holds the sheets snapped ten feet away from him and flew right past his head. “We had to beg for six months [for new clamps].”
“[Management] did whatever they could to kill the morale in the shop,” Rhoades said.
Di Donato told the Prospect that management began slapping disciplinary “points” on workers for arbitrary reasons as a tactic to force them to quit. Management told workers, “you better start looking for jobs,” Di Donato said. After negotiations began, the company told workers that they were unskilled labor, and so long as someone could weld, they could take their jobs.
Before the union vote, workers told the Prospect that management often wore T-shirts asking workers to vote no.
Several workers reported that upon union certification, management installed loud buzzers to signal shift changes and the ends of break times, and would stand outside their offices patrolling the workers as they clocked back in. “They would stand and just watch over us,” Reed shrugged. “We knew when our breaks ended.”
Rhoades added that after welding and sheeting, each of the sheets is treated with chemicals to prevent future rust, but that management refused to share the Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDS) for the chemicals used on a site, a violation of OSHA law. “I welded near [those chemicals] for years. I don’t know what’s in my lungs.”
Dowdall had a similar experience. He welded near a 200-gallon tank of an anti-splatter chemical. Management continued the same practice with the MSDS as they did with Rhoades. “It was horrible to breathe in.” When the company finally addressed the safety concerns, Dowdall added, “they hardly fixed anything. They knew they were going to kick us out.”
DESPITE THE HARDBALL TACTICS, the majority of the bargaining unit did not quit. “I’m willing to stand up and do what I need to do for my brothers and sisters,” Dowdall insisted.
But now the ironworkers are in a kind of limbo, waiting to see if they’ll ever get their jobs back.
“We just want this to be over,” said Reed. “I can’t believe they shut down [the company] legally just like that.”
Workers told the Prospect that the company admitted it would be bringing in workers from outside the bargaining unit to complete their jobs, but that the NLRB’s investigation into unfair labor practices was not yet completed.
G&D Integrated did not respond to a request for comment by the time of publication.
Toward the end of our phone call, Dowdall told me, “They treated us like crap.” I asked what he hopes to see after everything is settled. “I don’t want to see anybody else ever go through this again,” he said.
That could well happen if the NLRB carries out its aims on Joy Silk. Despite the legal and corporate hurdles the reinvigorated NLRB faces, alongside a continued decline in union membership, there’s a chance Dowdall and his union brothers and sisters are at a turning point for the future of organized labor.
