An Open And Shut Case

(Metropolitan Washington Council, AFL-CIO)

In early December, Eric Gulan strode across a drop cloth on the carpeted office floor of AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Elizabeth Shuler, overlooking Lafayette Park across from the White House in Washington, D.C. He and three of his fellow union glaziers hammered out caulking to remove the room’s old windows—original quarter-inch panes from the building’s 1953 construction. Another three glaziers drilled through the solid steel of the window frames to prepare for the installation of new aluminum frames and a set of energy-efficient double-paned windows. The AFL-CIO headquarters building is in the midst of an eight-month energy-saving retrofit project to not only replace its 525 windows but also upgrade 4,300 light fixtures, place high-efficiency faucets in every sink and add new CO2 sensors to regulate air flow and temperature only when rooms are in use and new energy-efficient controls on the building’s heating and air conditioning units. And it creates good new jobs for the Glaziers, IBEW, Steamfitters, Painters, IUOE, Plumbers and Carpenters…CLICK HERE for Robert Struckman’s complete report on the AFL-CIO Now blog.