A group of sheet metal workers demonstrated outside an Anderson business Friday. Company officials say their anger is misplaced.
Eleven representatives of Indianapolis-based Sheet Metal Workers International Association (SMWIA) No. 20 say Lehman’s Mechanical Contractors Inc. has undercut union wages and failed to provide health insurance, pensions or safe working conditions for its employees.
“They’re hiring people to do the same work we do and for $10 an hour,” said 25-year-old Richard Hiles of Anderson. “Our package is around $47 an hour.”
In a statement, Lehman’s President John Maidlow said his employees “decertified” the union 20 years ago. He characterized the demonstration as “out-of-town and out-of-work union members” making false claims.
“It shows they don’t know our business,” the statement read. “We provide wages and benefits for our employees that meet or exceed the union’s. That’s why we’re able to attract and keep the quality employees we have.”
SMWIA representatives appeared outside the business, located at 1023 W. 38th St., around 6 a.m. and said they planned to stay all day, arriving in shifts. They set up a 12-foot, bright yellow banner proclaiming “Shame, shame, shame” on Lehman’s.
“We’ve seen some dirty looks and we’ve had the cops called on us,” said 24-year-old Josh Tucker of Trafalgar. “We’re on the sidewalk, so we’re all legal. They just told us to keep the noise down.”
The demonstrators say they are not asking the public to boycott Lehman’s, but merely attempting to raise awareness of the issue.
A handbill distributed by the demonstrators read, in part: “Because of the failure of Lehman’s Inc. to meet these standards, the doom is that the employees of Lehman’s Inc. along with the working men and women and the decent contractors of the community, are having their own standard of living eroded.”
Maidlow said Lehman’s provides paid vacations, holidays and a profit-sharing plan to its non-union employees.
“We provide job security for our employees,” he said in the statement. “Our employees work year-round. They could go to the union if they wanted to. They just don’t want to.”
According to its Web site, the Sheet Metal Workers International Association represents 150,000 skilled craftworkers in the unionized sheet metal industry throughout the United States and Canada.
The Herald Bulletin previously reported that Lehman’s was founded more than 75 years ago and performs an average of $10 million of work annually within a 45-mile radius of Anderson. Lehman’s four-acre site on West 38th Street includes four buildings for fabrication, storage and other purposes.
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John P. Cleary
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March 23, 2007
6:30 p.m. - Sheet metal workers demonstrate
Lehman's targeted for unfair labor practices
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