Business Agent, United Brotherhood of Carpenters, Local 2361

His title is now union business agent, but Jesus Gomez, 34, is best known for leading--with a handful of other determined Mexican immigrants--a wildcat strike last year that won 3,000 Southern California drywall workers a union contract, better wages and health insurance. (Drywall workers put up the sheets of gypsum that form the interior walls of houses.) Forced to quit high school and get a job, these days Gomez is asked to lecture other unions around the country on organizing. He talked recently with staff writer Michael Flagg.

How many workers have you signed up as carpenters union members these days?

A little over 3,000, just in the residential drywall industry. About 900 are guys who went out on strike--the rest are people who didn’t walk out.

How did you come to organize the strike?

I had bought a little house in Perris because there was a lot of open land, and I got a job out there and was waiting for all the construction to hit. I started working, and I asked them how much they were going to pay per sheet (of square foot of drywall hung.) Once I finished that house, I asked the foreman again, how much does this pay? And he told me, and I said, “No, you gave me another figure earlier.” But I needed the job, so I shut my mouth. Then when he gave me my paycheck, it was $60 short. And the foreman said, “Hey, if you don’t want to work here, we know somebody else who will do it for this.” And I said, “Hey, I’m not working for you. I’m going to quit.”

What did you do then?

I talked to the guys, and they said: “Well, yeah, we have to do something.” See, the subcontractors were getting squeezed by the builders, so they cut our wages really low. I spent three weeks or more talking to guys all over. I called the carpenters union. They said “We can help you.” Ninety percent of the people I talked to agreed we were being cheated, we weren’t getting any benefits. The people who were against us were the labor brokers (foremen who supply gangs of men to work, and who--it is alleged--often pay them in cash and keep some of their wages.) The brokers were making up to $3,000 a week, and their guys were making $200, $150, but they were just happy to have the work.

The carpenters weren’t too keen on you guys at first because Mexican immigrants had helped break the drywall union and other construction unions in the late 1970s, right?

The head guy at the local in Los Angeles said, “Go ahead.” But Doug McCarron (the top carpenters union official in Southern California) wasn’t too happy, he didn’t want to do it. He was afraid we would go out on strike for just a few weeks and then give up and go back to work.

Did there come a time during those five months of the strike that you thought you weren’t going to make it?

No. But I would get discouraged, because the labor brokers knew how to talk to the guys to get them to oppose the union.

Are there still labor brokers out there? How much has being unionized reformed this “cash culture” of dodging taxes and exploiting workers that flourished in the drywall industry?

They’re still there, but they’re members of the union now because they were forced to (join). They don’t want to be there because we can stop them from stealing. As foremen they still cheat some guys who work for them. But at least the companies are telling them now: “Hey, we want you to play straight. We want you to pay the men what they earn.”

A few weeks ago, you had some unhappy union members: unhappy with the contract, unhappy with the deductions in their checks for union dues and for health insurance, of which they split the costs with the employers. Is that getting better?

Yes, because just about everybody is working now. The business is improving.

Are the carpenters going to go out and organize some more trades? Rumor is the framers, the guys who erect the frames of houses--which is also largely a Latino trade now--are next.

The framers and the plasterers are talking among themselves now, having meetings, and they asked me to come talk to them, but they haven’t decided who they want to represent them yet.

You think they will succeed? After all, many of you drywall workers had the benefit of being relatives, or at least all from the same town in Mexico, El Maguey.

It’s going to be harder for them, because probably 300 of us were from El Maguey, and that kept us together through the strike. It was one of the main reasons we succeeded. That’s not true of some of the other trades.

Are the subcontractors, who said they were dead-set against a union at the beginning of the strike last year, getting accustomed to dealing with a union again?

The strike was the best thing that ever happened to them. They’re no longer underbidding each other with the builders to get drywall jobs. Now they compete on quality and if they can get the job done on time.

You’ve signed up more than 50 of the bigger drywall subcontractors. How much non-union work is going on out there now?

About 20% of the companies are non-union. And those are the companies that are still paying cash and cheating the guys, where even the owners--not just the labor brokers--are cheating.

You’re now a business agent with the union. Do you expect to stay with the union?

I want to stay here at least until I see this to the end. There’s a lot of work still to do. I like organizing. I like to see people get what they work for. I don’t like to see people cheated. There are a lot of people taking advantage of workers, and I hate it. I was a foreman for six years, and there is nobody who can say I stole money from them. Nobody.

On advising workers trying to organize...

“Stay together. Fight. Because there are always people trying to take advantage of the worker. Refuse to work cheap.”

On hard feelings left over from the strike...

“There are a few when you have guys who went out on strike and guys who didn’t--and all the companies now have some of both working together. But we don’t call them ‘scabs’ anymore. They’re all union members now.”

On reforming the drywall industry...

“There are always going to be people trying to cheat workers. But every day it’s less. It’s not just me saying it--I think most people believe it’s getting better.”

On unionizing the rest of the home-building business...

“It will come. A lot of workers in those industries don’t understand yet how a union can help them get better wages.”