The members that make up Local 1536 are truly a diverse group. 1536 is a specialty local that has a wide jurisdiction. This month, The Carpenter focused on all of the hard working tradesmen and women in Local 1536.

First, The Carpenter visited the Timbermen and women. A Timberman’s jurisdiction includes shoring and sheeting work for all underground utility projects, which includes sewer, water main, telephone and electric lines. Some of the bigger jobs that you might find a Timberman working on include subway projects and water tunnels.

The Carpenter met Joe Geiger, a seventeen-year member at a Brooklyn water main site. Geiger explained, “If you see lumber sticking out from any roadway you know the Timberman are on the job… People sometimes forget the significance of shoring. If shoring is left to unskilled workers, people’s lives are being put at risk”.

On another Timberman job site, George O’Brien, Foreman for Schiavone Construction and longtime member, gave us a tour of an underground
construction site at a subway stop in Brooklyn. “If I could say one thing to our members, I’d say that I strongly believe that all of our brothers and sisters should take advantage of the classes that our school offers to us… I have. I have taken every course available to us. The more knowledge you have the more valuable you are to the contractor. But more importantly, the more we know, the safer it is for our members and safety means that members will be going home to their families at the end of the day.”

Another group of members in Local 1536 are the Coredrillers. These members do all of the preliminary work for prospective construction sites. Outside of New York City, they can be found working in parts of New Jersey and Westchester. They do all test borings, shotdrilling, soil samples and monitoring water tables at the site. They provide valuable information to everyone connected to the future worksite.

Greg Williams, a 2 and a half-year member and Cyril Farley, an 8-month member, were working under the Manhattan Bridge. They were drilling at a proposed shaft site for a new water tunnel (there are currently 2 in New York) to meet the City’s water demand. The members were drilling 700 feet deep into the earth for the NY DEP. The machine drills into the earth and then lifts a cylinder core of the earth. Williams said, “the job will take round 3 weeks long… I like what I do, but it can be rough in the winter…outside in the cold.”

Next The Carpenter met with the Woodtank Workers. They clean, maintain, install and manufacture cooling towers and tanks in most buildings. They are mostly unseen because their work is mostly done on the roofs of buildings and sometimes inside.

The Carpenter interviewed members from Rosenwach Tank Co Inc.Rosenwach, a company that started in 1866, is 1 of 4 companies that build water tanks in New York City, and 1 of the 2 that is union. Charlie Zimmerman, a 25-year member explained the basics of the water tanks, “my crew and I can take an old tank down and make and install a new wood water tank all in one day.”

Wood is the best material to use for the tanks because it self-insulates the water and keeps it from freezing. In extreme cases, if the water freezes, steam pipes or electrical heaters can be used to thaw the ice. Also, if the tanks start to leak, they are easily fixed with a piece of wood or lamp wick, unlike steel tanks.

Bobby Locke, 8-year member and John Deterge, 8-year member told The Carpenter, “We have a very good bunch of guys; truthfully most people look up at the roof and decide to not even attempt to do what we do.”

Tanks typically last 25 to 30 years. Tanks only need a yearly cleaning (done with a squeegee). Manley, a month-old union member, said that he knew that only way to continue a long career in tank building was to join the union and he was glad he did.

Another trade in local 1536 is the Hod Hoist Carpenters. They erect and maintain the material and personnel hoists on new construction in Manhattan and the outer boroughs. They also have worked on high profile scaffolding jobs such as the Statue of Liberty in 1986 and more recently the Washington Monument in our nations capital. Their jobs are dangerous as they sometimes work 50 to 60 stories in the air under difficult weather conditions.

The Carpenter stopped at Columbus Circle to visit the future site of the Time Warner AOL building, where the Hod Hoist Carpenters are currently
working. The AOL/Time Warner site is the first site to use a new hoist system in the United States. Jeff Keeley, 20-year member and supervisor, has created a new system scaffold that he believes will create a safer environment for workers. The new system uses round pegs to secure instead of the old way. Keeley told the Carpenter that he had been working on a jobsite in England with a crew of hoist carpenters, at Canary Wharf. “I go back and forth to job sites in England, as does many members in 1536. They are more easygoing on the sites in England and I was able to have a staging area with a crane available that allowed me to experiment with the rack and pinioning hoist…to tell you the truth it (the idea) came to me in a dream.”

Remember, 1536 are members of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America. We are a proud organization with more than 650,000 members like you.