For this article, New Labor Forum contributor Peter Lucas interviewed Charles Anderson, a field superintendent for Walters & Wolf in Southern California and a part-time instructor for the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades (IUPAT) Local 636, of which he is also a member.

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I am a field superintendent for Walters & Wolf [a design, engineering, and contracting firm] in Southern California and a part-time instructor for the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades (IUPAT) Local 636, of which I am also a member. I’m currently working at the Garden Grove Civic Center. It’s a three-story police station built on what used to be a park. It is not a typical installation. The scope contains a serpentine wall, ballistic windows, and also a straight, flat curtain wall, which hangs from the exterior on brackets, and a stick-built system, which consists of putting verticals and horizontals up, water diversion, and finally you glaze it. We are also installing bullet-resistant windows, mirrors, display cases, and panel work to close off openings. I’ve been on since April and will be on it through November, so it’s going to be a little eight-month job. My typical jobs last anywhere from a year to two years.

To become a glazier in the union, you take the entrance exam, which is a very basic math test. You have to have a high school diploma and a driver’s license as well. To become a journeyman, you have to complete four years of training, a rotation that consists of working three months in the field and then one week in the classroom. As you complete training, you get a pay raise every six months.

A journeyman glazier in the LA area makes $60.55 an hour at the top end. The full package, including retirement, benefits, health and welfare, 401(k), pension, is just over $89 total. When we travel out of our jurisdiction, which is outlined by the union, we get paid travel time. If it’s a day trip, you get paid door-to-door, from when you leave your house to when you get home. If it’s going to be more than a one-day duration, the employer will comp our stay, and we earn our per diem, which is $85 per day in California.

I joined the industry around 2005. I started at a small mom-and-pop glass shop, which was non-union, as a customer service rep. After several years of encouragement from a few friends in the union, I finally joined the union in 2008 to start working on the CityCenter project. I was there until the job was complete and every window was set. I moved to the Bay Area around 2012 to pursue more work. Around 2015, a company called Walters & Wolf asked me to join their team in Los Angeles. I relocated there, and I’ve been all over this great metropolitan area building buildings from Santa Monica down to San Diego ever since.

I’ve been glazing for 20 years, and I’m still doing stuff I’ve never done before. When I first got into trade, someone told me: don’t worry, it’s all the same—it is all glass and aluminum. But there’s a hundred different ways to put that glass and aluminum together. I see new stuff all the time.

As an apprentice, the training center gives you the parameters of how it is supposed to look on paper, but until you get out in the field, there’s a lot of stuff that they can’t cover in the classroom. I learned a lot from the apprenticeship program, but every local runs it differently. While the training center cannot cover all of it, I feel like they do a lot more now to prepare guys as much as they can.

I’ve been glazing for 20 years, and I’m still doing stuff I’ve never done before.

For an apprentice to journey out, you have to pass the Architectural Glass & Metal Technician (AGMT) cert test, which was not always the case. After you pass, you have to retake the AGMT cert, which consists of written and hands-on portions. You have to retake the AGMT cert every five years. I think it is going to start filtering out some of the guys who would fake it, because now you actually have to pass an exam that involves a caulking test, a curtain wall test, a storefront test, and reading the print test, all by yourself. I think it’s going to become a little harder for everybody to become journeymen. We know that we can’t just keep doing what we’ve done for all these years, because the industry is getting more competitive.

When I first became a glazier, the biggest adjustment was the early starts and long days. The work shift starting at five in the morning was a huge shock to me. I’d never been up before the sun came out. They can’t require you to work overtime, but if you don’t work the overtime, you find yourself out of work—especially in Las Vegas where the demand from the casinos is so intense. I like to joke, you haven’t worked overtime until you’ve worked in Las Vegas. When I joined the union, I went from working eight-to-four to working four-to-eight—and then you had to go home, clean up, and get ready to start again the next morning.

There’s not a lot of high rises that get built in the suburbs, where most of our glaziers reside, so each job is almost always going to require a commute to a big city. Whether I’m working in LA or San Diego, my commutes are round trip about three hours every day, no matter what. My work shifts are conventional; we work Monday through Fridays, starting at 6:30 am off at three o’clock. But still, part of being a glazier is knowing that you’re going to work overtime pretty much all time, so we work most Saturdays. Very rarely do we work Sundays, but sometimes jobs fall far enough behind that they want to pick up the double time. Our contract in LA says anything over eight is time-and-a-half on Saturdays and anything on Sundays is double time.

Workers are often picked for a crew based on two things: their ability and their availability to work the overtime. If someone decides after the first week that he can’t work Saturdays, it throws a wrench in the plans. Most everybody wants to work overtime, but if guys continually do not want to work overtime, they usually get worked out of the crew. Again, it’s expected, and you don’t want to call out.

