At Home in the Union

By David McCall
USW International President

Jamie Martinez grew up in a single-parent home with a mom who made many sacrifices but never enough money to own the roof over their heads.

At one point, Martinez also seemed destined to rent for life, his dream of buying a house falling further and further out of reach during the years he worked demanding yet low-wage positions in the service industry.

Fortunately, he landed a union-represented job at the Bridgestone plant in Morrison, Tenn., about a decade ago and changed the trajectory of his life.

Within a couple of years of becoming a tire worker and a member of the United Steelworkers (USW), Martinez designed a house, purchased five scenic acres to put it on, and sunk the kind of roots for his family that he missed out on himself.

As Martinez discovered, unions not only help workers break into the middle class but acquire an ownership stake in it.

Union workers across the country are 13 percentage points more likely than non-union counterparts to own their homes—an advantage that holds across racial lines, according to research by the Center for American Progress, a think tank in Washington, D.C.

This union difference becomes more pronounced each year as CEOs and shareholders hoard a greater portion of the nation’s wealth and force average Americans to scrape by with less. In all, 70 percent of American households—94 million in all—lack the means to buy even a median-priced home right now.

“I would not have the life that I have without this union job,” said Martinez, a member of USW Local 1155L. “I know that having that contract—being unionized—is what forces Bridgestone’s hand on that paycheck every week.”

“I’m not ignorant to the ways of corporate America,” he added, estimating he’d make just half of his current wages without the USW. “They want as much as possible for as little as it will cost them.”

Martinez formerly earned just $12.35 an hour as a general manager for a locally owned chain of sandwich shops. He tried to persuade the owner to advance him to a higher-paying position with greater responsibility but only got the runaround.

He despaired of getting ahead until his brother-in-law, who already had a job at Bridgestone, suggested that he try to hire on there as well.

Martinez started at the plant weeks later. And although he never before worked in a manufacturing environment, he quickly found himself succeeding with the help of a strong union and supportive co-workers.

Then he and his wife, Amanda, decided to take the next step and buy a home—a symbol of independence and prosperity and a means for building additional wealth.

“We were just ready to start investing in ourselves and our future,” Martinez said. “It was my wife who gave me the push. She was like, ‘We can do this now. You make enough money.’”  

“It felt really good to have something to call mine, especially when it was off the sweat of my own brow,” Martinez explained.

As the years went by, the couple realized that they wanted more square footage under roof and less land to maintain.

They recently sold their place in the country and closed on a bigger house that sits on half an acre, near downtown McMinnville, Tenn.

Martinez credited his union wages with enabling them to surmount the skyrocketing prices, surging interest rates and higher insurance costs now shutting millions of others out of the housing market.

By delivering good pay, unions also help workers steer clear of traps that can beguile those trying to get ahead without sufficient resources.

About 20 years ago, for example, large numbers of Americans desperate to own their own homes fell victim to predatory lending practices that left them broken, destitute and homeless.

“It really didn’t affect us because I had a good union job,” recalled Noah Cope, a USW member at what was then the BP-Husky refinery in Toledo, Ohio.

He and his wife bought their first house in 2008, the high point of the crisis, without over-extending themselves. While a solid income proved crucial to navigating the difficult period, he said, so did the larger sense of security provided by his USW contract and the mettle he forged as a union member.

“When you get to that stage, you’re not far from having the courage to make such a major commitment, the confidence that you’ll have the resources to maintain your asset, and the dignity to believe that you’re worthy of the dream of so many becoming the reality for you,” he explained. “The money is just the foundation.”  

The couple eventually sold that home and lived in Nevada and Michigan before returning to Toledo, where Cope, still a USW member, works at Cleveland-Cliffs.

He emphasized that renting, which he’s done at various points, will always be the preferred option for some families. But he said it isn’t fair—or good for the country—to deny large numbers of Americans a path to buy homes when they want them.

“It’s keeping people subservient,” he said. “When you push that out of reach for people, it marginalizes them. It affects the quality of life for them.”

The uber-rich fuel the current housing crunch by buying homes just to resell them. Homes are toys, one more means of accumulating piles of money, for them.

But this ugly profiteering needlessly drives up prices for everyone else, especially in places like McMinnville and other parts of Middle Tennessee already growing in popularity.

“I wish that more people could afford to be homeowners,” Martinez said. “I really do. There are a lot of people living paycheck to paycheck. It’s a vicious cycle. My heart aches for them. I was there before I got to Bridgestone.”