Employee Free Choice Act Would Make Jobs Safer for Arizona Construction Workers

by James Parks, Feb 20, 2007

Imagine you’re working in the attic of a new house under construction, putting in air conditioning ducts. It’s more than 100 degrees in the shade, and you’ve been at it for hours without a break. And you could easily fall and get hurt or, worse, die.

You need a drink of water, safety equipment and a union.

Mahelio Rico (see video) and his co-workers decided they’d had enough of melting in the Arizona desert sun, where they work for Chas Roberts, the largest, privately owned air conditioning contractor in the United States. Rico says:

Oh, it’s really hot. Sometimes temperature gets up 118 degrees in summer, and, I mean, it’s really hot. You’re up there in the attics working, and, I mean, it’s really bad.

So a few years ago Rico got interested in the Sheet Metal Workers (SMWIA) union—and began getting his co-workers interested as well.

The workers—mostly Latinos—have concerns on the job that go beyond the heat. They complained of poor working conditions and a lack of sick pay, holiday pay, vacations, affordable family insurance and a pension plan. Chas Roberts workers also have complained of pay shortages, discrimination, problems of favoritism and concerns about safety on the job.

Since 2003, there have been five Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) investigations involving Chas Roberts. OSHA has cited the contractor for 17 violations, four of them serious, and fined the company thousands of dollars.

As Rico says:

They would make me work with real unsafe conditions at the workplace, at the houses that we were installing air conditioning. Some of the houses did not have safety rails, so you can easily fall down to the first floor.

Rico says it’s not hard, under these circumstances, to understand why the workers want a union. It’s about justice.

All we want is just to bring justice to Chas Roberts. A lot of workers are not happy here, but yet they’re working because they need money. But the conditions here are really bad. And the company, sure they’re making some changes, but they’re not guaranteed. They’re not under a contract.

We just want to live the American Dream—have a decent job, make a good wage, be respected and not get killed on the job.

But when Rico and his co-workers tried to form a union to try to solve these problems, they ran into harsh retaliation from their employer. Chas Roberts hired the law firm of Ryley Carlock & Applewhite, which boasts of its “union avoidance strategies.” Workers call it union-busting. The company fired Mahelio less than one month after he submitted evidence in support of a wage and hour lawsuit; the company claimed he took too long to travel to a new work location.

Rico is not alone. Employers routinely interfere—sometimes legally and sometimes illegally—with workers trying to form unions. Across the nation, employer interference is off the charts, says Mary Beth Maxwell, executive director of American Rights at Work: