I know for a fact, after being in a union, I would never want to leave the union or go to another job.
Brighton Tru-Edge honored women at their shop during Women in Construction Week.
Joe Asher from Local 106 (Cincinnati, Ohio) is sandwiched between two generations of family with union pride: his United Mine Workers Association father and his daughter, Chasity Asher, the newest union member in the family. For Asher and his daughter, being stanchly union is all in the family.
Joe Asher’s father worked union during his son’s formative years, and it made a lifelong impact. Joe Asher has been working union his whole life and has spent the last 26 years in the fabrication shop at Enerfab and at Brighton Tru-Edge represented by the Boilermakers. He has been offered a promotion into management more than once, but he’s turned the offer down every time because he “wanted to work union.”
So, when his daughter, who was in nursing school during the COVID pandemic, decided nursing wasn’t the route she wanted to go, and after subsequent jobs at FedEx and as a tow truck driver didn’t quite meet expectations, he suggested applying at his workplace. Brighton Tru-Edge fabricates cold head end caps for pressure vessels.
“My dad never wanted me to work in a man’s shop, in a man’s line of work,” Chasity Asher said. “I think he realized that after I couldn’t find a decent job with insurance and benefits and pay, he finally came around and suggested I come and work where he’s at and see how it goes.”
It’s going well. Really well. It’s going so well that other young women have applied and gotten jobs at Brighten Tru-Edge. And they’re excelling, according to Joe Asher.
“When I first got hired, I was a material handler,” Chasity Asher said. “Driving the forklift, making sure people had materials they needed.”
But after a month, a position in X-ray came up and she put her name in for it and landed a position in NDT radiographic testing.
Joe Asher, the lead over the entire weld department and NDT at Brighton Tru-Edge, has three women on his team working in cutting, welding and non-destructive testing. Two other women work in the shop forming, but he doesn’t oversee them. He’s impressed with the work ethic and skillsets of the women.
“We now have women in place everywhere, so we could make a head 100% by women,” he said. “I think more women getting into Brighton Tru-Edge has brought it to the forefront. There’s no difference between men and women working here. It takes a different breed of man, just as it takes a different breed of woman to do this.”
Brighton Tru-Edge recently honored the women working for them during Women in Construction Week. For Chasity Asher, she’s excited to go to work for the company every morning she rolls out of bed.
“I used to want to call off work a lot,” she said. “There was no motivation in past jobs. Now, I wake up every day and enjoy what I do. The company I work for goes above and beyond to make sure we’re taken care of.”
She also enjoys working in non-destructive testing. She first assesses all the heads that need to be tested for the day, making sure no marks will come up on an X-ray. Then she loads the heads into a machine and uses kilovoltage and milliamperage radiation to take the image of the head and ensure there are no weld defects.
“I have to be that person who says we’re putting out the door what we say we are,” she said. She takes that job seriously, and like her dad, she is resolutely union.
“I know for a fact, after being in a union, I would never want to leave the union or go to another job,” she said. “I hope I can retire from here in 45 years. I feel women being in a man’s field have broken the generational curse that women can’t do a man’s job. Women deserve the job just as much as a man.”
International Vice President of the Great Lakes Dan Sulivan completely agrees. “Throughout my career as a Boilermaker, it’s become clear to me that women are more than capable of succeeding in this male-dominated industry—and those who choose this path often stand out and shine.”
