Labor Profile: Jim Lowery, Elevator Constructors Local 10

(Metropolitan Washington Council, AFL-CIO)

Elevator Constructor Local 10 Business Manager Jim Lowery started out as an asbestos worker. When Lowery's asthma prompted his doctor to suggest a career change in 1985, Lowery, who was 27 at the time, applied to the Elevator Constructors apprenticeship program. "My wife's dad was an elevator man and knew the benefits," says Lowery. He passed the exam to become a journeyman mechanic four years later. "We have to be jacks of all trades," Lowery, says, explaining that elevator constructors install and maintain elevators throughout the metro area. "Everything from hydraulics to carpentry, electrical, hoisting and rigging." They also do "mod work" tearing out old elevators and installing new ones. "Some elevators in DC have been running since the 1920's" says Lowery. "Often that old machinery is so well-made we just repair it." An elevator constructor can be responsible for as many as 100 elevators in a 6-block area, Lowery says. Local members also maintain the elevator in the Washington Monument and built the over 800 elevators and escalators in the Metro system, though those are now maintained “in-house,” work Lowery says would be more reliably and safely done by Local 10. With 1,250 members, Local 10 is the fourth-largest Elevator Constructors local in the country, says Lowery. The local’s jurisdiction includes Prince George’s County, Montgomery, Charles, St. Mary’s, Calvert, part of Anne Arundel and all of the District as well as 16 counties in Virginia. Lowery, who took over as Business Manager (BM) in February, got involved with the local as a volunteer on the organizing committee back in 2000 and was asked to run for Business Agent in 2002 and served for three 3-year terms before becoming BM last month (the senior business agent automatically becomes the Business Manager). He also served as chair of the Washington Building and Cnstruction Trades Council Organizing Committee from 2005 to 2011, an experienced he says “reinforced my ideas about the need to stick together.” Unlike many of the building trades, most of elevator constructors work is inside, Lowery notes, and the industry is also one of the most highly-unionized in the area, with 90% organized. “That’s why we have so much bargaining power,” Lowery says. Even so, Lowery has been watching events unfold in Wisconsin with concern, fully aware that “As unions fall, you’ll be the next target.” Like his predecessors, Lowery is keeping Local 10 fully engaged in the local labor movement, as well as working to form relationships with community, political and religious allies. With the union’s national agreement expiring next year, negotiations begin later this year and Lowery knows that employers “will be looking for concessions,” while a near-record number of his local’s members are “on the bench” waiting for work. Married for just over 30 years, Lowery and his wife Ruth have three sons, two of whom he proudly says are in the trade as elevator maintenance men while the third is studying labor law. His new role as Business Manager doesn’t leave him much spare time for his hobbies of fishing and hiking, but Lowery says “the health and safety of my co-workers is always on my mind: there’s danger in everything we do.” - report/photos by Chris Garlock