Santiago Ruiz’s 7 year old pitbull and scruffy steel toe work boots greet you at the bottom of the stairs when you enter his Queens basement apartment. His Milwaukee lunch box sits on top of his kitchen counter with a voltage tester sticking out of the side. There are sweaters and t-shirts with “IBEW” and local 3 spewed on the front and back hanging from various hooks and hangers in his closet. From the moment you enter his home, you are greeted with reminders that Santiago is not only an electrician but also a member of the electrical union. The day he joined, he says, was one of the happiest days of his life.
“ The non union job is just every man for themselves.”
After being used as a scapegoat for a job gone wrong, Santiago was fired from a non union company he had worked for for several years. Unemployed with bills to pay and a family to support, Santiago found himself applying to be apart of local 3’s apprenticeship program and three months later got in.
“ I feel valued at my job. I feel like I matter at my job. Im making some sort of difference at my job and they actually care.”
Today over 60 labor unions represent more than 14 million Americans whose common goal is to protect the rights of workers in various industries. Joe Hester who is the assistant employment director of the Joint Industry Board of the Electrical Industry in conjunction with Union Local 3 explains why unions are important.
“Being apart of a union means a sense of structure, a sense of just guidance of protections most people aren’t afforded unfortunately. You have an opportunity to build a camaraderie, build a family structure where you know there’s an organization behind you that won’t let you get harmed or afflicted in anyway.”
Currently overseeing the employment of over 27,000 members, Joe is in charge of the distribution of manpower throughout New York City, Westchester and parts of Connecticut. While optimistic of the attitudes towards unions even though he knows they are declining in popularity, he explains that policies passed by the Trump administration such as restricting unions in the public sector are just the start and is one more step closer to the private sector.
“Under the Trump administration right now the NLRB has taken a big hit. The NLRB is the organization that protects workers all across the country of all sorts but when the people who that the president gets to place there aren’t pro worker, you’ll see they stated back in the Spring i think that there was an 11% drop in cases even being heard because people don’t even want to have their charges that they bring up slapped down all in favor of pro business people that they’ve appointed. So it just gets tougher and tougher fight.”
While he believes unions to be only unpopular but will always be present, Joe describes that if in the future unions are no longer around, it would mean the disappearance of the middle class.
“Unions were made to support the middle class. One of our mottos you will hear all across the country is a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work.We understand that companies have to make money that businesses have to make money but people just want their fair shake. But the harder it gets for unions to form and have the strength to help their workforce the worse it will be for workers all across the country.”
Santiago too has noticed the fight on the horizon and similarly to Joe doesn’t believe unions will become obsolete. Seeing how he has worked non union before however, the declining popularity of unions has kept him up at night picturing a world without them.
“It would be pretty sad. I haven’t seen the positive side to the non union work. That might be dangerous in our field in particular because they’re aren’t many people qualified to the the work that we do… They don’t have things in place to teach you the right way. They just throw you into the pool and expect you to just learn things on your own”
While unions might be declining in popularity it seems that union members will not give up just yet and will continue fighting to have unions around. In Queens for Baruch College this is Imani Seda.