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."
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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.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Wednesday May 23, 2007 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 0 inches; 29 words Type of Material: Correction
Union members: In a caption accompanying an article in Monday's Section A about L.A. gang members joining building trade unions, ironworker Julio Silva was incorrectly identified as Jose Silva.
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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.
Members of Dog-patch, in Bellflower, and West Side Wilmas, in Wilmington, are in the Ironworker Union Locals 416 and 433. Members of the 204th Street gang in the Harbor Gateway area of Los Angeles are in the Sheet Metal Workers Local 105. And members of the South Side 18th Street Tiny Diablos are Teamsters.
"We probably make up the majority of the workforce now," said Albert Frey, once a Crip and crack dealer, now an apprentice with the Steam-Refrigeration-Air Conditioning-Pipefitters Union Local 250.
No one knows exactly how many gang members are in the building trades because the unions have stopped asking about recruits' backgrounds. Some unions even will allow a man to remain a member while in prison -- as Frey did for two years -- if he pays his monthly dues.
"This is our gang now," Frey said, "in a positive way, though."
'Almost like a lodge'
