Frequently Asked Questions about BE4ALL

Belonging and Excellence for All (BE4ALL) launched in December of 2021 and is a joint effort of SMACNA, SMART and the International Training Institute (ITI). The vision for the work is twofold:

1. To create a diverse and inclusive unionized sheet metal industry that is welcoming and fosters belonging for ALL people; and
2. To sustain a thriving industry in which:
   • We recruit, train and retain the best talent;
   • Workers and contractors strive to achieve the highest standards of performance and excellence in their technical skills and crafts;
   • We maintain high employment standards; and
   • We avoid quotas or arbitrary and unhelpful hiring goals.

Here’s a helpful way to think about the difference between the three terms:

• Diversity means that everyone — regardless of their race, gender identity, age or other identity strands — is invited to participate in and benefit from our industry.
• Inclusion means that everyone has a seat at the table and a way to make their voices heard.
• Belonging goes much deeper than diversity and inclusion. It means two things:
  1. That when people come to the table, they feel that they can bring their full, authentic self — ALL parts of who they are as a human being; and
  2. Belonging is also about building the table together. It’s about co-creation. To put it another way, transforming our industry and ensuring that we remain relevant and competitive will take all hands on deck. We will only be successful if we’re working on this endeavor together. BE4ALL is the vehicle for how we do this.

SMACNA and SMART have their own BE4ALL Committees. For SMART, BE4ALL is guided by a diverse committee of members and leaders from throughout the union, including apprentices, journey-level members and union officials. The committee makes recommendations to the SMART general president and general secretary-treasurer.

For SMACNA, BE4ALL is guided by a diverse committee of contractors, their management representatives, chapter executives and SMACNA leaders from the United States and Canada. The committee makes recommendations to SMACNA’s CEO and, if needed, the Executive Committee, who will take appropriate recommendations to the SMACNA Board.

The leadership, committees and supporting staff for both SMACNA and SMART, along with the ITI, meet several times a year to plan and coordinate BE4ALL activities across the industry.

SMART and SMACNA have retained Dushaw Hockett, our outside belonging and excellence expert, to provide facilitation and technical support for our joint BE4ALL effort.

The SMART and SMACNA BE4ALL Committees guide our work, and they meet regularly. On an annual basis, the BE4ALL Committees work with the SMACNA, SMART and ITI leadership to develop an action plan for the upcoming year.

As of 2024, BE4ALL has divided its work into four subcommittees that have focused on implementing the action plan and delivering material results aimed at ensuring our industry is welcoming and inclusive of all current and future members. The subcommittees work on the following initiatives: Toolbox Talks, the Rapid Response Protocol, Bias and Belonging Training, outreach to membership, the BE4ALL calendar, Learning Journeys, Juneteenth celebration, organizing more members and outreach to community groups.

Without question, BE4ALL is for ALL members and contractors. We believe that every human being should experience belonging (see the definition under question #2), regardless of your race, gender identity or other characteristic. But we also know that this is not currently the case for some groups. So BE4ALL may need to tailor and target programs and strategies to ensure that particular groups have what they need to reach the universal goal of belonging. But make no mistake about it, BE4ALL is for the benefit of everyone in the unionized sheet metal industry. Everyone deserves to be respected.

BE4ALL’s efforts address one of our industry’s most pressing needs — recruiting enough skilled workers to meet our workforce needs now and into the future.

The short answer is no. We’ve all heard the reports. Across our countries, meetings have turned into shouting matches. People are blaming and shaming each other. This is NOT what BE4ALL is about. Yes, the work of belonging requires us to have hard conversations sometimes. But it also requires that we treat each other with dignity, respect and compassion. It requires that we see our common humanity in other people. These are values that we can all agree on.

Below is a non-exhaustive list of BE4ALL’s accomplishments since we launched in December of 2021:

• Distributed hundreds of menstrual bathroom kits to JATCs across both countries as the result of apprentices pointing out the absence of menstrual products in local training centers
• Launched Bias and Belonging training through the ITI, SMACNA and SMART
• Developed the 2023 and 2024 BE4ALL Calendars
• Released Toolbox Talks on various topics
• Formed the SMACNA and SMART RISE (Representation, Integrity, Support, Empowerment) Committees
• Distributed the Rapid Response Protocol throughout the industry
• Hosted Learning Journeys to promote our commitment to lifelong learning
• Launched I Got Your Back challenges
• Celebrated and provided education on Juneteenth
• Held breakout sessions at SMART, SMACNA and Partners in Progress Conferences to educate leadership across the industry about BE4ALL
• Organized Pedal to the Metal Toy Drives designed to spread joy to children during the holiday season and raise awareness of family-sustaining careers in the unionized sheet metal trade

The goal of our work is to see results in five key areas:

• Expansion — Expanding and diversifying the pool of people from which we recruit.
• Recruitment — Proactively recruiting new members into our organizations.
• Training — Equipping members with the skills, tools and values they need to be successful.
• Retention — Creating the type of work and business environments where people want to stay — and where they can imagine a long career of service and contribution.
• Advancement — Helping members climb the ladder into leadership positions or other opportunities.

BE4ALL is not a quick-fix project. As one person recently put it, this is “forever work” — to truly transform an entire industry will take years. However, we set annual benchmarks to ensure that we’re making progress along the way.

Absolutely not. At the 2022 Partners in Progress (PINP) Conference in Las Vegas, Nevada, Tim Carter, who was president of the SMART Northwest Regional Council, and Julie Mueller, executive director for SMACNA’s Western Washington Chapter, shared that they’ve seen a “dramatic reduction” in the apprentice washout rates for women and people of color. They reported that they achieved this by “raising the bar,” not lowering it. Specifically, they improved the quality of training and support provided to apprentices to ensure that each person had what they needed to perform at the highest standards of excellence. Their approach reinforced two things: 1) this work is NOT about lowering standards; and 2) the work of belonging does not view people as inadequate or deficient. It sees talent and potential in all human beings. And it’s our job to nurture it.

This is an excellent question. Yes, in the long term, the goal is to build workplaces (and a society) where we celebrate our shared humanity and where we appreciate all the ways that human beings are diverse or different. But in order to reach this goal, we have to remove the barriers that get in the way. These include the biases and stereotypes about each other that we’ve all internalized (oftentimes unconsciously) over the course of our lives. These biases and stereotypes may stem from the places where we grew up. Or the schools we attended. Or the families in which we were raised. So yes, getting to the point where we treat each other like human beings is the ultimate goal. BE4ALL is the pathway for how we get there.

If you want to learn more about BE4ALL, or if you’re looking to get involved, please send an email to Director of Special Projects Louise Medina at lmedina@smart-union.org for SMART or Director of Chapter Management Jen Squirewell at jsquirewell@smacna.org for SMACNA. American SMART members can also text “BE4ALL” to 67336 (message and data rates may apply), and Canadian SMART members can text “BE4ALL” to 23235 (standard message and data rates apply).

If you are not currently in the sheet metal industry and are interested in a rewarding sheet metal career, learn how you can become a SMART member by clicking here.