Fred Braker’s sheet metal worker career started out as a temporary gig. “And it turned out to be 37 years. Twenty-one of them as an officer,” he says. Working for the Local 194, a sign making and production division, Braker help shepherd in Atlantic City’s casino boom of sheet metal work.
“I was working for a place called Cutler industries. At the time, there was a lot of casinos coming about in Atlantic City,” Braker remembers. “There was a big buzz for everybody in the Atlantic City area. They used to have bus trips down to Atlantic City for the seniors. At that particular point when it first started, the growth of it, everybody was happy, very happy. Everybody was working.”