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CONFRONT OR CAVE? FEDERAL PRESSURE SPLITS THE BUILDING TRADES  
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Natascha Elena Uhlmann, Keith Brower Brown
July 24, 2025
Labor Notes
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_ One week into President Donald Trump’s first term, top building
trades officers were chumming it up in the Oval Office, celebrating a
reboot of the Keystone XL oil pipeline. But when Trump returned to
office this year, things were very different. _

Workers are building a research center at Michigan State University
in Detroit. Union construction jobs are concentrated in state and
federal projects, where Trump administration cuts hit hardest., Jim
West/jimwestphoto.com

 

One week into President Donald Trump’s first term, top building
trades officers were chumming it up in the Oval Office, celebrating a
reboot of the Keystone XL oil pipeline.

But when Trump returned to office this year, things were very
different: First, the administration moved quickly to slash minimum
wages on all federal contracts by 25 percent, down to their decade-old
$13.30 level. Next, it canceled over $300 billion of funding at union
construction sites, eliminating both public and private clean energy
and infrastructure jobs.

In a leaked memo early this year, top trades staff complained about
the lost jobs, but thought they’d best “remain silent” and hope
to rekindle the old friendship. But after a few painful months, some
leaders in the trades tested out a more combative tone. When ICE
abducted Sheet Metal apprentice Kilmar Abrego Garcia to an El Salvador
prison without trial, SMART officers held rallies, and North
America’s Building Trades Unions’ top officer Sean McGarvey called
for his release. Now Abrego Garcia is back in the U.S., though still
jailed.

In April, the Trump administration canceled, without explanation,
federal permits for the landmark Empire Wind project off the New York
coast, which was already under construction. The head of the Laborers
cut a video in protest. With pressure from many trades and politician
friends, the project is back on. But nationally, most wind projects
are still halted.

But across the country, the construction union brass is largely
avoiding conflict. Since last fall, no U.S. construction union has
waged a strike, aside from small locals of Cedar Rapids plumbers, St.
Louis-area quarry Laborers, and Ironworkers near Pittsburgh.

Right before Trump’s budget passed in July, McGarvey called it
“the biggest job-killing bill in the history of this country…
threatening an estimated 1.75 million construction jobs… to make
room for more tax breaks for the wealthiest corporations and
individuals in America.”

But despite the historic blow, the national building trades federation
didn’t even plan a protest, just a meek appeal to “Republican
allies” to come to their aid.

On July 23, in a groveling appeal to Trump
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(“Mr. President, we need your help. You’re a builder. You’ve
forgotten more about what it takes to develop and build a project than
practically anybody in the world ever knew …”), McGarvey raised
the loss of tens of thousands of construction jobs from canceled
projects, which he blamed on “some people around you.” Attempting
to find common ground with the president’s vicious anti-immigrant
agenda, among the actions McGarvey urged Trump to take was to have ICE
send buses and investigate immigration violations at the Arizona TSMC
chip plant.

UNDERMINING SISTERS

The United Brotherhood of Carpenters, with 400,000 members, has often
been the lone wolf of the building trades. Its officers disaffiliated
from the AFL-CIO two decades ago, and the union has frequently faced
allegations of raiding from other trades. President Doug McCarron has
consolidated power since 1995, stripping locals of their right to vote
on contracts, while appointing regional leaders who often cover
several states.

In May, McCarron cited the Trump administration’s “current
executive orders and policies targeting identity-based initiatives”
when he ordered every part of the union to drop “any involvement or
expenditure” in the annual Tradeswomen Build Nations conference.
Soon after, officers ended longstanding union support for Sisters in
the Brotherhood, the official women’s committee, plus smaller Black,
LGBTQ, and Latino member groups.

Taji Riley, a carpenter in Local 157 in New York City, has attended
the Tradeswomen conference six times. The experience inspired her to
become a local women’s committee member. “I met so many sisters
from different states,” she said. “It empowered me to go beyond
the ‘go to work, pick up your tools, go home’ attitude—to have
more stakes in the union.”

Riley said it was infuriating for union brass to shut down the
women’s committees and pull support from the conference. “There
were no conversations with us. It puts such a sour taste in your mouth
as a woman—so y’all don’t want us here?” Riley says she often
faces hostility from men on the job.

“The officers have been talking more progressively for years about
supporting our sisters,” said Laura Gabby, a ceiling specialist in
Riley’s local. “Now the second the Trump administration starts
pushing in an opposite direction, they fold immediately and throw in
the towel?”

Gabby said the leadership claims that they’ll lose their tax-exempt
status if they don’t accede to Trump’s demands—but that seems
unlikely. Although locals in a few unions have temporarily lost
tax-exempt status from the IRS for financial reporting missteps,
Carpenters officers cited no evidence that the government would yank
that status for political leverage. “I think people can’t take
that as serious leadership,” Gabby said.

Some locals are resisting. “People who don’t normally speak up now
are speaking out against this decision,” said Gabby. Members in
eight Carpenters locals in Michigan, California, and Oregon swiftly
passed a resolution to restore support of Sisters and the Tradeswomen
conference. That should clear the threshold to get a vote at the
Carpenters international convention in August, unless top officers
maneuver to disqualify it.

In officer elections for the Portland local in June, two Sisters in
the Brotherhood ran as part of the Carpenters for Union Democracy
slate. The slate backs the Tradeswomen resolution and called for
restoring members’ right to vote on approving contracts.

