UMWA Shows Support for Pulte Workers

Delegates to the Mine Workers convention showed their solidarity with Pulte worker. Shown, from left, are IUPAT organizer Norma Uribe, IUPAT DC 15 Business Manager John Smirk and UMWA President Cecil Roberts.

June Rostan, AFL-CIO lead organizer for the Pulte campaign, reports on the support delegates to the Mine Workers (UMWA) convention showed for the Building Justice Campaign.

The Mine Workers made time during its constitutional convention in Las Vegas last week to show its solidarity with the Building Justice Campaign, a collaboration of the Painters and Allied Trades (IUPAT) District Council 15, the Sheet Metal Workers (SMWIA) and the AFL-CIO. 

After UMWA President Cecil Roberts introduced them to the convention, IUPAT District Council 15 Business Manager John Smirk and IUPAT organizer Norma Uribe described the Building Justice campaign—a campaign that calls upon the giant homebuilder Pulte Homes to improve standards in residential construction. They told the delegates about the poor working conditions of employees of subcontractors working at Pulte Homes construction sites across the Southwest.

June Rostan, an organizer with the AFL-CIO, asked for the hundreds of delegates to sign “Lemon Pledges” promising to tell their family and friends the truth about how Pulte Homes treats the workers who build their homes and the customers who buy them. Delegates signed without hesitation and, taking it one step further, UMWA delegates passed the following resolution as a sign of solidarity:

Whereas residential construction workers in Arizona and Nevada, with the help of the Building Justice Campaign (the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades District Council 15, the International Sheet Metal Workers Association, and the AFL-CIO) are fighting to improve their pay, benefits and working conditions and to have a voice in the workplace;

Whereas national corporations rule the homebuilding industry in the Southwestern states and set the standard for how workers who build the homes and customers who buy the homes are treated;

Whereas Pulte Homes is the nation’s largest residential construction corporation and markets its Centex brand to first time homeowners, its Pulte brand to customers upgrading their homes and its Del Webb brand to active-adult retirees;

 Whereas Pulte Homes has the moral responsibility to treat their homeowners fairly and to ensure that the contractors who operate on their construction sites provide fair treatment and good working conditions for the workers;

 Be it resolved that the United Mine Workers of America will inform and educate its members and their families about how Pulte Homes treats the workers who build their homes and the customers who buy them;

 Be it further resolved that the United Mine Workers of America will ask its members to stand in solidarity with and take action to support these residential construction workers as they fight to win justice.

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