What started as a paycheck to support a new baby came full circle this June, when union representative Darrin Boyce helped bargain a pair of first contracts with the HVAC company that first got him into sheet metal.
Boyce started working non-union at a Gensco distribution center in North Portland in 2006 after his girlfriend got pregnant — just a job to pay the bills as he started a family. But pulling products and delivering orders, he learned about sheet metal and eventually joined a non-union sheet metal apprenticeship program.
Gensco subsidiary Columbia Manufacturing is a union employer at its sheet metal fabrication shop in Fife, Washington, but Gensco’s distribution centers then and now are non-union…