In Fort Worth lies a lineage of union men. A grandfather, father and son. Each generation introduced the next to the principles of the working class \u2014 how to stand in solidarity with other workers and how a union could provide stability for families. For now, it ends with Robert Martinez Jr., the international president of one of the largest labor unions in the U.S.<\/p>\n
Robert Martinez\u2019 grandfather, Pascasio Martinez was a retail meat cutter and became a union negotiator. He rode a train from Fort Worth to Chicago to bargain a deal between the United Packinghouse Workers of America with Swift & Co., then considered one of the big four of meatpacking and the company that championed the refrigerated railroad car.<\/p>\n
Once word had spread that an agreement was reached, a stockyard assembly hall filled with union members as Pascasio returned to Fort Worth. Pascasio had the contract typed up and rolled into his satchel. Immediately upon arriving, he\u2019d read the labor contract aloud to his comrades in the heart of the city\u2019s livestock exchange to vote on the agreement.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow that had to be some pretty wild stuff,\u201d his grandson said. \u201cI can appreciate that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pascasio\u2019s son, Robert Martinez Sr., joined the meat cutter\u2019s union in the \u201860s, following work to Emporia, Kansas, then Sioux City, Iowa and back to Texas again. He was a representative within the union for years before eventually getting into company management.<\/p>\n
Those contracts not only made a middle-class life possible, Robert Martinez Jr. said. But it showcased to him the value of being in a union.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey are the reason I am here today,\u201d Martinez Jr., 63, said of his grandfather and father at the United Food and Commercial Workers\u2019 International Convention in 2018 in Las Vegas. \u201cThey are the reason I am the first Latino president of an international union.\u201d<\/p>\n
After nearly eight years leading the union with upwards of 600,000 aerospace, defense, airline, railroad, automotive and healthcare workers across the U.S., Canada, Puerto Rico, The Virgin Islands and Guam, two decades on the executive council and more than 43 years of membership, Martinez, who <\/strong>goes by Bob, is retiring.<\/p>\n His tenure as international president includes some of the most challenging moments of the union\u2019s history as the pandemic shuttered work and threatened to dismember the labor group. Martinez\u2019 navigation of the last few years not only put Texas on the map, but himself as a leader of today\u2019s labor movement.<\/p>\n In a notoriously employer-friendly state, there were plenty of forces arrayed against Martinez as a union president in Texas, said Rick Levy, president of the Texas American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations. But Martinez rose beyond that climate, Levy said, rallying a powerful and vibrant labor movement.<\/p>\n \u201cUnless we change Texas, we\u2019re never going to change this country,\u201d Levy said. \u201cBob understood that to the very core.\u201d<\/p>\n When difficult issues or situations arose, union leaders and workers alike went to Martinez, Levy said.<\/p>\n \u201cYou can trust Bob,\u201d Levy said. \u201cHe doesn\u2019t get scared, he doesn\u2019t get distracted. He\u2019s just a real force when it comes to carrying out a vision and carrying out a program.\u201d<\/p>\n Martinez\u2019s tenure spanned a renewed energy across industries in the labor movement. After nearly five months of striking, Hollywood\u2019s writers are set to vote on a contract. UPS averted a strike that some estimated would have been the costliest in a century. The United Auto Workers have walked off the job at General Motors, Ford and Stellantis. <\/strong>Railroad workers came close to an economy-crippling strike and pilots at nearly every major airline have battled for major pay raises.<\/p>\n More than 16 million workers were represented by a union in 2022, according to the Economic Policy Institute. That\u2019s an increase of 200,000 from 2021. Throughout that year, the number of workers involved in a major work stoppage increased by nearly 50%, more than 120,000 <\/strong>in all.<\/p>\n Last year, high-profile organizing campaigns took place within companies such as Starbucks, Amazon and Trader Joe\u2019s.<\/p>\n \u201cWorkers have confidence right now,\u201d Martinez said. \u201cThey\u2019re going to the bargaining table, in all organizations, demanding their fair share. In the majority of cases, we\u2019re getting it.\u201d<\/p>\n In his role as international president, Martinez visited Donald Trump and Joe Biden at the White House and shares stories with a Texan drawl about how Washington\u2019s flight paths made him miss landmark phone calls from Nancy Pelosi.<\/p>\n The machinists and aerospace workers union emerged from the pandemic with financial stability and historic membership growth, despite losing nearly 92,000 members to layoffs and deaths, predominantly from the manufacturing and airline workers.<\/p>\n \u201cWe represent all those folks,\u201d Martinez said. \u201cAnd they turned the lights out on us overnight.\u201d<\/p>\n People were getting sick and it was a disaster, Martinez said. He and his team began working around the clock, seven days a week, on legislation and programs.<\/p>\n On top of the worries of his members, he also had the financial concerns of the machinists union itself. The labor group offered voluntary retirement incentive plans, which nearly 60 of the union\u2019s 500 Grand Lodge workers, or those working for Martinez, accepted. Some others were laid off, Martinez said. For a year, the labor group\u2019s training facility staffed only its security guards.<\/p>\n Martinez and his team began lobbying virtually for the Payroll Support Program. The legislative package gave $25 billion to airlines in aid and another $25 billion in loans in exchange for a promise not to lay off workers, enact furloughs, cut pay or hours along with prohibitions on executive pay raises and share buybacks.<\/p>\n After a long night of work, Martinez was waiting for word from Pelosi on <\/strong>whether the bill would pass. As he headed home to his townhouse in Virginia around midnight, nearing the Woodrow Wilson Bridge across the Potomac, his cell service cut out due to the flight path of the DCA airport. When he got off the bridge, he had a missed call from Pelosi. When he called her back, Pelosi told Martinez, \u201cMr. President, I just want to let you know, we got it done,\u201d he recounted.<\/p>\n \u201cThat legislation saved our membership,\u201d Martinez said, fighting tears. Some 35,000 workers of the 92,000 never returned to their jobs and the union.