TIM MORAN: MY JOURNEY Organizer, Local 9 I started my career as a third-generation sheet metal worker in October 1979. My dad, grandfather, cousin, nephew, and three brothers are all sheet metal workers. I tried to break the mold and become an electrician, but nepotism was alive and well then. I started out as a sheet metal worker in St. Joseph Missouri, Local 81, and became a journeyman in 1983. That was the last day of old Local 81, which was merged into Local 2 in Kansas City.
When I was working with my tools, I loved that everything we installed, we usually made in the shop. I liked the creativity of being a sheet metal worker and the camaraderie of the people you work with. I miss that, at times, being an organizer. My career as an organizer started in 1991 when I was elected as a Business Representative out of Local 2. I served three years as an agent. Our group was voted out, but I remained close to the new Business Manager and was soon appointed as Local 2’s organizer. I had a lot of success organizing sheet metal companies in Kansas City. In 2004, the Sheet Metal International Director of Organizing asked me to take the job as Director of Organizing for the Building and Construction Trades Department in Washington, DC. So, in May of 2004 my wife Margaret and I moved to Fredericksburg, Virginia, to assume my new role as head of Education, Organizing, and Research in the Building and Trades Department. I taught organizing from an active ground organizer to fellow organizers of all 15 trades. I did this for four years, until the carpenters, laborers, and the operating engineers withdrew from the National Building Trades, leaving us short on funding. I came back to Kansas City and stayed for about two years working with my tools. I still had the desire and passion to organize the unorganized. Local 2 had their organizer, and there wasn’t room for two of us. I heard that several other Locals were needing a seasoned organizer. My stepson lived in Colorado, so I talked to my wife about moving out here, and she was all for it. I submitted my resume to the current Business Manager, Dwayne Stephens, and in December of 2011, I started the job as the Head Organizer in Local 9 Colorado. I couldn’t have asked for a better spot to finish my career—the agents and the manager are all great people to work with.
14 » Partners in Progress » www.pinp.org
What I like most about being an organizer is meeting different people and contractors and working within their mindset of becoming a union member or a newly signed contractor. I also love the research that goes into beginning a campaign with a contractor. Every contractor has a different personality, every non-union worker has a different perspective of being union. My job is to find that niche and work their attitude in that way. I consider every contractor I have ever signed my friend and every non-union worker a person I want to get to know. One of the biggest contractors I signed is Grand Mesa Mechanical on the Western Slope. The challenges that I faced were numerous, from the owner having over 45 employees, to being four hours away, to other organizers before me poisoning the owner against becoming a union contractor. I worked with him for over two years to help him understand why it would benefit him and his employees to become union. I would advise anyone coming into the sheet metal trade: If you like working with your hands, making great money as you work, and retiring with a great pension, this trade is for you. As a sheet metal worker there are so many different facets of the job, from the industrial side, welding, and architectural to air balancing and drafting with AutoCAD. You can also run for a business agent position and help run the Local or become an organizer and help grow the Local. I believe having strong labor and management relations is imperative for both sides to exist and prosper. After all, without the union contractors there would be no union workers. I talk to the union contractors about different jobs they won or lost bidding against their competition, the non-union contractors. So, its great having those relationships and helping to cultivate them for both the contractors’ and the union’s advantage. ▪
