At Hillery Company — a custom metal fabrication shop in Groton, Connecticut — a volunteer effort to produce aluminum strips for face masks has become a national initiative for the Sheet Metal Workers’ International Association (SMART) union. With volunteer labor, participating shops are asking for donations to cover shipping costs. To date, Hillery has mailed out more than 500 packages containing 40,000 metal nose strips.  

“We want to do everything we can to help and support health care workers and first responders who are on the front lines helping people and savings lives in our communities during this public health crisis,” says Sellers about the effort.

In turn, SNIPS is taking a forward-thinking approach to better support and increase the depth of our reporting on the sheet metal industry, and it starts with SNIPSmag.com.

Subscribe now to receive our digital edition of SNIPS delivered to your email inbox.  

With a large portion of the sheet metal workforce sheltering in place, we are suspending the delivery of our print magazine beginning in July. In order to keep you reliably connected and informed during this pandemic and long after it, SNIPS is prioritizing the digital delivery of our content via email.

We are committed to ensuring that our stories continue to reach you in a safe, timely manner with no added costs attached. Taking a (digital) page from SMART, we are stepping up, figuring it out, and responding in real time to the needs of the sheet metal industry with an emphasis on education, reader engagement and, of course, people (like you).

Subscribe to our digital newsletter to stay connected to the latest HVAC industry news. 

SMART certainly has a formidable labor force and a formidable leader who is leading the union to success. As your editor-in-chief, I am equally committed to do the same.

A version of this article appeared in the May 2020 edition of SNIPS.