Washington Sheet Metal Worker Chosen for International Union Role

Tammy Meyen, a member of International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation workers Local 66 near Seattle, Washington, was recently hired as the recruitment and retention specialist for the International Training Institute, the educational arm of the unionized sheet metal industry. In this role, she will focus on recruitment and retention efforts of apprentices at 150 training centers across the United States and Canada, finding ways to bring more people into the industry and help ensure they find it a welcoming environment.

Women make up around 50% of the possible workforce, but still represent less than 5% of sheet metal workers. Initiatives such as offering lactation pods can help encourage women of childbearing age to consider the trades.

Meyen’s father was a union roofer, and she remembers her father encouraging her to look into sheet metal, so they might someday work side-by-side on a jobsite. Thanks to him, she learned early that union brotherhood and sisterhood can be like family.

Meyen began her own career in 1999, at the age of 19 as an apprentice, and graduated near the top of her class at Western Washington Sheet Metal in 2005. Over the past 19 years, she worked at PSF Mechanical, one of the Northwest’s leading full-service commercial mechanical firms, rising to the position of shop foreperson in 2011.

For more information visit the website.