Essay 3054

From The Los Angeles Times…

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L.A. gang members go union

A rising number of gangbangers are moving into well-paid futures as members of the region’s building trade unions.

By Sam Quinones, Times Staff Writer

Shortly after his release from prison four years ago, Julio Silva entered the apprenticeship program in the Ironworkers Union Local 433 in La Palma.

To his alarm, he learned that ironworkers called all first-year apprentices “punk.”

He had been an East Los Angeles gang member, a drug user, and a car burglar in and out of jail. In that world, a “punk” was someone’s prison sex slave.

But Silva tried not to let it bother him. The more he worked at his new job, the more his skills improved. Ironwork became the one legal thing he had done well. It also paid $29 an hour, plus benefits.

Glimpsing a future, Silva’s desire to do drugs was replaced by his determination to master the use of sleever bars and spud crescents.

After Silva’s first year on the job, the ironworkers simply called him Julio.

“I never thought my history would allow me to have something more than $7 an hour,” said Silva, 37. “I don’t see this happening nowhere else but in the union. It’s given me the best opportunity of my life.”

Silva is among a large and growing number of Southern California gang members who have joined building-trade unions over the last decade as construction work has boomed. These good-paying jobs were once reserved for those with family connections, as fathers recruited sons.

But today, beset by nonunion competition and an aging membership, unions have stepped up recruitment in minority enclaves where many young men have criminal pasts. Now homeboy recruits homeboy.

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