The flip side of that is, yes, if you volunteer for the overtime, which I’ve done for years, you do miss out on a lot of the family stuff. I have three boys in sports, and I try to make it to everything that I can to the best of my ability. But there are days, games, and parties that I have to miss to work. It’s an unspoken rule. Nobody’s going to tell you have to, but if you don’t, you’re not going to keep getting offered it.

… [My] commutes are round trip about three hours every day, no matter what.

When I teach, I tell guys that our biggest hazards—the ones that actually prevent us from going home—is falling off a building and rigging a load incorrectly. With windows and steel, we’re picking up units that are thousands of pounds and then setting it on small connection points to be attached mechanically afterwards. The potential for failure in setting glass is catastrophic, so we emphasize the proper training to rig a load, knowing how the crane is going to work with that load, and knowing how to call the crane so that a window doesn’t slam into you and kill you.

Ninety-nine percent of our work is done on a leading edge, which is the exposed side of a building. There’s no windows or anything to keep you from falling out. A glazier’s biggest safety concern on the job is to prevent a fall—from ladders, from deck heads, from swing stages.

…[O]ur biggest hazards—the ones that actually prevent us from going home—is falling off a building and rigging a load incorrectly.

Inclement weather is a huge issue. I have worked in Las Vegas where it was really hot and extremely cold. In California, you could spend one day working in the Bay Area right by the water where your high is 70, nice and breezy, and the next day you go out to Palm Springs where it’s 110 and dry. Because of the nature of the job and our positioning while hanging off the building, we are never going to be in the shade. It’s lots of long sleeves and sunscreen. Fortunately, in California, after it hits a certain temperature, you’re required by law to give a certain amount of shade breaks and stuff like that.

The company I work for is really good about providing us with stuff to deal with that. Everybody got full brim visors for their hard hats, they bought a refrigerator to put water in, and distributed hydrating popsicles and little cooling towels for your neck. But this is very unusual. You are supposed to be provided water, but it doesn’t mean that it hasn’t been sitting in the sun all day.

Also, consider the material we’re working around. You could be working indoors next to a bunch of unfinished dry wall where you got insulation all over you, so then you’re itchy and hot and sweaty. If I’m eating my lunch on a fold out rubber-made table in the middle of the dirt, every time the wind kicks up, I’m eating a little bit of dust with my yogurt. But that’s part of the job. The best part of all is the restrooms. If it’s 80 degrees outside, that porta-potty is 110 degrees.

When I first got into trade, in Las Vegas, I dealt with a safety guy who only wanted the position to work less. Our contract said that, as part of safety, the workers have to be provided ice water every day because it was so hot. The safety rep did not appreciate me calling to inform him that we were out of ice. He told me that it’s not his fucking problem and that I need to mind my own business. He took it to a whole other level and threatened to beat my ass. He told me I don’t know shit because I was an apprentice.

I took it to my union steward, and we went through a form of arbitration. After we resolved it, I sat down with the business agent, and I said, I also want to get the training that this guy has because, apparently, I don’t know anything, and I’d like to know whatever he knows so that this problem doesn’t occur again. That’s how I got into instructing.

Ninety-nine percent of our work is done on a leading edge, which is the exposed side of a building. There’s no windows or anything to keep you from falling out.

In 2020, in the middle of Covid, we went into negotiations, and management had a difference of opinion about the rate of pay we should be earning. So, we went on strike for five weeks. It was a very surreal experience. In glazing, when there’s a project labor agreement (PLA) on a job, the unions make an agreement with those developers that by using all-union labor, a strike will not affect that project. At the time, I was working on a job that had a PLA, so we would get up in the morning, go picket at a strike location for two hours, and then all get in our trucks to go to work. We’d work so that we could pay the strike assessments at the end of the week for everybody who was on strike. We won almost three times what management originally offered us. For the following contract, the management came with a fair proposal right out the gate, and we won back-to-back solid contracts.

When I worked non-union, we also got no training. You were handed tools, an assignment, and told to go to work.

Building trades are not your typical union, in the sense of firefighters, nurses, teachers, and so on. In the building trades—and glazing particularly—you’re a rank-and-file member in a local, but all that dictates is that you’re working out of that jurisdiction. The main driver for glaziers is certification. An average glazier has your typical fall protection, equipment, and swing stage certifications. But then you have glaziers who can also operate cranes, glaziers who can weld, glaziers who know more intricate pieces of equipment. Those guys will bounce from company to company. To their benefit, they stay employed a whole hell of a lot more than your average workers. But it’s not the case that you just stay with one firm forever. It’s centered around the workflow, which swings a lot.

