Good News!

Sheet Metal Workers Local Union 105 has gathered enough UNION representation cards from the workers at Tinco Sheet Metal Inc. and an election has been ordered by the National Relations Board Region 21 here in Los Angeles!

The election has been scheduled for May 11th.

Calls have been coming in all day from workers who are feed up with the low-wages and poor working conditions at the company, and are happy that they will finally get a chance to vote for UNION representation.

Not everyone at the company is happy though. Workers have recently been flooded with phone calls from company management asking them to vote against the UNION in the upcoming election. Management is blind to the fact that it's their poor treatment of their workers that got them in this position in the first place. Sheet Metal Workers Local Union 105 did not target Tinco Sheet Metal for organizing. Workers from the company sought out help from the local union because many of the workers were being paid substandard wages and being pushed to work at unsafe productivity levels. Workers also had no company provided health insurance coverage for their families, or retirement benefits.

When the economy took a turn for the worst several years ago, management at Tinco Sheet Metal responded by trying to balance the company's books off of the backs of their workers, slashing wages for every field and shop worker, took away company gas cards from the Foreman who were driving company trucks and making them pay for the gas in out of their own pockets.

These issues, among many others, are the reasons that Tinco Sheet Metal finds themselves in the position that they are in now.

The company is family owned and operated and has grown by leaps and bounds over the decades, a real success story. Ironically, there is no question that with a properly trained workforce, and local 105 as a strategic partner, Tinco Sheet Metal could easily be a premiere UNION architectural sheet metal firm, the kind of firm that the owners could truly be proud of. Instead, greed and selfish self-interest has produced a disgruntled workforce, some of them undocumented.

The management at Tinco Sheet Metal have decided to take the low road and are using lies and deception to try and convince their workers that being UNION would be bad for the company, which of course isn't true. The company has a hand full of qualified journeymen who they pay around $25 an hour with no additional benefits. The rest of its workforce, estimated to be around 90 men, are made up of young men, many related to other co-workers in some kind of way (cousins, uncles, sons, nephews, etc.), which the company pays between $8 to $15 an hour, and lack the training necessary to take the company to the next level of competitiveness.

Not surprisingly, the lowest wage earners in the company are undocumented, which helps to suppress the wages and working conditions of their co-workers. Without representation, the company will continue to take advantage of its workforce. Sheet Metal Workers Local Union 105 will not sit idly by while the management of Tinco Sheet Metal Inc. continue to erode the area standards of workmanship and living conditions for sheet metal workers in the Los Angeles region.

Stay tuned for updates of this battle for workers rights.

 FAMILY NEEDS OVER CORPORATE GREED!