A Construction Workers Union Faces Its Most Divisive Issue: Immigration

Though many of his members support Trump, labor leader Jimmy Williams Jr. has been an outspoken voice against the president's deportation campaign.

LITTLE CANADA, Minn. — Jimmy Williams Jr. doesn’t shy away from difficult conversations. As a union leader in the building trades, he’s become accustomed to making the case for progressive policies to skeptical members who support President Donald Trump. But there’s one issue that never gets easier to talk about, no matter how often it comes up.

“Every single conversation that I have with our membership around immigration is a tough one,” Williams said recently at a union hall outside Minneapolis.

He went on, “People break my stones all the time and say I’m too ‘woke.’ They say we focus on too many things, like DEI and stuff like that. We are a union that represents workers, period.”

Williams was talking to local union representatives about how to forge tighter bonds within their membership at the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades, which represents more than 100,000 painters, glaziers and drywall finishers around the country. He said he wants members to overcome their political differences to see their common economic struggle.

A “broken” system has been pitting U.S.-born workers against immigrants, weakening the union’s solidarity and bargaining position, Williams explained. To illustrate the stakes, he said one of the union’s predominantly Latino local councils hasn’t held a mass public membership meeting for months.