My Journey: Tammy Meyen

Tammy Meyen, a member of Sheet Metal Workers Local 66 near Seattle, became the ITI’s recruitment and retention specialist in May 2023. In this role, she focuses on recruiting and retention efforts at 150 training centers across the United States and Canada, finding ways to bring more people into the industry and help ensure they find it a welcoming environment.

Meyen said she is well on her way to mastering the the day-to-day aspects of the job. She has spent time going over programs that Lisa Davis began during her time at ITI, prior to being named administrator of the National Energy Management Institute (NEMI). Part of that work included immersing herself in curriculums to see what needed to be updated or replaced.

For instance, in a 2010 curriculum on the apprentice mentoring program, Meyen found that the mentor was exclusively referred to as male. From seemingly small things like pronouns all the way up to more solid roadblocks, these obstacles can all add up to an image that turns off prospective new apprentices at a time when the industry faces critical labor shortages. Finding ways to appeal to potential recruits and be a welcoming environment for new demographics is the key to filling those spots and creating a stronger, more diverse workforce.

“When I tell my kids about it, I say my job is to go around the country and teach people to not be mean,” she jokes.

The reality of her tasks is far more involved, of course. Women make up around 50% of the possible workforce but still represent less than 5% of sheet metal workers. Offering lactation pods, an initiative put forth by Julie Muller of SMACNA – Western Washington and facilitated by Meyen, is one way to help encourage women of child-bearing age to consider the trades.

Meyen was born into a union family, the daughter of a roofer with United Union of Roofers, Waterproofers, and Allied Workers, Local 54, in Seattle. She remembered her father encouraging her to look into sheet metal so they might someday work side by side on a job site. Thanks to him, her early impressions of union brotherhood and sisterhood were positive.

“You kind of form a family,” she said. “After my father passed away, his union friends came about and checked on me.”

Meyen began her own career in 1999 at the age of 19, going on to graduate near the top of her apprenticeship class at the Western Washington JATC in 2005. Over the past 19 years, she worked at PSF Mechanical, one of the Northwest’s leading full-service commercial and mechanical firms, rising to the position of shop foreperson in 2011.

At her home local, Meyen was a member of the finance committee and served multiple terms as a trustee. She was a facilitator on the Belonging and Excellence for All (Be4ALL) Committee, a joint effort of SMART, SMACNA, and the ITI. Today, she still serves as chair of Local 66’s women’s committee and heads that committee’s mentorship program.

Her efforts with committees and programs like these represent countless hours of unpaid time, which she describes as more than a hobby—making the unionized trades more welcoming to all has been her passion project.

A lyric in one of her favourite country songs, “Buy Dirt” by Jordan Davis advises, “Do what you love, but call it work.” Meyen says that tune hits her differently now that she’s earning a paycheck for this kind of work.

“It rings true now,” she says. “Every time I hear that song, I get a little bit emotional, thinking I can’t believe I get to do this for a living.”

Meyen and her husband—a fellow sheet metal worker who serves as organizer with Local 66—live in Snohomish, Washington, with their two young daughters. Her youngest, age 9, has shown interest in someday becoming a sheet metal worker ▪

This story was reprinted with permission from Focus on Funds, volume 8 issue 2, 2023.