The slate fell short, garnering about 30 percent of the vote. Turnout
was just six percent—probably because members could only vote on a
workday, and there was just one voting site for a local covering a
territory 150 miles wide. According to union reformers, the incumbent
president is currently also a company superintendent.

The reformers plan to keep up bowling nights and family socials to
grow their rank-and-file group.

AN INJURY TO ONE

About three million construction workers nationally are immigrants, a
third of the sector. Recent ICE raids have targeted some major
non-union jobsites. Over a hundred workers building campus housing in
Tallahassee, Florida, were arrested May 29.

Organizers say the persecution is further undercutting union
organizing by making it tougher for non-union workers to stand up,
noting a steep drop in complaints against wage theft and workplace
abuse at non-union contractors this year.

In the 700,000-member Electrical Workers (IBEW), escalating attacks
against immigrant workers have catalyzed the relaunch of the Latin
American Electrical Workers Alliance, a caucus of members and some
staff to increase Latino participation and political advocacy in the
union.

LAEWA members are asking locals to adopt an immigrant defense
resolution to mobilize against “government raids or racist
groups.” The resolution has been adopted by locals in Los Angeles,
Denver, Houston, Portland, Oakland, Richmond, and suburbs of San
Francisco and Seattle.

Francisco “Paco” Arago, a journeyman wireman and member of IBEW
Local 11 in Los Angeles, said that caucus members wanted to “create
a network to find out how we can defend our communities, as unionists
and as electricians.” He added that the caucus is “learning a
bunch of stuff as we go.” For instance, he said, the union’s
apprenticeship program “turns out a good product for the contractor.
But they’re not really turning out good unionists. And we’re
taking it in our own hands at this point.”

After Local 11 adopted the immigrant defense resolution, Arago said,
officers officers sent staff to a rally to support Abrego Garcia, the
detained SMART apprentice, in downtown L.A.. Previously, officers had
said they wanted to stay away from divisive issues.

As LAEWA mobilizes in defense of immigrant workers, it may force top
officials to pick a side. Many members want to end structural barriers
that keep Spanish-speaking workers from joining the union. Often
locals have no Spanish language applications or training programs,
workers said, even where state certification programs are available in
Spanish.

“I was an organizer for a few years in the local and I had to turn
away dozens of electricians [who were eligible for the union],”
Arago said. “You’re watching him pull wire, you’re watching him
do the work, and he can’t come just because he knows damn well, he
cannot even fill out the application without asking for his niece to
sit down next to him and help him.”

“In our constitution for the IBEW, it clearly states that we want to
organize every electrician, every electrical worker,” said Jesus
Padilla, an electrical apprentice in the Oakland area who is pushing
his local to pass the immigrant defense resolution. “It doesn’t
say every Caucasian worker, it doesn’t say every English-speaking
worker, it doesn’t say every Christian worker. It says every
electrical worker.”

As unions decline, their only path to the restoration of strength and
power is based on increasing numbers, increasing market share, and
organizing,” said Mark Erlich, former executive secretary-treasurer
of the New England Regional Council of Carpenters. “If you’re not
organizing the workers who are actually doing the work, then you’re
simply irrelevant.”

MEMBER ENGAGEMENT KEY

International Union of Painters and Allied Trades (IUPAT) President
Jimmy Williams Jr. has been a prominent voice against Trump’s
attacks on immigrant workers and the labor movement as a whole. In
March, he called on the labor movement to fight for the release of
Mahmoud Khalil
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a Columbia grad student and former UAW member detained by ICE for
leading protests against the Gaza genocide. Weeks later, the union
condemned the deportation of Abrego Garcia of SMART and the detention
of SEIU Local 509 member Rümeysa Öztürk
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Williams isn’t courting a confrontation for confrontation’s sake,
one staffer said. The union is engaging members under the banner of
their “One Union, One Family, One Fight” campaign. The plan is for
Painters leaders to visit each district council in North America as
part of a training program on building union power. In the training,
workers will learn about the union’s history, look at policies that
have diminished union density over the years, and discuss how they can
get more involved in the union, from understanding their contract to
joining a bargaining committee.

CHANGE THE TACTICS

As ICE raids spread terror across the country, organizers recruiting
new members will need to change up their tactics, said Savannah
Palmira, director of organizing at IUPAT District Council 5.

“The first thing workers asked my organizer yesterday is if they
were ICE,” she said. Instead of wearing black safety vests
resembling those worn by ICE, Palmira has encouraged her organizers to
use colored safety vests. In addition, she said, some meetings will
need to go under the radar to help protect workers from employer
retaliation.

District Council 5 is working to ensure that every contract is
available in Spanish, along with the union’s bylaws and
constitution. The district is also building a Spanish-speaking
committee and is planning classes for Spanish-speaking members who
have questions about their contract or benefits. “We’re going to
sit there with donuts or bagels,” Palmira said, and create “a safe
place to ask questions.”

Defending immigrant workers isn’t just a question of ethics, Palmira
said: “When immigrant workers are taken advantage of on a job site,
that affects you, that affects me, that affects all workers. Because
once one company gets away with it, they’re gonna keep getting away
with it, and it becomes a race to the bottom.”

“I don’t care who they are, we’ve got to elevate the lowest
worker,” said Palmira. “Because when you raise the floor, you
raise the ceiling.”

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Natascha Elena Uhlmann [[link removed]] is
a staff writer at Labor [email protected]

Keith Brower Brown [[link removed]] is
Labor Notes' Labor-Climate [email protected]

A version of this article appeared in #557-558
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* Building Trades; Women in the Trades; Immigrant Workers;
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