Shop Steward Spotlight: John Cabral (IAM S6) Finds Solidarity, Strength & Union Pride in the Labor Movement
PHOTO: John Cabral at the IAM Local S6 strike at Bath Iron Works in 2020.
Union shop stewards are critical to building a stronger labor movement. Stewards are our frontline defense when it comes to defending and enforcing union contracts, educating and orientating new members, helping members with workplace issues and so much more. Our new “Steward Spotlight” column features shop stewards doing the hard work of representing workers in workplaces throughout Maine.
This year's Labor Summer Institute, to be held August 13 - 14 at UMaine in Orono, will focus on Shop Stewards Past, Present & Future and will bring together stewards from across the state. More info will be forthcoming and we encourage all unions to send your stewards - and all members - to the Summer Institute.
For Local S6 member John Cabral, being a shop steward isn’t just a title. It’s a calling. But it took him a little while to figure out where he belonged. Cabral grew up in a Portuguese-American family between Fall River, MA and Gilford, NH. He came to Maine because he fell in love with a Maine girl at the age of 17 while in trade school in Vermont. When he was 18, they moved to Maine on New Year’s Eve, 2004.
"It was a struggle for a while staying with the love of my life, figuring out what I wanted to do and the obstacles of meeting new people,” Cabral recalled.
He worked a number of different jobs like selling cars for Bill Dodge AutoGroup, pouring concrete and installing pools one summer. Eventually he landed a job at Poland Spring Water in Poland as a warehouse coordinator, shipping products and training other workers. It was that experience that made him realize he needed a union.
Ten years before Cabral began working at Poland Spring, in Dec., 2004, 56 percent of the unionized workers there decertified their union after being represented by UFCW 1445 for 18 years. Supporters of the decision argued that union staff in Massachusetts had limited contact with the workers in Maine, but opponents pointed out that the company waged a “campaign of distraction and misinformation” to convince workers to decertify. At the time, the plant manager celebrated the decertification vote stating that the company provided “an opportunity for the company and its employees to work directly together.”
But as Cabral learned, the company's flowery promises did not come to fruition. He quickly earned a reputation for his strong work ethic. When the company was having warehousing issues at its locations in New York and New Jersey they sent Cabral and his team down to fix the issues. By making some changes, they helped the company save $4 million in three weeks. But when he returned to Maine he learned that the company had fired 14 workers with 20 years experience two weeks before Christmas as part of a plan to cut costs. He was infuriated that they had let go a man who had been a good mentor to him.
“I’d seen the writing on the wall,” said Cabral. “They were taking young guys like me who were ambitious and saying, ‘You’re going to be a shipper, you’re going to be a dock coordinator, you’re going to be our probationary trainer, you’re going to be our fork lift trainer.’ After three years, I had four or five titles. There’s no way that would have happened in the union world.”
The following summer, he gave Poland Spring an ultimatum. He told them he didn’t think it was fair that he was doing four or five different jobs while the company was cutting career employees.
“They said, ‘Apply for a management position.’ I said, ‘No, no, that’s not the way this is going to work. If you guys want me to stick around, pay me and bring some guys back.’ And they said ‘Well, that’s really not on the table.’ I was like, ‘You guys have got us so thin right now after you fired guys with experience eight months ago. It’s not right.’ They offered me ten cents an hour more.”
At the same time, management didn’t want to lose him as a valuable employee. They praised his work ethic and told him he was the future of the company, but it felt pretty hollow, like when employers give a workers pizza party instead of a pay increase. A few days later, Cabral was with his wife watching their son's football practice when the grandmother of his son’s friend overheard him complaining about work. Carol Alexander was a member of the Machinists’ Union (IAM) Local S7 and had worked at Bath Iron Works for decades.
“She heard me bitching to my wife about how they treated people, how they put a lot more on my plate and how they like to blow smoke up my ass and they want me to stick around yet offering nothing,” he recalled. “Carol was like, ‘Johnny, your son and my grandson have been playing sports for the last eight or nine years together. You’re a good man. You need you to come to BIW with me and be a shop steward. Just the way you talk and the way you are, you really need to be at BIW.’”
Union Pride
Cabral had heard horror stories of people trying for several years to get a job at BIW, but after two interviews he was hired in early 2020 as a Grade 6 fork lift operator working in materials and transportation. A few months after he started, workers at the shipyard began their “hammer down” protests where they would hammer pieces of scrap metal to raise awareness about the company’s lousy contract offer. As he drove down the crane way to deliver materials his heart swelled with union pride at hearing the tremendous racket of hammers hitting metal every hour on the hour. He said being on strike was transformative in solidifying that pride in his union.
Alexander told him that he should work for a year on the deck plates and then run for steward. The following year Cabral did just as she suggested and was elected to represent his fellow workers as a steward. He also joined the union’s safety committee.
“I was like ‘Man, this is the job for me.’ My wife was even like, ‘This is your calling,’” he said. “It’s just really rewarding work.”
He loved helping his fellow union brothers and sisters and saving their jobs. He loved helping people from other trades move up in the ranks. He has used the IAM’s Employee Assistance Program (EAP) to help workers with substance use problems get clean and sober.
“You see a guy who has a 15 or 20-year problem and you sit down and have a talk with him,” said Cabral. “He considers what you say and a couple days later he says, ‘You know what? I considered what you’re saying and I’m going to take action on it. Would you mind helping me out, what’s the avenue?’ You make that phone call, you get them picked up and you help to change their and their family’s lives. That’s really rewarding.”
Unlike at other companies, Local S6 provides training to the workers, not management. Cabral took classes at the IAM’s William W. Winpisinger Education and Technology Center in Maryland and the ICWUC Center for Worker Health & Safety Education in Cincinnati, OH to develop a train-the-trainer at the shipyard. After being a steward for two years, he figured he would step aside to give someone else a chance, but one of his senior union brothers, Randy Chaput, told him, “Nope, you’re our shop steward. Stay put. You’re doing a good job. You’re our guy.’”
Cabral getting a training certification at the ICWUC Center for Worker Health & Safety Education
Local S6 prides itself on the quality of its steward program, which Cabral attributes to its strong contract language and the IAM's training and education programs. The Winpisinger Center offers several steward training classes at varying levels and courses on arbitrations and grievances.
“You go down there for a week, you get rejuvenated with union pride and you learn new things,” he said. “Our union, the IAM, strongly emphasizes training and education, which helps newcomers take on roles, gain traction and take off. If it wasn’t for the IAM and the way they’re structured on an international, district and local level I don’t think I’d even be a tenth of what I am right now.”
Having members with decades of experience in union business is also extremely helpful. Cabral says he is fortunate to have had mentors like Alexander, Chaput and Doug "Crittah" Hall who have taught him what it means to be a union member.
“I wouldn’t be even close to where I am if it wasn’t for their support and education,” he said. “You have to learn from all of the history before you — the grievances, the arbitrations and everything that’s happened prior to you taking this position. If you’re open to listening to senior guys who have done the job you’ll be successful.”
Last year, Hall encouraged Cabral to get involved in the broader labor movement, including attending Western Maine Labor Council meetings, the Maine AFL-CIO’s Labor Summer Institute and even canvassing door-to-door in support of pro-labor candidates for the Maine Legislature. He now serves on the Local S6 Legislative Committee.
“As Dougie told me, ‘Being a steward is more than just representing people in the local,'" Cabral said. "Being a union steward is also representing the community. It’s representing labor."