SMART Delegates Elect New Officers

Delegates to the Second SMART General Convention have elected by acclamation Joseph Sellers, Jr. as General President and Joseph Powell as General Secretary-Treasurer on August 14, 2019.

Sellers is a second-generation sheet metal worker who began his apprenticeship in 1980 at Local 19 in Philadelphia. In 2002, after serving as a Business Representative for two years, he became Local 19's President and Business Manager. Sellers was elected to the international leadership as 11th General Vice President in 2009. The General Executive Council elected him to serve as the union's General Secretary-Treasurer (GST) in July 2011, and he was unanimously re-elected as GST by delegates to the first SMART General Convention in August 2014. Sellers became SMART's General President May 1, 2015 upon the retirement of then-General President Joseph Nigro.

Sellers has instituted programs directed at providing better representation for a diversifying workforce as well as a focus on positioning the Union for a new era of technological change that will affect the sheet metal and transportation industries in the years to come.

Joseph Powell, Assistant to the General President and former Business Manager/Financial Secretary-Treasurer of Local 206 in San Diego, California, was elected General Secretary-Treasurer by acclamation. He started his career in 1988 as a Local 206 apprentice. He is a strong proponent of training and education in the sheet metal industry to stay in front of a changing industry. From 2004 to 2012, Powell served as Business Manager and Financial Secretary-Treasurer of his home local. After serving on the SMART General Executive Council starting in 2012, Powell became Assistant to the General President in 2015. He will succeed retiring General Secretary-Treasurer Richard McClees, also a Local 206 member and former Business Manager.

Jeremy Ferguson, a member of SMART Transportation Division Local 313 in Grand Rapids, Michigan, was elected Sunday, August 11, to serve as SMART's President ? Transportation Division. After serving in the U.S. Army and attending college, he started railroading in 1994 as a conductor on CSX and was promoted to engineer in 1995. At the first SMART Transportation Division convention in 2014, Ferguson was elected vice president. Ferguson also served as a special representative and organizer starting in 1997 and most recently was appointed to the SMART General Executive Council in July. He succeeds John Previsich, who has been the North Olmsted, Ohio-based transportation union's president since October 2013.

They will be joined by members of the SMART General Executive Council from all sectors of the Union across the United States and Canada.