Finishing Up with Mason's 891

If you want to catch up with Keith Hickman you’ve got to get up early in the morning. Really early. UNION CITY caught up with Hickman – Business Manager for the Operative Plasterers & Cement Masons Local 891 – before dawn on a recent Monday morning. Though the day had barely begun for most of metro Washington, Hickman had already sent out a crew of masons to a bridge jobsite and, between juggling calls on his Blackberry and office phone, he filled us in on his local. “All my guys are working,” the ebullient Hickman said, “It’s a great feeling. The best thing about this job is seeing good quality work.” Though they probably don’t realize it, hundreds of thousands of area residents see Local 891’s work every day, as they drive on highways and bridges – and walk on sidewalks -- whose concrete masonry has been finished by Local 891 members. Though commercial cement masonry comprises the bulk of Local 891’s work, they’re also proud of the skilled plastering work they do, especially on high-profile projects like the recently-renovated National Portrait Gallery. “There was a lot of original restoration work there,” says Hickman. With over 700 members, Local 891 has more than doubled in size since Hickman became Business Manager in 1998. The local continues to grow “slowly but steadily,” according to Hickman, and last year dedicated an expanded apprenticeship training school next door to the union’s Kenilworth Avenue offices, with 60 students currently enrolled and working in the field. Concrete finishing involves shaping and smoothing fresh concrete in a wide variety of styles and designs, while plastering can include everything from wall finishes to ornament and decorative work, sculpting and even creating molded props for the entertainment industry. Just 52, Hickman embraces new technologies in his field and proudly showed off brand-new equipment that can spray concrete into startlingly realistic brick patio designs, as well as wall finishes that uncannily mimic marble. “Even floors are getting high-tech,” Hickman told UNION CITY, “and now have to be finished to highly precise levels because of the advent of robotics” which require perfectly level and smooth surfaces. With full employment and plenty of upcoming major work in the pipeline, Hickman says his biggest challenge these days is finding and training enough masons and plasterers, and the local has a full-time organizer in the field on the lookout for new members. Originally from Chicago, where he trained as a mason, Hickman moved to Washington in the late ‘80s with his wife, a native Washingtonian. The couple have three children. Asked if he has any hobbies, Hickman just chuckles. In addition to serving as Local 891’s Business Manager, he’s the local’s Financial Secretary-Treasurer, chairs the Joint Apprenticeship Committee that oversees the apprenticeship program and is Vice-President of the Washington Building and Construction Trades Council. -Report/photos by Chris Garlock