<\/p>\n After navigating the immediate crisis the pandemic brought on, Martinez turned his attention toward organizing the healthcare industry. He recruited Canadian and American nurses and hospital workers who were interested in unionizing because of how they were treated during the pandemic.<\/p>\n His staff outlines Martinez\u2019s legacy through the programs and changes he enacted for the membership.<\/p>\n The three programs Martinez is leaving behind are close to his heart, he said. He started a veterans assistance program, an addiction program and a women\u2019s leadership program.<\/p>\n As a Navy veteran, Martinez recognized the obstacles in navigating Veterans Administration claims and wanted to allocate resources to ensure veteran members were able to access their benefits. The addiction services program offers 24-hour-a-day consultations and treatment placement and the leadership program creates new pathways for women to advance in the union.<\/p>\n Among those is a first within the labor community. Martinez engendered a rank-and-file endorsement of a presidential candidate. The decision to do so stemmed from a local union president asking Martinez early in his tenure when the membership would be able to contribute to the endorsement. His team began creating an electric ballot short after.<\/p>\n \u201cBob has made it a point throughout his tenure as international president, and going back, that he listens to the members,\u201d said Jonathan Battaglia, the machinist\u2019s communications director.<\/p>\n The union endorsed Joe Biden. By Biden\u2019s 28th day in office, Martinez was invited to the White House.<\/p>\n Prior to the Biden administration, Martinez visited Donald Trump in the Roosevelt Room twice to discuss stopping offloading Americans\u2019 work to foreign countries and to create incentives for employers to bring work back from overseas.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was what he campaigned on,\u201d Martinez said. At least 48 IAM-represented plants closed during the Trump administration, according to Martinez.<\/p>\n The labor group was not invited to visit the White House during the Obama and Bush administrations, Martinez said.<\/p>\n At the last convention the union held, Martinez put in a rare provision to its constitution for organized labor. The month a member of the executive council turns 65, they must <\/strong>retire.<\/p>\n In early October, Martinez will turn 64. The political environment both internally and externally made it time to go, he said, citing the Biden White House as the friendliest administration he\u2019s worked with throughout his time on the union\u2019s executive council.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve dealt with a lot of hostile presidents and directives and policies over the years and then I\u2019ll finally get the person that I want and I\u2019m on my way out the door,\u201d Martinez said. \u201cSo politically, it\u2019s good to be able to turn this over at this time.\u201d<\/p>\n The union\u2019s general vice president Brian Bryant will succeed Martinez as the international president.<\/p>\n \u201cI am honored to follow in the footsteps of an amazing leader and educator,\u201d Bryant said. \u201cBob has been a great mentor and has left our union in a great place.\u201d<\/p>\n While he jokes that he has a lot of cellphone numbers in his arsenal, it will <\/strong>be difficult to give up the reins.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve been going 100 miles an hour since I was 20 years old, and then it was just more and more and more,\u201d Martinez said. \u201cNow it\u2019s that time and I really don\u2019t know what I\u2019m going to do.\u201d<\/p>\n Martinez turned down an offer to play tight-end at North Texas State at 16 and left Amon Carter-Riverside High School to enter the U.S. Navy in the delayed entry program.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a long walk in the park here how my journey began,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n After training, Martinez was <\/strong>an aircraft mechanic working on helicopters and fighter jets. Four days after getting out of the military, he started as an aircraft assembler at Lockheed Martin Aeronautics in Fort Worth in 1980, across the road from the local district union lodge.<\/p>\n Within <\/strong>a year Martinez became a steward for the union and spent 13 years in union positions inside the plant. When he left Lockheed, he was 38. \u201cIt was extremely difficult leaving the family here,\u201d Martinez said.<\/p>\n He moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1993, to teach courses on hazardous materials and emergency response at the Center for Workers Safety and Health. He then went to the union headquarters in southern Maryland until 1999.<\/p>\n He\u2019s spent long stints between Dallas-Fort Worth and headquarters. From 2003 to 2013 he worked out of the southern territory office in Dallas before he was relocated again to the Upper Marlboro office. He was elected international president in 2016.<\/p>\n The union has wrapped up most of its major contract negotiations through Jan. 1, when Martinez retires. Before he leaves his post, he\u2019ll dedicate a veteran\u2019s memorial at IAM\u2019s training facility.<\/p>\n Martinez has already started missing long conversations with other workers, the kind that guided his leadership. \u201cJust talking to people from everywhere, and not acting like a stuck-up person, \u2018I\u2019m up here.\u2019 It isn\u2019t right.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYou know me, I\u2019m just a shop guy,\u201d Martinez said.<\/p>\n ——-<\/p>\n \u00a92023 The Dallas Morning News. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.<\/p>\n KeyWords:: d81b6a39-0ef9-4851-97c4-5ec30841e4c5 In Fort Worth lies a lineage of union men. A grandfather, father and son. Each generation introduced the next to the principles of the working class \u2014 how to stand in solidarity with other workers and how a union could provide stability for families. For now, it ends with Robert Martinez Jr., the international president […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29737","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29737","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29737"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29737\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29738,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29737\/revisions\/29738"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29737"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29737"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29737"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Evolving labor movement<\/h3>\n
Union legacy<\/h3>\n
Stepping down<\/h3>\n
\u2018A long walk in the park\u2019<\/h3>\n
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\nBC LABOR LEADER RETIRING DA<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"