In glazing, you construct a building with a company, then that company doesn’t have work, so you get put back on the bench, and then another company picks you up. Even though we’re in a union, you’re essentially soliciting your own work, which you get based on your skills and abilities, because not everybody can call a frame or weld or drive a forklift.

When the work is good, you get accustomed to making $60.55 an hour, you’re living high on the hog, and then the job just comes to an end. If you don’t have the skills required to get picked up on the next job, you’re back out of work. You could sit for months, especially because since Covid the industry itself has been really slow to get fired back up.

We’re in the middle of that now, and there’s a lot of workers who have to sit at home and just wait for a phone call. Recently, I called up about five or 10 guys, and said, “hey, we’re going to be getting busy, I’m going to be hiring the first week of May. Make sure you got all your certifications up to date.” They got all their certifications up to date, and then the job got put on hold for three months. I got them all teed up—they were ready to go, went to the classes, maybe went out and spent a little money, bought some new tools or boots—just to find out that now they got to sit for a little bit longer. That’s a very common thing in glazing. That’s why you have to get the extra certs and keep doing your training.

A lot of these kids coming up believe that just because they went to college they know best, but that really has no bearing on the situation.

When I got into the trade, an older guy who was on his way out told me, “Kid, you want to stay busy? Get every cert you can.” And, so I did; any cert that has ever been created, I’ve gotten it at least once. If it’s something that the union doesn’t cover, but it’s required for the employer, then the employer will pay it. But 99 percent of all my certifications were paid for by the union.

The biggest difference between union and non-union glazing is pay and training. When I worked non-union, I was making peanuts, paying what I call non-union dues. For all the guys I try to organize now, I tell them: when a non-union company bids for work, they’re still bidding as if they were going to pay a union worker, and so the worker ends up paying non-union dues. They’ll ask me, “what do you mean I’m paying non-union dues?”

It means that the company priced it as if it was union labor doing the job. My employer is paying me my union rate at $60.55 an hour. Your employer also charged the same rate—and we know because of prevailing wage jobs, they have to pay these rates. They price them all as prevailing wages and pocket the non-union dues by paying the worker less. Another individual who worked 20 years non-union might still be making $17 an hour, and I’m over here making $60.55 an hour—more than three times what they’re making. The pay disparity is crazy.

When I worked non-union, we also got no training. You were handed tools, an assignment, and told to go to work. There was no telling of how it’s supposed to look or explaining this is what the caulking does that you’re putting in there. Just go out, have at it, and hopefully the building doesn’t leak when you’re done and hopefully nothing falls off. That’s partly where the AGMT came from; there were so many issues stemming from people out there saying that they could do the work when they weren’t properly trained. Finally, the industry said, maybe we need to create a certification like the electricians and farmers have.

In the last 10 years, I’ve seen a dramatic increase in college graduates joining the field from the general contractors stand. Before, it used to be, this guy worked X amount of years in this particular field, and that’s how he became the superintendent for the general contractor to be the expert on what was being installed. Now you have these kids coming out that don’t even know how something’s supposed to be built, and then they’re going to tell you how you’re doing your job wrong, because it doesn’t look like that on paper. But the problem is, on paper, it’s two-dimensional.

They get on a computer and draw stuff up in the model, but have no idea of how it’s going to be installed. They just say, “hey, this is the end result that we want. Make it happen.” You have to have some type of constructability, but because they have no experience actually working it, they just insist on the model.

A lot of these kids coming up believe that just because they went to college they know best, but that really has no bearing on the situation. You can go to college to be a doctor, but that doesn’t mean you’re going to perform surgery on this window. I feel like if you’re going to be out in the field telling people what to do, you should have to spend time in the field learning what those people do.

I appreciate the camaraderie I’ve built with my fellow brothers, especially considering the constant travel required by the job. It’s nice to make friends and build stuff together using all sorts of different methods. And then we all sit back and reminisce: You remember this job? Or remember when we did that crazy thing?

For the LUMEN West building, which was two 12-story buildings that earned a write-up in Glass Magazine, the general contractor made a bet with us: if we set 90 windows in a day, they would make the whole crew breakfast. We set 124 windows and steak and eggs never tasted better.

The biggest benefit to this job is when I’m done, being able to look back and say: I built that building. It’s impressive to install windows that are 22 feet tall, 18 feet wide, 5,000 pounds, in a hole that’s 500 feet in the air. This building I’m working on right now is just a little three story, but I’ve gotten a bunch of comments from the architect and the contractor, like, man, you guys are killing it. I can’t believe how fast you wrapped this building. That’s what I like to do: get out, build stuff, and make things happen. They say glaziers are the glory boys of construction. Electricians, iron workers, contractors, they all do stuff, but nobody ever feels like the building’s done until the windows go up.