Find out which candidates are looking out for Union Millwrights.
When union millwrights vote, we have POWER. We encourage our members to vote for candidates who support:
Good Union Jobs
Elected officials have a lot of influence over the types of jobs created in their states and communities. Some lure high-profile projects to their areas with taxpayer-funded incentives, on the assumption these projects will provide good-paying jobs for local workers. Then they don’t pay attention to the labor force used to build and maintain those projects – or, worse, they encourage the use of a non-union workforce.
As a union member, you work under collective bargaining agreements that guarantee fair wages and benefits – including a pension – and give workers a voice in jobsite matters. Generations that follow might not be so lucky. Union membership has declined from 30% in the 1950s to 10.3% in 2021, according to the U.S. Labor Department, and the decline is associated with a shrinking middle class. Strong union membership is needed to protect the union way of life and union pensions.
Access to Free, Ongoing Training
Some candidates plan to invest in and expand free, high-quality training programs like the ones run by our joint labor-management trust funds. Other candidates either don’t have workforce-development on their radars or support industry-centric programs that don’t give labor a seat at the table and aim to steal resources from our programs.
Our training programs allow apprentices to work for any signatory contractor and gain a variety of on-the-job learning experiences instead of being indentured to a single contractor. The fields millwrights work in evolve quickly, and free continuing education allows journey-level millwrights to stay competitive in the job market by keeping their skills current.
Fair Wages and Benefits
Many politicians are so tied to corporate interests that they turn a blind eye to illegal labor practices. These practices cheat workers, push down our wages, threaten our benefits, and result in less work for union contractors and union millwrights. Through abuses of visa programs and the Visa Waiver Program, for instance, equipment manufacturers and their contractors sometimes bring in workers from other countries to perform millwright work for very little pay. That happened at the SK Innovation battery plant in Georgia in 2020. Some contractors also misclassify millwrights as independent contractors, denying them benefits, or as less-skilled workers, denying them fair wages.
Protection of Union Pensions
For our pension funds to be healthy enough to support the needs of current and future retirees, we must have membership growth. Some elected officials make this extremely difficult by creating policies and legislation that stifle unions in favor of corporate interests.
Politicians also can play a direct role in preserving our union pensions. Through a provision of the American Rescue Plan passed by Congress last year, 200 multi-employer pension plans backed by a federal insurance program that was projected to become insolvent in 2026 are now protected until 2051. This saved pensions for millions of union workers and retirees. Learn which candidates on your ballot stand with working people and support actions that protect union pensions.
Let’s stand with candidates who: promote project labor agreements, which require contractors to hire skilled workers and pay them at union scale; understand falsely named “right-to-work” laws are about weakening union power to bargain well and enforce contracts; and support prevailing-wage laws (including the Davis-Bacon Act), strong wage and hours laws, and robust labor-law enforcement.