BM Saliba offers a fix
Boston hospitals consume roughly four times the energy of comparable buildings across the city, according to a Commonwealth Beacon investigation into hospital emissions.
Jeff Saliba, Business Manager of Heat and Frost Insulators and Allied Workers Local 6, says the finding didn’t surprise him at all, as his members work inside those steam tunnels every day.
Saliba joined the America’s Work Force Union Podcast on behalf of the Mechanical Insulators LMCT to talk through the report. He explained that Boston hospitals chasing net-zero goals keep overlooking the cheapest, most proven tool for cutting energy waste: properly installed and maintained mechanical insulation.
Local 6 members perform approximately 95 percent of the mechanical insulation work at Boston-area hospitals, Saliba said, and he spent years working the steam tunnels at Brigham and Women’s Hospital himself. Saliba then described a maze of piping that most people would find hard to believe. Properly installed and maintained mechanical insulation – not just material wrapped loosely around a pipe, but work done with the skill and precision trained journeymen provide – lets equipment run at its designed efficiency. It also extends equipment life and directly cuts fuel consumption and carbon output. For hospitals that run largely on gas and are chasing aggressive net-zero timelines, Saliba said mechanical insulation should be the first step, not an afterthought that engineers forget to budget for.
An Apprenticeship Program Built for the Long Term
The conversation then turned to the Local 6 Registered Apprenticeship Program, which currently trains about 80 apprentices. After a 14-year run of unprecedented demand that pulled in as many as 140 traveling workers to cover commercial jobs in the region, Saliba said the market has cooled somewhat with regional power plant closures. However, the Local has not pulled back on its training investment.
Local 6 recently bought the building next to its Union Hall for more than $3 million and renovated it into a training facility, backed by nearly $700,000 in state grant funding for equipment ranging from sewing machines for pad-making classes to mechanics training tools.
For the men and women who choose to enter the Local’s apprenticeship program, they receive wages throughout their training – both classroom and on-the-job. Saliba said the Local is looking for members who understand the opportunity in front of them and will protect it, and they are deliberate about removing apprentices who treat the program as an entitlement rather than an earned path.
A Recovery Program Rooted in Personal Experience
The next topic started with Saliba explaining he has been sober for more than 20 years and holds a Massachusetts license in alcohol and drug addiction counseling. That personal history shapes how Local 6 handles substance use among apprentices, through an employee assistance program (EAP) called Modern Assistance Programs (MAP).
Apprentices who test positive are referred to MAP and must sign a last-chance agreement requiring full compliance for the rest of their apprenticeship, including drug testing and counseling. Those who come forward voluntarily before a violation occurs skip the last-chance agreement but must follow MAP.
Members dropped from the program can petition to return after 10 to 12 months with a favorable MAP report, and Saliba said roughly 60 percent of those petitioners succeed.
EAP services through MAP remain available to members for life, regardless of standing, he added.
Saliba also pointed to the Massachusetts Building Trades Recovery Council, which holds its annual Wellness Walk each September.
If you or someone you know is struggling, the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline is available by calling or texting 988, free and confidential, 24 hours a day.
The Real Fight, Saliba Says, Is Against Individualism
The sharpest part of the conversation centered on what Saliba called the biggest internal threat facing unions today: a decades-long cultural drift toward individualism that he says accelerated through the Reagan era and is now amplified by media fragmentation.
He described a Local 6 vote on a 45-cent raise the union chose to direct into the annuity. One member wanted the money in his paycheck instead, convinced he could invest it better himself in the stock market. Saliba told him he might be right about his own ability to invest, but he was not accounting for the other 599 members in the Local who may not have that same capacity and rely on the collective annuity for retirement security. That is the tension Saliba sees everywhere: a member thinking in terms of “me” instead of “we.”
He connected that same dynamic to how many workers vote, arguing that members who choose candidates based on wedge issues rather than that candidate’s record on wages, benefits, pensions and family economic stability end up voting against their own interests. Without the union, Saliba said, doing non-union insulation work would likely leave his own family reliant on Medicaid and food stamps. His ask of members is simple and costs nothing: when the union calls asking you to phone your legislator, make the call, state your name and address, and state your position.
As Labor Day marks its 132nd anniversary, Saliba ended with a reminder that a union isn’t a social club. It is a political organization that exists to fight for the wages and benefits that let members feed, house and educate their families. That fight, he stressed, only works when members show up together.