EP #9 - William Nevin

Will Nevin started in 2001 carrying bundles on residential roofs for $8 an hour. He worked up through bigger steep slope jobs, moved into low slope commercial, left the trade for a few years to drive trucks, and came back as a union journeyman who broke six figures in the field. Along the way he finished a construction management degree through twelve years of night and weekend classes. Today he runs the service department at RSS in St. Louis, a union shop focused on private re-roofing. In four years he has grown service from two crews to five or six, and his strategy is simple: sell the same things to new people and new things to the same people. That means expanding territory, and moving customers from reactive leak calls into inspections, preventive maintenance and coatings. He also makes the case for union work plainly. Pay, health insurance, a traditional pension, and the security of forty other contractors held to the same standards if work runs out.